Le Clézio quote ...

Here is a Le Clézio quote that came up in one of the many articles that is being written about him after the literature Nobel prize. Strangely this important figure of French literature is little translated into English:

`The dawn of peoples is important because we seem now to be living in the dusk. You have the sense that we are getting near the end.`

Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio, a true citizen of the world, is a patient student of non-western, extra-logical sensibilities and civilisations.

Here is an excerpt from his novel Étoile Errante (Wandering Star) from the Words Without Borders website. Wandering Star is the story of two teenage girls, Esther a French Jew and Nejma an Arab.

The excerpt is an English translation of the French original.

Book reviews: Saikat Majumdar's Silverfish

Forgotten Little People

There is something about Andrew Marvell’s poem, To His Coy Mistress that strikes the fancy of writers. Hemingway used two lines from this poem in that important scene from A Farewell to Arms when the hero Frederic Henry, is leaving his beloved again, to fight a war.

``But at my back I always hear

Time’s winged chariot hurrying near”

And time surely, as we would see, was not on their side. Saikat Majumdar, in the final pages of Silverfish writes, `There will never be world enough, and time, something inside told her …’ This sentence too reminds us of the beginning of Marvell’s poem,

``Had we but world enough, and time,’’

Time is important in Marvell’s poem as it is in Majumdar’s delicately written novel about two people separated by more than two-hundred years of history but bound to each other by a tale of neglect and forgetting. There is at least one other contemporary writer I can think of, who has put this metaphysical poet’s lines in his narrative.

Silverfish is a story about a woman in 19^th century Bengal and a school-teacher in present-day Calcutta living out starkly different lives. But as the reader slowly discovers, these two lives have similarities, nuances, shades that bring them gradually closer to each other, both figuratively and also within the narrative through the device of a forgotten manuscript found in an old trunk.

The woman, Kamal, is living a life of material plenty in her rich-husband’s house in 19^th century Calcutta, where a thousand customs suffocate her free spirit. She wants to read and write, the world outside attracts her. But she is not allowed to step outside. Kamal’s story, always told in the first person, begins with a tinge of sadness and a shade of the lyrical:

``I can see the streets through the windows, the red-hued streets I haven’t stepped out in ten years, maybe fifteen, maybe more.

I lose count of time.

They say the wives of this family pass the marble lions of the main gate only twice. They enter as pre-pubescent girls – tiny, shy new brides, eyes red and swollen from crying, drowned by the shower of flowers and music and wedding chants. They leave in the dusk of their lives, through the hushed fragrance of sandalwood and white tuberoses, the name of God sung again …’’

The other protagonist Milan, a school-teacher in present-day (the early nineties, I should say) Calcutta, is fighting a losing battle against the bureaucracy and a corrupt system that is withholding his meager pension. Milan is an idealist and so his battles continue.

These individual battles, of Kamal and Milan, draws along the intertwined narratives of the novel till the time, they begin to flow into one another. This is the structure of Silverfish, a slow-moving river of a novel that unhurriedly coaxes the reader to accompany it on its journey.

While the battles of Milan and Kamal are vastly different – because of two centuries that separate them, because of the social milieu that they come from, because of several other factors – yet in their relentless struggle against customs and soulless traditions (in Kamal’s case) bureaucratic intransigence and political crime (in case of Milan), these two characters seem to tell the story of the `little man’ fighting powerful, unknown enemies. Silverfish is in fact the story of this struggle that common people have been engaged in for ages.

Their stories – forgotten, lost or silverfish-ridden however constitute important yet neglected passages in the history of this nation. Yet nobody seems to care. At least not those at the centre of this story. Even those who do care, do not have the energy to carry on bravely against the formidable forces of forgetting, the armies of neglect, amassed against them. Some of them like the old bookseller Moidul, commits suicide. Only the young Shireen, who is a professor in the United States (like Majumdar himself) in the final pages of this book, hold out a glimmer of hope. A hope that these forgotten histories will not be lost after all. But Shireen herself is also unsure and so – `There will never be world enough, and time, something inside told her …’

The parallel narratives of Silverfish are written in markedly different styles. I personally was more attracted to the spare and delicately shaded narrative of the present, as perhaps being a fellow Calcuttan, I could identify easily with the setting. The narrative of the past is lyrical and appropriately antiquated but sometimes I felt it was slowing down the pace of the story. Yet nowhere does Majumdar’s prose strike one as overwrought, nowhere is it burdened by the spirit of exoticising that has struck the fancy of many Indian writers today.

