Wings of Desire (Aajir Manuh)

Glimpse of rural Assam

Name of the book: Wings of Desire (Aajir Manuh)

Author: Hitesh Deka

Translator: Parag Dasgupta

Publisher: Chandra Prakash

Pages: 152

Price: Rs 180

Hitesh Deka’s Aajir Manuh (Man of today) is a well-known Assamese novel and has a lot of promise. The writer has a natural flair for an objective appraisal of rural life, its problems and intrigues and a realistic portrayal of typical village life and characters, mostly peasants, based on personal experience and observation.

It was a popular novel of its time and retained an old-world charm of the rural milieu when life was not at all complex.

The translator has deliberately chosen to name the book Wings of Desire in order to “bring it out of its antique context and to give it a modern look”.

The third-person narration follows the lives of two college friends — Mahesh Kalita and Pratap Deka — and the interpersonal relationships they share with people who matter the most to them.

The story itself is very simple.

Both Mahesh and Pratap are idealistic young men who refuse to be straitjacketed by the unhealthy norms of society, which is a direct offshoot of the disintegrating and disruptive effects on rural life of rapid industrialisation and urbanisation.

Mahesh fails to secure a good job even after scoring distinction marks, as the whole process of employment is steeped in corruption.

Pratap, the other hand, is forced by circumstances to go by his brother’s wishes and marry the snobbish daughter of the village zamindar, Gopikanta Barua.

The subsequent drama involving job-seeker-turned-social activist Mahesh, hapless and cash-strapped Pratap and his overbearing in-laws and the God-fearing villagers brings to the fore the simplicity and innocence of the rural populace.

The novel also deals with the problem of immigrants who set up home and hearth on a “land belonging to Assamese people”, and that too, at the behest of Barua, who turns against his own people and motherland.

The sequence of events land Mahesh in jail and turn Pratap’s life around.

The novel decries the corrupting influence of wealth, and at the same time, is fired by the radical patriotic zeal of Pratap and Mahesh, who strive against all odds for a society free from exploitation and economic inequality.

The author is often satirical in order to expose the hollowness of the money-grabbing classes.

The story reflects the author’s intimate acquaintance with all features of Assamese rural life that is apparent from the graphic and realistic portrayal of the individual characters representing various aspects of social reality.

There is a moral vision implicit throughout the novel and Wings of Desire is full of promise despite its idealistic ending.

The translator, too, has tried his best to do justice to the original, but his efforts, at times, prove to be too stilted, and at other times too literal.

The sentimental and emotional scenes are lacklustre and leave one feeling cold; the pathos is missing, especially when Kalyani dies. The English is at times anachronistic, and the meaning of expressions ambiguous. Another big faux pas is his confusing the name of Gopikanta Barua. It appears as Ghanakanta Barua in Chapter 14.

Nevertheless, for all discerning readers, the original Assamese novel is such a delightful read that the translated version is only its shadow. The translator’s endeavour is honest, though, and there is always room for improvement.

BASHABI GOGOI

Published on December 23, 2011

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1111223/jsp/northeast/story_14891148.jsp

Napam Dapam

Name of the book: Napam Dapam

Writer: Pabindra Deka

Publisher: Chandra Prakash

Pages: 310

Price: Rs 175

A socio-political novel, Napam Dapam, is an effort by the author to unify Assam at a time when different communities of the state are demanding separate administrative areas.

The story and the characters of the novel has developed taking the Indian independence struggle, Assam Movement and armed struggle by different outfits in the state as its background.

This is the eight book of Deka, a politician and a writer.

Published on December 16, 2011

Ithaca

The editor and his monsters

Name of the Book: Ithaca

Author: David Davidar

Publisher: Fourth Estate

Price: Rs 499

David Davidar, ex-CEO of Penguin Canada, can safely be assumed to be an authority on the unique selling points of novels. As the ace publisher, he must have delivered numerous lectures on the art of becoming a successful novelist. So when he chose to become an author himself, he was armed with the magic formula that helps brew bestselling, even Booker-worthy, works. It is surprising that with all this useful knowledge, Davidar came up with Ithaca in his third attempt. It is less a novel than a series of lectures on topics that must be very close to Davidar’s heart. They are interspersed with a narrative that charts the rise and fall and the resultant progression towards inner light of the editor of an international publishing house, Litmus. The fictional cover is thin, and it is all too easy to hear Davidar speaking from within the protagonist, Zachariah Thomas. Here is scandal-scarred Davidar exonerating himself before the public by telling his tale and, at the same time, trying to make a few good bucks out of his ‘story’, which had stirred the publishing world in 2010. But the licking of wounds hardly makes for a lofty work of art. Let alone greatness, this novel does not seem destined to earn its author even a handsome return from sales.

