CRITICAL AND CREATIVE WINGS Volume 3, Issue 2, September 2016 Volume 4 Issue 1, March 2017

Editor Tapati Talukdar

Associate Editor Shymasree Basu

Editorial Board Shri Partha Kumar Mukhopadhyay, Former Associate Professor of English, Kidderpore College, Kolkata and a Fellow (U.W.A.) Dr. Kalyan Chatterjee, Professor of English (retired), University of Burdwan, West Bengal Dr. G. K. Das, Former Vice - Chancellor, Utkal University and Professor of English (retired), CRITICAL AND CREATIVE WINGS University of Delhi Volume 3, Issue 2, September 2016 Dr. Bijay Kumar Das, PhD, DLitt (Utkal University), Volume 4, Issue 1, March 2017 Professor of English, University of Burdwan, West Bengal Professor C. R. Visweswara Rao, Former Vice-Chancellor, Vikram Simhapuri University, Nellore, Andhra Pradesh Shri Shankar Chatterjee, Former Reader in English, University of Kalyani, West Bengal

Publisher Tapati Talukdar, HB 7, Flat No.6, Salt Lake, Kolkata 700106 E-mail: [email protected] Tel: 033 2337 5310 / 919836457490

Printer The Artisan 107A, Bepin Behari Ganguly Street Kolkata 700 012 Published/owned by Preface Dr. Tapati Talukdar, HB 7, Flat No.6, Salt Lake, Kolkata Issue 1, Volume 4 that combines with it the preceding issue, that is, 700106 Issue 2, Volume 3, opens with Professor Kalyan Chatterjee's comparative study of Tagore and Shelley. The article, aptly titled March 2017 as “Rebirth of the Angel: Tagore's Shelley”, delves deep into the poetry of both the poets to meticulously record how Shelley's ideas and words influenced Tagore from the outset of his poetic career. Professor Chatterjee cites profusely from Tagore and Shelley to © Tapati Talukdar substantiate the points of resemblances between the two poets. Shelley strikes him as the yathartha Dosor of Tagore as the former's platonic ideas had a lasting impact on the latter. Prof. Chatterjee does not, of course, deny Tagore his originality in his study. The next article written by Dr. Shashi Assella depicts a world poles apart from that created by Tagore. She makes a detailed textual analysis of a novel On Sal Mal Lane by Ru Freeman, a Sri Lankan novelist, dealing with ethnic riots in Sri Lanka. The novel, as Dr. Assella has discussed, gives voice to the voiceless and disempowered living on Sal Mal Lane in Colombo. Freeman The editors are in no way responsible for the views expressed allows the frequent intrusion of the omniscient narrator to comment by the authors in their articles included in this volume. on the roles of characters in the narrative. But it is through the eyes of the subaltern characters like the children and women that the narrative unfolds depicting the innocence of the children who are, for the major part, unaware of what divide them later, namely, ethno - religious affiliations and politically - fuelled ethnic hatred. The third article by Dr. Rudrashis Datta transports us to the Tantric realms of consciousness as explored by Sri Aurobindo. He studies Volume 3 Issue 2 Canto iv, Book IV of Savitri titled appropriately “The Quest” to Volume 4 Issue 1 show how Aurobindo translates his Tantric concepts into Savitri's quest for resurrecting Satyavan. Dr. Datta has rummaged Aurobindo's tract to retrieve his sparse references to Tantric philosophy. He discovers two powerful aspects of the Tantric quest Printed by: as exploited by Aurobindo – the first half of the canto represents The Artisan what Aurobindo calls 'the Mahakali aspect' and the rest describes 107A, Bepin Behari Ganguly Street the consummate state called 'the Mahasaraswati aspect'. Dr. Datta Kolkata 700 012 traces Aurobindo's subtle negotiation with the 'Kali' and 'Saraswati' email : [email protected] Price: Rs. 200/- aspects of Savitri's quest. He illustrates both the states of the quest with citations from the fourth Canto of Book IV.