A reading of Kamal’s narrative reveals the author’s indebtedness to Bengali literature and in fact he has mentioned in interviews that the task of re-creating 19^th century Bengal was facilitated by his reading of Rabindranath Tagore and Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay among others. To delve a bit deeper, one would perhaps have liked Silverfish even more if Kamal’s narrative was written in Bengali while Milan’s was in English. In fact the story of Kamal, sometimes seems to be a translation of a Bengali original while Milan’s does not. Perhaps this was the author’s intention. In any case as experiments of such bi-lingual texts are too far fetched and impractical we would not discuss any more of it here.

There are some moving passages near the end of the book where past time and present time mingle in a touching scene surrounding Milan’s heart-attack. The narrator’s voice is appropriately somber; it has the saltiness of hidden tears, the pain of a life and a time about to vanish for ever:

``Rainwater, cooking water, wasted soup and gravy down rust-iron kitchen pipes, faecal water from leaking, bursting drainpipes, holy water from the mythic Ganga river sprinkled daily around the house, on the shrines that nestled Shiva and Krishna and Lakshmi.

Desire rose from all, smoky, gasping fumes of it.

What did the red earth of this back alley speak of, what had it been a hundred, two hundred years back? The sad bundle of moth-eaten papers now lay in peace, inside the loose Shantiniketan bag slung from his shoulders, but they had been somewhere else, a long, long time ago. The red earth might have been the inner courtyard that lived, drenched with love and disgust and the power of the real in the pages with the gaping holes, the courtyard that allowed the one slice of sky they saw for the most part of their lives, the blisters of the read earth he had trodden with dusty slippers a little girl had once hidden away, aeons ago, the smell of freshly chopped vegetables and red dye applied on women’s toes, the vermilion on the partings of their hair.’’

And finally, when Shireen is flying away to New York with Kamal’s silverfish-ridden manuscript safely in her bag, the novel achieves something close to the sublime. Sublime or what pseudo-Longinus had called hupsos. Those last few pages have a transcendental quality about them, they remain with you and they grow in your mind, long after the book has been put away.

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Silverfish by Saikat Majumdar, HarperCollins Publishers India, New Delhi, 2007, Pp. 293

Published article.

The above book review is Copyright © Rajat Chaudhuri, 2008. All rights reserved.

Meditation - Learning about oneself

Posting here a quote from J Krishnamurti:

`Meditation is one of the greatest arts in life-perhaps the greatest, and one cannot possibly learn it from anybody, that is the beauty of it. It has no technique and therefore no authority. When you learn about yourself, watch yourself, watch the way you walk, how you eat, what you say, the gossip, the hate, the jealousy-if you are aware of all that in yourself, without any choice, that is part of meditation.'

Of Gourmets, Ghosts and Goddesses (Durga Puja Journal - VI)

A frozen margarita sky wrapped itself around Calcutta this Saptami morning. The first day of Durga Puja – the rainclouds remind me of exotic drinks. Shared with shiny-faced people with glowing skin, in a far-off country. Many years ago. With the sun outside, and wistfuly thinking of Durga Puja being celebrated far away at home.

But today I have woken up early. Egged on by those around me. The roads suddenly look clean. Early in the morning perhaps roads in every city look clean. I am preparing myself for the Goddess. I have started avoiding crowds, I have become a bit apprehensive. What, with the wanton taking of lives in the name of whatever suits radicals on every side, religious or otherwise. Religious radicals or progress-radicals or `freedom'-loving radicals. And so, to avoid crowds, to try to return home perhaps, in one piece, we are driving down south, this early in the morning.

The road to the south, recently repaired, perhaps to give us a better Pujo ride, goes by lakes brimful. The coconut palms on the far banks throw trembling shadows on the water. I hear the first beats of the dhak. It comes to us from somewhere beyond those waters. On the far side, beyond those trees, among the cluster of buildings the man beating the dhak is the first messenger of the Goddess, speaking to me. His festive beats is the music of life, talking, singing, laughing proudly in the face of death.

But the driver is going too fast. I signal him to slow down, I snap on the seat belt. We have entered the city. We stop in front of a pandal and those accompanying me step out. I can see her from the car and so prefer sitting inside. Early morning lethargy is still creeping in my blood. The pandal is modest but in good taste. She is slim, with beautiful eyes. Mahisasura, who she is slaying, is a bit-lacking in expression. We stop again at Gariahat and visit some pandals on foot.

The roads are just beginning to come alive. Along the footpaths, barricaded with bamboo walls, small groups of men and women are walking leisurely. We join them. Many of the pandals have been decorated by artists. The artists have had their say in the design of the image and have left their unmistakable mark on many. Some I liked, some didn’t mean anything to me at all.

One of these south Calcutta Pujos has a Daliesque Goddess floating in mid air with a blue halo around her. She is memorable and I am sure she will intrigue us even more at night, when the hidden lights in the cave-like structure where she is residing, are switched on. To me she is both a poignant surrealist image and also one that could be brought about by hallucinogens. Something like magic mushrooms or peyote cactus.This image of the Goddess interests me much as my second novel (to be published) has themes quite akin.