Initially, one wonders what impelled Davidar to write an apology for the publishing industry — did anybody ever say that the industry is a big bad world, and in that way, different from other idyllic professional spheres out there? There are diligent discourses on editors’ skills — “Celebrated editors are superstars at the companies they work for…. The world is aware of one of the most important skills any editor worth her salt must have: the ability to nurture all the writers she publishes…. But another equally important skill is almost never spoken about outside the profession: the ability to sell”; on editorial meetings — “it is in this forum that the books that the company is thinking of buying are first revealed, appraised, discussed, fought over, and bought or turned down”; on CEOs, on the Frankfurt Book Fair, and so on. (For the philosophically inclined, there are also lectures on treachery in the publishing world, and for those fond of success stories, on Rushdie, as an exemplary star child of the industry.)

Halfway through the book, one realizes what has urged Davidar to take the podium. There’s a wolf at the door of publishing houses and it takes the form of Kindles and iPads. But don’t worry, Davidar reassures us. If the Frankfurt Book Fair, as old as Gutenberg, has “insouciantly negotiated every convulsion in the publishing business”, the latter will also slay the monster of digital revolution. While one inflates one’s heart with this daring hope, there are sermons on the importance of the publishing industry right from the horse’s mouth. “All its disadvantages notwithstanding, to be part of this world is a privilege and he [Zachariah, Zach for short] is proud to belong to this company of men and women, who for centuries have nurtured the mother of all creative arts, storytelling, with dedication and skill.” (EOM)

Published on December 16, 2011

The yearning of seeds

Poetry on life and roots

Name of the book: The yearning of seeds

Auhtor: Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih

Publisher: Harper Collins

Pages: 151

Price: Rs 199

Seeds wish to be trees and bear fruit, even palimpsest pears. This describes Kynpham’s wishes and concerns for he wants to be radical, in the original sense of being rooted, and with a poet like him even description is advocacy.

Rooted to his locale, he reaches out to the wider world and tries to come to terms with the sprouts, native or alien, friendly or belligerent. His range is impressively wide and his learning helps. He has taken considerable care in the arrangement of the poems into three distinct but not separate sections.

Over and above the meaning of the individual pieces, he wants the book to convey a general meaning or significance. He hopes the willed organicity will define his oeuvre.

‘Sundari’ from the first section — ‘the yearning of seeds’ — gives vent to a general human wish which takes on an immediacy because of the context and because of its nearness to the folk idiom and a focus, particularly in the reference to the river Umkrah. He is sad and depressed because there was nothing to do ‘but watch the grey winter sky/breeding ill will’ as ‘the timid afternoon/was slinking out like peace/from this town’ [Forebodings]. ‘Ren’, a poem based on a Khasi folk tale is simple and striking and has the poignancy of a corporate yearning:

Times have changed

Few care to listen

Many only wish to be left

To their separate dreams.

Kynpham does not seem to acknowledge the legitimacy of the wish and last lines ‘and mine always end/with alien policemen/their eyes longing/to eat us up/or if they don’t/those they protect will/an insidious infection someday could well have been left out. The staccato rhythm here and a few other pieces is more for effect than effective. It has that lurking persistence of satire that informs many of the pieces in the first two sections.

Kynpham has a ready, caustic wit and wry humour, which makes these poems lively, but his lyric genius deserves a lasting place in the sun:

Winter that sneaked into these hills

On the tenth moon has consolidated

Its stay behind the cherries.

[2]

The above lines are in stark contrast to what follows in ‘Good versus Evil’ and underlines his rich variety. There is a terse mix of folk metaphors and critical modernity in poems like ‘Rain Song 2000’.

The second section begins with the title poem for the section ‘Fungus’:

But the outside forms no part of my possession.

The heart that slithers out of its hole

To curl up in its sunshine warmth

Must risk being stoned.