Volume 4 Issue 1 March 2017 Critical and Creative Wings

Dr. Shymasree Basu's article features next in the issue with her whether the novel can be described as a metafiction deriving the exploration of Azar Nafisi's memoir Reading Lolita in Teheran. definition of the term from Barbara Foley. I have also brought in the Her reading of the 'Memoir as Protest' underscores the protest of fold of my discussion Hayden White's remark about the historians Nafisi against what she experienced in her teaching career before who show a tendency to politically domesticate historical facts. As she retired in 1995. Nafisi seeks resort to an innovative and creative Mahasweta claims to maintain objectivity in documenting Birsa's way to protest against the restrictive norms imposed by the heroic life, the remark appears applicable to her as well. What I totalitarian regime of Iran by forming a book club with seven of her have discovered in my study is that Birsa has emerged more as a best women students to discuss literature once a week. They read figment of Mahasweta's imagination than what he was in reality. literature and debate on issues and express their views freely. Their That the real Birsa eludes her for the paucity of adequate historical experience of what Dr. Basu calls a mulivocal atmosphere in the evidences too has been underscored in my article. book club creates for them a space denied to them in the formal academia they attended. Nafisi delves into classics like Nabokov's The articles have been arranged in such a way that they produce Lolita, Invitation to a Beheading, Austen's Pride and Prejudice, an impression of diversity and rid the readers of monotony. The and Flaubert's Madam Bovary to show how books can be liberating Creative Section starts with two poems by Ms Sohini Sengupta, for the young minds. The book club becomes a site for resistance titled, respectively, as 'Journey' and 'A Fall to Hope'. Dr. Chirantan and empowerment for the students. Dr. Basu cites Foucault and Sarkar's poem 'Sermons From Nowhere' follows. The entries in discusses how Nafisi negotiates female agency and subjectivity of prose include 'A Short Story about Despair' by Ranadurjay her students. Talukdar; an experience of climbing rendered by Ayan Adak, titled 'Climbing Kosciuszko: Because it is there!'; and an account of a trip Dr. Rupa Deshmukhya delves into Yeats's life focussing on his to Bali given by Kunal Sinha titled as 'Bali High'; and also a fascination with mysticism and the occult. She traces how it leads Memoir titled as 'Memories of Magura' written by Adhir Biswas in to his interest in Indian philosophy reinforced by his meeting with Bengali and translated by Amit Das. I believe that creative pieces Mohini Chatterjee, and Purohit Swami. She discusses at length should best be left to the readers for evaluation and hence I desist how Rabindranath Tagore casts a spell on Yeats by his collection of from dissecting them. The concluding literary discussion centres devotional poems eventually published in English as Gitanjali. on two books: one is an anthology of relishing articles on food, The introduction to Gitanjali that Yeats writes shows how much titled most appropriately, Chillies and Porridge: Writing Food, moved he was while reading those poems. Dr. Deshmukhya edited by Mita Kapur. Dr. Shymasree Basu has concisely reviewed documents the powerful hold that The Bhagabat Gita and the the articles contained in the book. The last item is a Tamil fiction Upanishads had on Yeats with ample illustrative references from Maadhorubaagan written by Perumal Murugan and translated as Yeats's work. She underscores how the Indian philosophical One Part Woman by Aniruddhan Vasudevan. I have reviewed it and resonances that mark Yeats's oeuvre add a distinctive flavour to his it is for the readers to assess it. poetic output. In every issue we do request our learned readers to send their My article on Mahasweta Devi's Aranyer Adhikar (The Forest's invaluable comments. But rarely do we get any response. It is only Right) occupies the last slot in the critical section. The article is my teachers Professor Kalyan Chatterjee, Professor Shankar intended to pay my homage to Mahasweta Devi who left us in Chatterjee and Professor Tirthankar Chatterjee who never fail to 2016. I have chosen this novel as it is associated with the life and convey their responses. I must mention Professor Shymapada Pal rebellion of Birsa Munda. What actually evoked my interest is the who is also an avid reader of the journal. He is very prompt in introduction that she writes to the novel. It betrayed contradictions communicating his responses. Professor C.R.V. Rao makes it a some of which I have tried to address in my paper. I have argued point to write a long mail with his comments on each article. He is