In another pandal in the south, the Godess is in the form of a carved stone image (see image at the beginning of this post) of an ancient temple. Stylised with the aura of the ancient about her, she glows in the clever reddish lighting that have been used there.

We drive to other parts of the city. Many pandals have installed CCTV cameras and they remind me of shopping malls and big department stores. Their sight leave me a bit sad. Sadness, irritation, bitterness. The sight of the cameras and all that they stand for, what is before them, what lies in their past, leaves my mouth dry. I feel a faint throbbing in my head. Maybe it’s time to eat.

We drink tea at Park Street in a large, well-lighted place with newly-printed No Smoking signs all over the walls. The signs remind me of the cameras in the pandals. What do they have in common? We walk a little up the road to a place where they serve a mix of Gujerati and north Indian savouries. They even do dosas, but we have arrived too early for that. We eat tasty, ghee-soaked sweets, some of us have kachoris. The jalebis they serve are works of art by themselves. As I walk out I am accosted by a small girl in a torn frock. She has a tired worn face, there is the redness of some disease in her eyes, she wants me to buy something from her. A box of paper napkins. I take the box from her and for one last time look at her. Her eyes are suddenly bright. She has smiled somehow, I notice. She runs across the streets and vanishes near the French restaurant. The restaurant with the French sounding name, and the associations with Toulouse-Lautrec. It’s time to head north.

We stop at a few pandals in Central Calcutta. On the way we plan lunch. Lunch – Chinese or Mughlai, Chinatown or Arsalan? At last we settle for Chinese. Tomorrow (Ashtami) it will be home-cooked vegetarian fare. Nabami, of course is the day for mutton – biriyani or kosha or maybe the classic kochi-pathar jhol with rice.

The frozen margarita has melted and a fine rain has begun. Rain like spray; here in Bengal we call it illshaguri. We huddle into a pandal. A folksy Goddess, made from bamboo or what could be wood. Stylised and beautiful, and in another pandal a group of beggars has taken shelter near the goddess. They form a circle of silence around the brightly-lit image of the Mother, the saviour, the protector, the banisher of evil. The beggars hold out their hands, dignified and calm. And surely, perhaps because the pujo-revellers do not want to miss out on their share of good-karma, the beggars get more then they expect. The Goddess smiles a cryptic smile, the beggars count their nickels, surrounding the platform where she stands. Like practioners of an occult sect. I am suddenly scared and step quickly out of that pandal.

The crowds have begun to swell but walking up to the pandals is still comfortable. One of the Pujos, is making a statement in the context of Tata’s Nano small-car project. The pandal is made to look like closed factories and there is a model of the Nano car near the entrance. The message is clear. Open the closed factories before taking on new industrial projects.

We drive deeper into the north. To the oldest neighbourhoods of Calcutta. On the way we take-in another famous Pujo which is themed this year around environment. Another way to spread the much needed message that we cannot go on plundering the resources of the planet and behaving like a bull in a china-shop, so to say. The earth has its limits, Sister-mother Earth (to use St Francis’ words) is patient, but her patience is running out fast.

The Pujos of the north have a different aura. They seem to be steeped in history and tradition. Well, not all, but many of them. The Goddess at Bagbajar Sarbojanin is the traditional ekchala image (maa Durga and her family on a single platform). The pandal is styled after an ancient temple, the tales from the Puranas adorn its interiors. On our way out from this pandal we discover the traveling Banarasi paan-seller. His shop is on a raised platform and his advertisements, written in Dev-nagri say, he has been traveling all over the country selling his rare betel-leaves. Amitabh Bachchan in his film Don did much good for the Banarasi pan-seller as the opportunities provided by these festivals, where he brings his rare offering. Every connoisseur knows how the Banarsi paan melts slowly in your mouth, releasing it’s delicate cocktail of flavours of aromatic tobacco, areca nuts and spices.

Perhaps after Durga Puja is over, he will travel northwards again. For Diwali – the festival of lights and then perhaps when the winter is fresh, he will take his wares to Punjab or to southern India in time for Pongal or some other festival whose name is unknown to me. Perhaps he will go another way. He could, after a good-year’s earnings even decide to go back to his village, on the ghats of the wide Ganga, where on a cold evening he may be telling his wife and children of the strange places he has been, the people he has met on the road. They will listen wide-eyed to his story but what is strange to them will no longer have been strange to him. My memories of this Durga Puja will be of the Benarasi paan-seller traveling across the country, traveling alone and confident, bringing the delicate taste of his betel-leaves and the aroma of spices, like a salve for suffering souls.

Copyright: Rajat Chaudhuri 2008. Published article. All rights reserved.