These lines have immediacy and a rich hinterland of awareness, and the metaphoric expression here is terse and accurate. ‘Self-actualisation’ poses the problems of life befittingly in a prosaic manner and remains too disturbingly discursive.

My vote is for the lyric effervescence of the final section and the pieces here are sufficient witness to his genius and learning, because they spurn the unnecessary and the unnecessarily didactic.

Finally, I hail the emergence of an intelligent and conscientious poet from this tortured region of ours.

PRADIP ACHARYA

Published on December 16, 2011

http://www.telegraphindia.com/archives/archive.html

Bhutan : Through the Lens of the King

KING WITH A CAMERA

Name of the Book: Bhutan : Through the Lens of the King

Publisher: Roli Books

Pages 176

Price: Rs 1,495

Change has come to Bhutan. There can be no greater evidence of it than a book of photographs taken by the king himself and published with introductions by two Indian writers, Pavan K. Varma and Malvika Singh. The remote mountain nation, closed to outsiders for so long, once existed in the mind wreathed in clouds and circled by dragons. But in little more than a decade, television and the internet have been introduced, tourists have been allowed in, and from 2006, the aloof kingdom was turned into a constitutional monarchy, complete with parliament and elections. Bhutan is now open to being viewed and known and documented, to a more democratic relationship with its viewers. To the outside world, it has emerged from the mythical realm of Shangri-La to become a living, breathing country.

In Bhutan: Through the Lens of the King, the current monarch, Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck, documents different aspects of the country through his camera. Some images are familiar to viewers already — vast sweeps of land and mountains rearing up in fantastic shapes; old forts or dzongs of whitewashed stone with exquisite detail around the doors and parapets; landscapes that could be dreamscapes of preternatural beauty. Others let you in to a different Bhutan — corn cobs that crowd the roof of a house, a kitchen with an earthen stove where the family gathers for warmth, a man pouring out wine from the traditional hollow horn, students playing football. Jigme Wangchuck visits isolated rural communities and tries to capture a way of life. Flora and fauna also find a place in this album — the gnarled bark of a cypress, the national tree of Bhutan, is seen in close-up, blue sheep streak up a hillside filled with scarlet flowers. Some pictures are more sombre, as the king visits villages ravaged by fires and other natural disasters.

Although the photographer has stunning raw material to work with, most of the pictures might be of historical rather than artistic interest — that is, if the hagiographic captions are ignored. Images of a country on the cusp of change, taken by its king, perhaps have an element of nation-making in them. Bhutan constructs its own modernity as it tells of itself to the world.

On the left is a weaver from Khoma village who sits with her child on her back. A large house, called a nagtsang, shows the trademark architecture of Bhutan (top middle). The house, in the village of Khengkar, once belonged to the “power lord” of the region. Meanwhile, the right hand of a Guru Rimpoche statue wields a thunderbolt (top right). The Angry Sparrow Peak, which rises to 6,900 metres, is home to the snow leopard and blue sheep (bottom right). The lake in the valley below supplies water to the town of Paro.

IPSITA CHAKRAVARTY

Published on December 09, 2011

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1111202/jsp/opinion/story_14824208.jsp

Women’s Empowerment: Present and the Way Forward

Women and change

Name of the book: Women’s Empowerment: Present and the Way Forward

Publisher: Purbanchal Prakash

Editor: Deepali Bora

Pages: 280

Price: Rs 500

Women’s empowerment is an issue that has been grabbing headlines for quite sometime now. But when it comes to Assam, the demographic and social diversity poses a challenge to those implementing women-specific programmes.

The book, Women Empowerment: Present and the Way Forward, is a compilation that can guide the implementing agencies in finding the perfect balance when it comes to empowering women in a multi-community, multi-cultural society like that of Assam.

The book is a compilation of papers presented in a national seminar organised by the Prateeti Women’s Forum at Debraj Roy College, Golaghat, in August 2009.

Though most of the papers are interesting and introspective case studies of marginalised women groups in the Northeast and their problems, a few like Education: A way to Women’s Empowerment, Women Empowerment: Issues, Strategies and Challenges, Education: A Tool for Empowerment of Rural Women and Women Empowerment and Education are just rehashed statistics.

Other papers shed light on the Misings and the tea tribe population of Assam vis-à-vis the condition of their women, their position in society and also on other little known facts like why and how the ex-tea garden labourers came into being in Assam and how they subsist.