Volume 4 Issue 1 March 2017 Volume 4 Issue 1 March 2017 Critical and Creative Wings CONTENTS always effusive about Professor Kalyan Chatterjee's articles. I Rebirth of the Angel : Tagore's Shelley must thank Professor R. W. Desai, Professor B.K. Das and KALYAN CHATTERJEE 1 Professor Partha Kumar Mukhopadhyay for reading the articles and commenting on them. Professor Brandon Kershner, a Joyce scholar of great repute, mailed me with valuable feedback on my Children, Burghers and Tamils On Sal Mal Lane: article on Joyce's Portrait published in the last issue. We assure our The Subaltern's Narrative of the Ethnic Riots readers that we won't mind even if we get adverse feedback. SHASHI ASSELLA 18 We are still grappling with manifold problems. We have initiated peer-reviewing with a handful members in the team. It would be a 'From gilded dusk to argent dawn' : great help if some of our learned readers offer to peer-review. The A Tantric Reading of “The Quest” of Savitri main stumbling block in regular publication of the bi-annual RUDRASHIS DATTA 28 journal is the lack of response from the contributors. This is our earnest request to our readers to help the journal survive with their contributions. Another problem plaguing it is the dwindling Reading Lolita In Tehran : number of readers. We do not know how to address these pressing Memoir as Protest issues. But we do hope the journal would be able to overcome these SHYMASREE BASU 36 problems which are, we are sure, faced by all journals in the initial stage. The Echoes of Indian Philosophical Thoughts We owe to all who have contributed to the issue and also to those in the Literary Oeuvre of W. B. Yeats whose contacts helped us in getting contributions. Our gratitude to our subscribers is immense. We are grateful to our peer-reviewers RUPA S. DESHMUKHYA 48 for their valuable suggestions. Our Associate Editor Dr. Shymasree Basu deserves special mention for her unstinting cooperation in Mahasweta Devi's Aranyer Adhikar: everything related to the journal. To Shri Sukamal Adhikari, my A Metahistorical Novel? friend Ms Dipti Adhikari's husband, my gratitude is immense for TAPATI TALUKDAR 64 printing the journal at an affordable cost. I must express my gratefulness to the staff of The Artisan who never grumble about the laborious job they have to do for days at a stretch to print the Journey issue to my satisfaction. I am indebted to my family, relatives and SOHINI SENGUPTA 91 friends who have directly and indirectly helped me in bringing out the issue. A Fall to Hope SOHINI SENGUPTA 93 Tapati Talukdar Shymasree Basu [email protected] [email protected] HB 7 Salt Lake Sermons From Nowhere Kolkata 700106 CHIRANTAN SARKAR 94

Volume 4 Issue 1 March 2017 Volume 4 Issue 1 March 2017 Critical and Creative Wings Rebirth of the Angel : Tagore's Shelley

A Short Story about Despair Rebirth of the Angel : Tagore's Shelley RANADURJAY TALUKDAR 96 Kalyan Chatterjee Climbing Kosciuszko: Because it is there! AYAN ADAK 104 The idea of Europe as torchbearers of modern history, so Bali High prevalent in India in the heyday of the British Empire, occurs KUNAL SINHA 108 frequently in Tagore's social essays and literary criticism.1 In prose as well as poetry, he urged upon his countrymen to Memories Of Magura throw open their doors and windows to European nations and ADHIR BISWAS meet them half-way in welcome. It is natural, therefore, that Translated by Amit K. Das 113 as a poet young Tagore should turn to contemporaneous BOOK REVIEW Romantic-Victorian poetry for inspiration, to its emphasis on CHILLIES AND PORRIDGE: WRITING FOOD (2015) sensibility, and to its general tendency to move away from ED. MITA KAPUR 121 realism and apotheosize lyrical subjectivity. The biblical proverb that a prophet is not respected in his BOOK REVIEW own country is apt to come to one's mind when considering ONE PART WOMAN (2010) the contrastive attitudes between England and the rest of By PERUMAL MURUGAN Europe shown towards Byron's poetic persona as the essence Trans. By Aniruddhan Basudevan, 2013. 125 and embodiment of Romanticism. The same is the case with Contributors’ Profile 132 Shelley's devaluation as a thinker in his native land vs. his angelic aura in Victorian Bengal. In a series of articles that Tagore wrote for his pioneering family's own vernacular journal Bharati (1879-81),2 he gives enough proof of being himself a Shelley aficionado and aesthetic convert, so that traditional Bengali poetry was to him the ancien regime. In one of these essays, bluntly titled as “Bangalira kobi noy” (Bengalis are not Poets), we see him excoriating this poetry in a language that proves the point: “How many poems are there which show the infinite universe as the playground of