Out of the total of 31 papers presented in the seminar, four are novel studies on women’s status and progress through the media of cinema and literature.

The first traces the empowerment of Assamese women through cinema is aptly described in the paper, Women in Assamese Cinema: A Saga of Women’s Liberation by Kritanjali Konwar, Kakoli Sonowal, Plabita Das.

Another paper, Phelani: A Portrayal of Women’s Empowerment by Mayuri Sarma Baruah deals with the novel by Assamese author Arupa Patangia Kalita.

A paper by Deepali Bora and Mousumi Baruah upholds Pitambardev Goswami as a torchbearer in the field of women’s empowerment in 20th century Assam.

Though most of the data and statistics may have been relevant to the period when the research was carried out, this book stands as an invaluable record of our times — the inferior status of women in our country, the yet-to-be-addressed issues which will remove the hurdles in empowering women in the 21st century, legislative support for women in India, government initiatives, the Panchayati Raj institution and other development programmes for women.

The government should pay heed to the slew of suggestions by experts who had worked in the field to understand the problems plaguing implementation of development programmes for women and to find solutions to these problems, which are as much a reality today as they were a few years ago.

SMITA BHATTACHARYYA

Published on December 09, 2011

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1111209/jsp/northeast/story_14850981.jsp

The Opium War: Drugs, dreams and the making of China

WARS WITHOUT END

Name of the book: The Opium War: Drugs, dreams and the making of China

Name of the writer: By Julia Lovell,

Publisher: Picador

Price: Rs 499

Julia Lovell’s book opens afresh the “shameful story” of the 19th-century Opium War, which has not yet slipped out of Chinese memory. What emerges is “why” and “how” it happened at all. Was it only because of unstable relations between the Chinese rulers and the foreign merchants trying to operate in and around mainland China? Part of the answer appears to lie in a reciprocal relationship between Chinese tea and Indian opium, with the British as the driving force behind the trade and the war.

Lovell observes,“by the 1780s, Britain was running up a serious trade deficit: while China’s government was quite happy to service the growing British tea addiction, it seemed to want little except silver in return. As East India Company profits failed to offset the costs of rule in India, the British tea-drinkers pushed Asia trade figures further into the red”. But Chinese consumers had taken to Indian opium the way Londoners had taken to Chinese tea. After 1833, when the free trade lobby ended the East India Company’s monopoly on tea, the market was flooded by merchants looking to profit from tea, offering opium as barter. Not surprisingly, the British soon made money and it was in Bengal, especially Calcutta, that the drug was shipped and auctioned.

But this soon led to the “corrupting effects of a booming drug culture”, the secret actors of which were a crew of merchants from London. These businessmen “were joined by the Protestant missionary community”. The London Missionary Society had sent one Robert Morrison to China as far back as 1807. These “missionaries became natural allies of the smugglers”.

Lovell’s book combines erudition with a comprehensive perspective. She offers a lucid analysis of Qing China’s interactions with the outside world, of “the miscalculations of the Chinese court’s anti-opium lobby; the mutual incomprehension that pushed both sides towards war” and of “the opportunistic hypocrisy of the British”. She also explores the “Opium War myth”, which has endured in both Beijing and Britain for 170 years.

The actions and attitudes of the British leading up to the wars stand out for their sheer brazenness. For instance, when William Napier was appointed “to maintain a legal trade financed by illegal drug imports” and became Britain’s official resident in China, he vowed to “blast China into submission”. Arrogance, coupled with contempt for the Chinese, made him declare: “The Empire of China is my own”. One can hardly criticize modern China’s view of the West after this.

In China today, the Opium War is the traumatic inauguration of the country’s modern history. It is thought to be the main “cause of all their country’s troubles”. It has certainly cast a long shadow over Sino-Western relations and both sides appear to have “tampered with the historical record for their own purposes”.

Lovell notes that the “refusal to look at matters from the perspective of the Chinese state’s own prerogatives helped drive Britain towards war in the nineteenth century, and risks pushing relations towards confrontation in the early twenty first”. There seems to be a subtle softening towards the Western stand on China in the 19th century. Nevertheless, the role of British imperialism in the war is highlighted in the book. India’s position in this saga could have been elaborated a bit more in this otherwise enjoyable and readable book.

ABHIJIT BHATTACHARYYA

Published on November 25, 2011

Burning Bright: Irom Sharmila and the Struggle for Peace in Manipur

Name of the book: Burning Bright: Irom Sharmila and the Struggle for Peace in Manipur

Author: Deepti Priya Mehrotra

Publisher: Penguin

Pages: 219

Price: Rs 275

Even if you have nothing, you can always give a smile. When you meet somebody, give a smile to that person” — Irom Sharmila learnt this mantra from Tonsija Devi, her grandmother.

Her grandmother had told her many things — about the history of her state, women’s role in protest in ancient and medieval times, about the indomitable spirit of the meira paibies, and all later developments. A young Sharmila used to listen to those stories with amazement, and, gradually developed the spirit that helped her to be the one she is today.

Manipur will never forget the tragic incident of mowing down of 10 innocent persons by the Assam Rifles at Malom, a village near Imphal, in November 2000, which had not only shaken the state to the core but also produced a satyagrahi — indomitable and hopeful. Sharmila, then 28 years old, visited the spot and was moved by the incident. She began her fast-unto-death demanding the repeal of the “draconian” Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act and drew world attention, continuing her fast for more than a decade.

Many news articles have been written on the Iron Lady of Manipur so far, who, with her strong will, has given a new thrust to the growing anxiety and anger of the people of Manipur against the army act. But, Deepti Priya Mehrotra’s Burning Bright has dealt with the subject through all possible perspectives, including the poet inside Sharmila.

The book narrates how Sharmila, the ninth child of a veterinary attendant, imbibed moral values from age-old traditions, completed her education and worked with a human rights organisation for a brief span of time before taking up her crusade against the army act.

Reading this book, the reader will have a fair idea about the factors behind Sharmila’s protest, her steadfastness to continue her struggle amid adversity, her dreams and desires. After their first rendezvous in 2006, the writer met Sharmila many times and peered into her mind through their conversations. She has also met others who knew Sharmila closely, including her 104-year-old grandmother, Tonsija.

Mehrotra describes Sharmila’s protest as “original, uncompromising and very tough” and “her sacrifice speaks louder than words.” She says that through her determined satyagraha, Sharmila has become “a parable for our times”.

The history of Manipur as of today is a testimony of human culpability, exploitation and neglect. But Sharmila was a satyagrahi, the defiant lady and a poet. One of her poems, The road to peace, reflects her wishes: “I’ll spread the fragrance of peace/From Kanglei, my birthplace/ In the ages to come/ It will spread all over the world”.

Revolving around the life of Sharmila, the writer has recorded other significant incidents which took place in

Manipur during the last few years like the nude protest by a group of Manipuri women against rape and murder of Manorama Devi.

BISWAJIT M. MAYANK

Published on November 25, 2011

In the Sea there are Crocodiles

Test of human nature

Name of the book: In the Sea there are Crocodiles

Author: Fabio Geda

Publisher: Random House

Pages: 211

Price: Rs 499

T his is a story of a 10-year-old boy’s travails. He journeys from his home in Afghanistan to Pakistan, Iran, Turkey, Greece and finally to Italy. It is an 11-year odyssey with many twists and turns and relates of his experiences, exploitation and the cruelties and heartlessness that the boy had to undergo before he attains freedom in Italy. In between, there are also acts of kindness and humanity that helped him through all the hard times and situations of hopelessness, deprivation, hunger and death.

The story begins with the boy, Enaiatollah Akbari, being taken by his mother from his home in Afghanistan to Pakistan. His father was killed by ganglords who threaten to kill him as well if the family did not do their bidding. Enaiatollah’s mother leaves him with three pieces of advice. He finds work at the inn where he stayed. This helped him tide over the initial days.

After some time he looks for a way of bettering his means as a small trader, makes new friends and grows bigger, and decides to go to Iran to do better. He suffers many hardships and is twice repatriated to Afghanistan. He then goes to Turkey. Here things are not too good either and he undertakes a rather precarious journey to Greece, followed by a very risky sea journey by boat and finally gets to Italy. Some helpful locals give him food and sustenance, and he finally gets asylum. Enaiatollah then tries to better himself through education. He is now a 21-year-old man, who finally manages to contact his mother, who has managed to move to Pakistan with the rest of his family. The story ends with the promise of a reunion.