Volume 4 Issue 1 March 2017 Volume 4 Issue 1 March 2017 1 Critical and Creative Wings Rebirth of the Angel : Tagore's Shelley the poet's imagination? [. . .] Have you seen in any Bengali poetic aim to give to Romantic poetry, the poetry of feeling poem a portrait of the ideal human character?” (225). and imagination, a new habitation in India, with a In a follow up essay in the same magazine (“Bangalira corresponding suspension of disbelief. Romantic poets were kobi noy keno”) (Why Bengalis are not Poets), Tagore gives all lovers of nature and natural objects, but that in itself was excerpts from several Bengali poems and compares one of not enough; they used the latter, as Tagore saw it, to express them in particular, on the score of its common subject matter, their inner experience. scenes from nature with an example from Shelley's This is the essence of the Bengal Renaissance, a cross- “Epipsychidion” (lines 422-512). The Bengali excerpt is cultural phenomenon, the importance of which in world only an ornamental composition, says Tagore and points out literature cannot go unnoticed. Anticipating postcolonial that it is a mere assemblage of detail that does not add up to aesthetics, by nearly half a century, Tagore made the anything, (that is the ideal world, Tagore could say), whereas, interesting point in a latter-day recapitulative essay “Banglar he continues, Shelley's poem does not merely describe Jatiyo Sahitya” (The National Literature of Bengal), that “it nature; it bears the stamp of the poet's distinctive thought and was not only that English had made the mind of India alive; acute feeling. It is, therefore, not a question so much of what English had been, in its turn, made lively by its growth in that the poet describes, but, in essence, how he projects on the mind” (799). It is a remark that serves as a keynote to the object of description his own persona (Rabindra Rachanabali rebirth that Romantic poetry, a creature undoubtedly of the vol.17: 233- 234). European mind, gained at the hands of Tagore and his By means of such examples, Tagore gives proof of how generation. The new lease of life that Shelleyan poetry Romantic aesthetics have captured his mind: “Have you seen received thereby, albeit in a foreign country, is a part of the in any kind of Bengali poetry the portrayal of what is ideal in story. human character, or that of an intense war of opposing II impulses in the mind, . . . or any, in reading of which, your The eternal and ideal beyond the mundane and real, the heart has been caught in a storm, as a result of which mountain characteristic theme of Shelley's poetry, was what enchanted high waves have blown over you, or that you have breathed Tagore most. He desired his native Bengali poetry to emulate in such a naturally fragrant, soft air that all the turbulence in this quality and followed the example himself. Later in life in your soul is becalmed, with your eyes closed, disembodied another recapitulative essay titled as “Adhunik Kabyo” like live moonlight, plunged into a tranquil sea of bliss?” (“Modern Poetry”), he remarked that Romantic poets “saw (225) Tagore is speaking for himself. For, these remarks, the world in union with their inner being. The world was to made with Shelleyan poetry in view, define Tagore's own them the extension of their own personality” (342). This

Volume 4 Issue 1 March 2017 Volume 4 Issue 1 March 2017 2 3 Critical and Creative Wings Rebirth of the Angel : Tagore's Shelley immanent idea of the poetic personality, to which he returned II. Tell me, Moon, thou pale and gray in many other later essays,3 serves to show how Tagore made Pilgrim of Heaven's homeless way, Romantic poetry speak an Indian tongue. At first he, like his In what depth of night or day elder contemporary Biharilal Chakraborty (1835-1894) met Seekest thou repose now? with ridicule. Perhaps the latter, for his lack of happy III. Weary Wind, who wanderest phrasing, deserved it a little, but Tagore, what with his Like the world's rejected guest, mastery of lyrical poetry and with the new wind in his wings Hast thou still some secret nest soared to great heights. He was not one to give up on his On the tree or billow? Romantic aesthetics. A poem, “The Reject” from Tagore's Tagore finds this idea not only in Shelley but also Manasi [Soul-mate] collection (1890), is a recapture of the Shelley-inspired Victorian poets like Edwin Arnold and spirit of the times: Christina Rossetti. He goes on to remark, “In this world there I remember those days in my youth is that other—'My Own [self]'; in the whole of the created When the new Bengali poetry world there is none closer to me than this 'My Own'” Was receiving a new life, borne (538).Tagore ends the essay with a longish excerpt from a from mouth to mouth, giving rise to a new hope. poem by Arthur O'Shaughnessy, too long to quote in full: (Tagore Rabindra vol.1: 298) In all my singing and speaking I send my soul forth seeking These essays and poems by the young poet, as well as O soul of my soul's dreaming some others, particularly the essay called “yathartha dosor” When wilt thou hear and speak? Etc. (The Other Self), published in Bharati in 1881,4 represented (qtd. in Tagore Rabindra vol.17: 538-540). his ardent desire to adapt Shelleyan poetry to Bengali, specifically this idea of the other self or the true home of the This facile flow of lyricism with its kernel of Shelleyan spirit. It is noteworthy that this particular essay is prefaced by ideology of the inner self serves as a key to Tagore's poetry his translation of Shelly's poem “The World's Wanderers” too, in collections of poems, starting with Sandhya-Sangit (534) as an example. I quote the poem below as it is not so (Evening Songs) 1881-82, and followed by, in the main, well-known: Prabhat-Sangit (Morning Songs) 1883-84, Chhobi O Gan I. Tell me, thou Star, whose wings of light (Pictures and Songs), 1888, Manasi (Psyche) 1890, Sonar Speed thee in thy fiery flight, Tori (The Golden Boat), 1893, and Chitra (The Beautiful), In what cavern of the night 1895-96. These volumes of poetry belong to Tagore's 20th to Will thy pinions close now? 35th year, that is, early to late early period, stopping just short Volume 4 Issue 1 March 2017 Volume 4 Issue 1 March 2017 4 5 Critical and Creative Wings Rebirth of the Angel : Tagore's Shelley