Enaiatollah narrates his story to Fabio Geda, who recorded it and brought out the book originally in Italian. This is a translation by Howard Curtis. The English version has thus gone through two levels of recording.

The book is nevertheless absorbing. It brings the worst in human nature – torture, cruelty, oppression of the weak and helpless and exploitation to the point of blackmail. There are also remarkable acts of kindness and compassion. Enaiatollah experiences all these. He surmounts all the trials and comes out triumphant. It is a remarkable story of immense human courage and indomitable will in adversity, which grips the attention from the beginning to the very end.

H.W.T. SYIEM

Published on November 25, 2011

Beato’s Delhi: 1857 and beyond

History’s refuge

Name of the book: Beato’s Delhi: 1857 and beyond

Author: Jim Masselos, Narayani Gupta

Publisher: Ravi Dayal and Viking

Pages: 258

Price: Rs 1,499

T he revolt of 1857 is of obvious historical importan­ce. What is less apparent is the event’s significance in the history of journalism and photography. William Howard Russell set new standards of reporting when on behalf of The Times he moved first with Havelock’s column and later with the army of Colin Campbell and left behind detailed accounts of the British counter insurgency measures in north India. A few months later Felice Beato, an Italian photographer, arrived in India and documented the impact of the rebellion and the manner in which it was quelled. He thus left behind images of Delhi and Lucknow that are of undying historical value.

The subtitle of the book reads “1857 and beyond’’ but it actually goes beyond Beato. One of the authors, Jim Masselos, in 1997 followed Beato’s footsteps in Delhi and photographed the same sites as far as possible.

The photographs reproduced here are not all from Beato’s album and do not relate to the great uprising. The first photograph is that of the Jain temple between Chandni Chowk and Jama Masjid. Beato’s photograph of it is reproduced here. Today, it looks different: cleaner and the land has changed its character.

The second picture is taken by Masselos and is that of a more familiar monument, the Jama Masjid. In the aftermath of the rebellion, there were sche­mes, stopped by Lord Canning, to raze Jama Masjid to the ground. The masjid actually remained under military control for five years and thus escaped vandalism. It stands today virtually unchanged from what it was in 1857. The third, another familiar Delhi monument, is here captured in Beato’s camera. The fourth-century pillar stands framed by a 13th century arch. Masselos notes that Beato may have been the first to photograph this view. It has changed little over time.

The next picture is a view of the Jantar Mantar. When Beato photographed the landscape was bare and of course without a modern hotel looming over the observatory built in the 1720s by Jai Singh II of Jaipur. The mos­que seen in the last picture is from Beato’s collection but the mosque in it cannot be identifi­ed. The style, Masselos comments, is distinctly Mughal.

The book by juxtaposing photographs tells a history of Delhi and the way the city has chang­ed. In her essay, Narayani Gupta — and very few know the history of Delhi after the revolt of 1857 more than her — places Beato’s view(s) of Delhi in the context of the European gaze on Delhi.

In the pro­cess she offers a glimpse into the many layers of Delhi’s unique history. In the 14th century, Gup­ta tells us, the city was called Jahan-Panah (the refuge of the world) and it has remained that ever since. Past Lutyen’s elegant bungalows, on tree-lined avenues one can drive to the ruins of Mughal grandeur.

RUDRANGSHU MUKHERJEE

Published on November 25, 2011

Lines in the void: Poems by Rajeev Barua

A prism of perspectives

Translator: Krishna Dulal Barua

Publisher: Loopamudra Publications

No. of pages: 66

Price: Rs 100

Poetry provides pleasure because it is closer to the heart and emotions. Suggestions of infinite kind erupt and the reader stays engrossed within the rich kaleidoscope of images and metaphors. Small and mundane attain the extraordinariness in views and perceptions. Life and men are reread, re-envisioned, in the momentary reflection of the poet and rightfully he becomes the representative voice of man and his philosophy.

In the anthology of his translated poems Lines in the Void, Rajeev Barua captures moments of illumined nebula of perceptions in chiselled words and brilliant metaphors. The sensitivity of the poet is not wasted in fluidity of hesitant expressions but is crystallised in mature and condensed idioms. Fleeting time and transient love find a striking chord in Ballad of Dejection, where a “ripened fallen leaf” need not be directed “where to head for’. But in the poems like The Hand, the contour of a hand retains splendour of life and love; it is posed as a sculpted hand fixated “on the loom”.