of his climactic middle period, which includes the well- Yes, who was it that descended on my soul? known Naibedya, Kheya, and Gitanjali.5 (These latter He was no other than the bud of volumes are well represented in the English Gitanjali, first my childhood He was no other than my beautiful self. published in 1912.) (Tagore Rabindra vol. 1: 31. lines 26-28) Tagore's transaction with Shelley was not exclusively, but mainly a matter of some long poems and shorter lyrics Another word, Tagore used for this conjoint self is dosor, as used in Yatharta Dosor, referred to above and in some such as Alastor, “Epipsychidion,” and “Hymn to Intellectual songs, like amar dosor je ke jon tare jane (Who cares to know Beauty.” Alastor is responsible for his teen age poem Kobi- the secret sharer of my soul) in Prem (love poems), 134. kahini (the poet's story),6 which is likewise the story of a Dosor is not quite like the euphonious words that Tagore wandering spirit in nature, undoubtedly a re-creation of liked, and although he repeated it a couple of times more, it Shelley's poetic persona. “Epipsychidion” and “Hymn to did not catch on. Later on, he would use another word for the Intellectual Beauty” gave to Tagore's poetry the concept of same idea, antaryami (the soul within), which is the title of a poem in Chitra (Rabindra 1:490-95). The poem is like a the soul within the soul or “conjoint self” and, allied with it, dream talk, so characteristic of Keats, and opens with lines the Platonic concept of love and beauty as images of the like the following: “What is this your ever changing sport, O divine and eternal. An example of a Bengali “Epipsychidion” my mystic maiden?” (my translation) is “Ami-hara” (The Self-forgotten). Shelley wrote: Another very Shelleyan image that occurs in many In the clear golden prime of my youth's dawn poems is the deep, dark forest of the Soul, as exemplified by Upon the fairy, sunny lawn . . . “Ami-hara” (The Self-forgotten): “Into the deep dark forest She met me. (Epipsych.191-199) of the soul / We two strayed and lost our way” (lines 31-33). Tagore sent back to the memory of the dead Romantic a The series from the Sandhya-Sangit to the Sonar Tori, which includes the poem “Manas-sundari” (Intellectual Beauty), is beautiful echo: 7 named as “the forest of the heart” poems by Tagore himself. In the youthful hour of my life One cannot but recollect here similar lines in Oh, who was it inside my heart “Epipsychidion” : “Therefore I went forth with hope and fear That swayed in the swing of dawn! . . . / Into the wintry forest of our life” (Shelley 417: 246-249). (Tagore vol.1: 31. lines 2-4). Such lines in Shelley bear echoes of the famous opening lines of Dante's Divine Comedy. As Tagore drew upon Shelley, so A few lines later in this Tagore poem, there comes another Shelley had drawn upon Dante. From either source, the echo of the soul within or resting on soul: phrase stuck to Tagore's mind.

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Interestingly enough, there are more such echoes in I saw the newborn dawn inscribing, Tagore, for example in the poem “Re-union” (55-57): On the snow-white face of the mountain peak, There is a vast forest called the human heart A text in sandal paste Which knows no bounds in this world. of the color of light. And in that forest we two got lost. (57: 21-23). (Tagore 3: 839: lines 4-6)