This solitary figure riveted to the extent of absorption poses like the reaper on Wordsworth’s canvas. Apart from his affiliation to common folk life as projected in Morning Stroll at Bhomoraguri and Firewood, Barua’s poetry sketches individual pathos or serenity of composure of a passerby who is elated at the refreshing glimpse of the scene which is “restless” or the gurgling happiness condensed in the heart of a fisherman who “catches” the sun in his net.

But the golden hue of the sun does not connote an entire fleet of joy for the introverted soul. For, here are moments of deep immersion in the heart and the sensitive yet placid poet intermittently realises the futility of all human attempts that aim at transient merriment. So the inevitable query to his fellow poet is:

“What a poet you are

Without a pond of your own!”

He has earnestly felt the need of a “pond” for oneself which perhaps reflects his mirror image, his other self. You and I in the Office Room is a similar poem that, too, brings to the surface the idea of introspection that takes the vivid form of a one-on-one conversation between the subject and the other. Almost all poems of Barua feel and read like interior monologues. A dialogue is set forth and that brings to focus unforetold experiences and realisations to the creative artist. Life’s gusto is felt in every minute moment and the poet remains an aesthete who is able to decipher beauty in every small act of kindness or a gesture of pitiful love. Looking Beautiful authenticates this dichotomy between beauty and ugliness and real and illusory.

A thoughtful poem in the anthology is Tale of a Pair of Shoes which is full of innuendoes, stark similes and suggestive metaphors. It very blatantly evokes in the mind the image of Van Gogh’s A Pair of Boots which very urgently, as it were, condenses realised situations like the rustic and his ambience. Similarly here in Barua’s poem a few related narratives are woven around the lovers, neighbours and foes of the shoes. The most arresting line of the poem is “Both the shoes had fallen in love with a pair of brawny feet.”

Barua’s images and metaphors, as indicated earlier, are reflective in nature. The cosy security of the “home” offers a stable founding ground for all journeys that the subject undertakes and to the poet home resides on “two bullock carts” evoking along with a strain of melancholia, the reality of dislocated and migrated souls.

The poem Home draws deeply poignant pictures of hope, desperation and calamity and it seems to be one of the best poems in the anthology. Breaking Away and Ballad of the Empty Bottle-1, too, offer some intense metaphoric sonority in images like “Yours wishes are pomegranate flowers” or “The traits of a bottle grow apparent/Only when it is empty”.

The present anthology of the translated poems of Barua can claim another credit apart from the thought, cadence and suggestion of his images and rhetoric. All poems here are very well translated and each of the four translators has retained the candour of the source language. Because of their virtuosity the diction feels fresh; the metaphors tend to suggest in infinite variety of ways and the poems remain honest statements of a poetic heart.

The book will definitely thrill the avid readers of poetry.

GARIMA KALITA

Published on November 18, 2011

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1111118/jsp/northeast/story_14741806.jsp

The Cat’s Table

A memoir and an autobiography

Name of the book: The Cat’s Table

Writer: Michael Ondaatje

Publisher: Jonathan Cape

No. of pages: 288

Price: Rs 499

Truth disappears with history and gossip tells us in the end nothing of personal relationships,” writes Michael Ondaatje in Running in the Family, his record of the eccentric lives of his ancestors. Growing out of “two return journeys” in 1978 and 1980 to Sri Lanka, the place where he was born, Running in the Family is a curious mix of autobiography, reminiscence, hearsay and history. Yet, in spite of the fusion of fact and fiction, it is a work that is firmly aware of its narrative destiny: “anecdotes and faint memories... dates and asides [interlock] as if assembling the hull of a ship.” Indeed, the final vision of the book that the reader has is one of completing a heady voyage, during which minds matured, hearts were put in peril, and lives came together or fell apart.

That image of a ship afloat in a sea of voices is what comes vividly to mind as one reads Ondaatje’s latest novel, which, he admits, “uses the colouring and locations of memoir and autobiography”. There is a travelling circus, a rabid dog gone crazy, and a cast that is straight out of the world of Running in the Family. The plot literally involves a nautical expedition undertaken by the 11-year-old autobiographical narrator on the Oronsay, sailing from Ceylon to England in the 1950s. The young Michael is going to England to live with his mother after his parents’ divorce. He shares his humble cabin with Mr Hastie, a kennel keeper who reads mystical works, and takes his meals at “the cat’s table”, tucked farthest away from the coveted captain’s table. Keenly sensitive to the pulse of life on a ship presided over by a captain who “was not fond of his Asian cargo”, Michael begins to “distrust... the authority and prestige of all Head Tables” on this three-week journey — a habit that would gradually grow into his adult personality.

In the company of his peers, the “exuberant” Cassius and the “quiet” Ramadhin with his “tentative heart”, Michael learns “about adults simply by being in their midst”. He meets Larry Daniels, the botanist who is transporting a garden of exotic herbs to Europe; Mr Mazappa, “half Sicilian, half something else”, a “Homeric” character “with his list of feminine charms, as well as vices”; Miss Lasqueti, a voracious reader who threw books she disliked into the sea; Asuntha, a strange deaf girl; and Mr Fonseka, who aspired to teach Shakespeare to schoolchildren in England, but burned hemp in his cabin to inhale the familiar smells he had left behind. But the two most arresting members of the dramatis personae are Sir Hector de Silva, the philanthropist who is cursed by a monk and dies a freak death on board, and the prisoner who makes a devastating escape while being transported to an English jail.

This is also a story of the East’s encounter with the West, of odd characters who are “half something else” going in exile to the other end of the world.

For much of the novel, Ondaatje entertains us with a sprightly account of boyhood pranks. We are reminded of the delightful always-Sunday ambience of R.K. Narayan’s Swami and Friends. Time seems to have been arrested by the unshaken optimism of youth. But before long, the adult voice of Michael, the writer, intervenes, and moments of great tenderness and unalloyed intimacy from the past are lit by a pale melancholic glow. After an obscurely erotic encounter with his cousin, Emily, on the ship, the boy Michael feels “a mix of thrill and vertigo”. But the older Michael, looking back on the incident decades later, wonders: “was it a pleasure or a sadness, this life inside me?” Emily, the ethereal 17-year-old who had a not-so-clandestine thing going with Sunil, “The Hyderabad Mind”, retires to an island after a failed marriage and a lifetime’s struggle for security. Years later, when Michael spends a day with her at her cottage, she tells him coldly, yet with a hint of self-pity, “I don’t think you can love me into safety.”

What gives Ondaatje’s novel its power and intensity is this coming together of many kinds of time — not only past and present, but also of youth and middle age — until the stillness of history and the tumult of flowing life become intermingled. Episodes flash upon the imagination, perspectives become intertwined, as though the life that was, the one that is, and the one yet to come are sealed together into a single arc of memory. But memory, when entrusted solely to the vagaries of the human mind, often takes flight into fiction. “For us this was an era without the benefit of photography,” writes Ondaatje, “so the journey escaped any permanent memory.” Like an Impressionist painting, the image of this era is put together with patches of colour and hazy, indistinct shapes. This shifting, protean quality of the past is also mirrored in the adult self of the narrator, who has not quite evolved from the boy who once sailed to the far shores, “someone startled, half-formed, who had not become anyone or anything yet”.

This rootless and unformed quality, together with the capacity to surprise himself and be surprised by the world, remain with Michael, the story-teller, as they seldom do in adults, who “are always prepared for the gradual or sudden swerve in an oncoming story”. “As members of an audience we should never feel ourselves wiser than [the characters],” he admits with humility, “we do not have more knowledge than the characters have about themselves.” There are, as a result, some seemingly inscrutable acts, such as Michael’s marriage to Ramadhin’s sister, Massi, and their eventual break-up.

This unfathomability is often tied to the child’s vision of things that are seen again in another light years later. “I realised only recently that Mr Mazappa and Miss Lasqueti were young,” writes Michael when he is long past his own youth. But such clarities — like Miss Lasqueti’s advice to Emily, “Despair young and never look back” — are necessarily ironic. They always come late, bearing the burden of missed chances and lost opportunities, when the moment for them is no longer ripe, but rotten to the core by the poison of life.

SOMAK GHOSHAL

Published on November 18, 2011

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1111118/jsp/northeast/story_14748583.jsp