8 These lines cannot fail to remind one of those epitomizing Surojit Das Gupta regarded the entire poem as inspired lines from Adonais, “Life, like a dome of many-coloured by Dante's Divine Comedy, without reason given, but perhaps glass, / Stains the white radiance of Eternity” (Shelley 463- for the above lines and the following: 64). This morning a bird showed me the way I am not trying to give a full catalogue of these parallels, And brought me out of that forest but it is not an exaggeration to say that Shelley's cosmic Brought me to seashore of joy awareness and contemplation of the infinite and everlasting, When suddenly I saw the sun his intuitions about life and death, and his Platonic conception And suddenly too heard songs. of love as of divine origin in the soul before it finds its true ( Tagore 57: 35-39) correspondence in an earthly beauty, as in Adonais, Be it noted here that Tagore showed his interest in Dante “Epipsychidion,” “Mont Blanc,” and “Hymn to Intellectual early enough in his life, as shown by his 1878 essay “Beatrice, Beauty,” colored Tagore's mind very deeply. In “Ononto Dante, and His Poetry.” 9 Dante's love for Beatrice, more like Jibon” (Eternal Life) one finds such lines as “From the earth worship than love, was of particular interest to Tagore, and we emanates a great stream rushing for ever / Aiming to meet a remember in this connection that his Puja (worship) songs are great ocean” (Tagore Prabhat-Sangit vol. 1. 53: 8-9), bearing often indistinguishable from his love (Prem) songs. an echo of “Mont Blanc.” Another poem in the same collection, titled simply as “Srot” (“The Stream”), dwells on IV the same idea in its very opening lines: Among some other Shelleyan imageries, conspicuous by their recurrence, one can mention the image of a white Who knows where the stream flows [. . . ] monument, symbolizing the eternal. In “Re-union” the image Or where it would end is present: “a white monument raising its head high in the Or at what point this world-stream would meet the ocean. sky” (Tagore 56: 32). In the poem “Shahjahan,” the emperor's From the beginning of time, in the infinite sky it flows TajMahal in white marble is “a radiantly white drop of tear on And makes a roaring sound as it meets the Everlasting. the cheeks of Time” (Tagore 2: 477: ll. 14-1). Poem number 1, (Tagore vol. 1. 70:1-6) dated 21 February 1941 in the series of poems, collectively The imagery in the last line is worth pondering over as the named as Jonmodine (On My Birthday), goes like this: very acme of Romantic imagination. The river and its

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everlasting rolling to meet the ocean, occurs frequently in effort, which defies grasp” (Tagore vol. 1. 251: last couplet). Tagore, but the foregoing poem cannot but recall the musing From this concept of Beauty, comes another important with which Shelley's “Mont Blanc” opens: concept word of Tagorean poetry—aroop (Unseen Beauty). The everlasting universe of things The individual soul's yearning after this archetype, fixed in Flows through the mind, and rolls its rapid waves, Eternity, became the burden of numerous poems and songs. Now dark . . ., where from secret springs To give a few examples: The source of human thought its tribute brings Aroopveena rooperaral-e lukiyie baj-e (The lyre of unseen Of waters . . . One majestic river Beauty hidden behind, sounds on eternally). (Tagore Puja The breath and blood of distant lands, forever Rolls its loud waters to the ocean waves. (1-25) 347 vol. 4: 110). These words echo and re-echo in Tagore's Aroop, tomar bani / Ong-e amar chit-te amar mukti dik se ani philosophical lyrics. (O unseen Beauty, let thy message, / Bring salvation to my body and soul). (Tagore vol. 4 Puja 9) V To give one more example of how deeply his imagination Tagore's early poetry follow a curve of increasing 10 11 was rooted in Shelley's thought, one can turn to “Manas- mastery of style, culminating in Manasi, Sonar Tori, and sundari,” which too means Intellectual Beauty: 'the beauty of 12 Chitra. But even here, Shelley's words and ideas freely the body swoons in enchantment, while the soul within glows flow into Tagore's language, as in the introductory poem at its confines, as if it would burst the bonds of the senses' 10 of Manasi: (page 386: lines 25-27). Would not Tagore's thought here bear From moment to moment, a trace of the following lines from “Epipsychidion”: “The Against the walls of my sequestered soul, brightness of the divinest presence trembles through / Her There beat restlessly limbs” (413: 77-78)? Waves from the world beyond. (Tagore vol.1. 217:1-3) It is time to come to an end before my argument becomes But most of all, Shelley's “Hymn” is echoed frequently. A tedious, but there is no way to bypass a couple of poems characteristic example is Kshonik Milon (A Moment's belonging to the Chitra12 collection: “Jibon-Devata” (The Union):“suddenly this world turns into a shadow” (Tagore lord of life) in particular, and the opening poem of the vol. 1. 223:11) echoes the first lines of “Hymn” (“The awful collection with the eponymous title. Tagore's maturing style shadow of some unseen power” etc.). A sonnet, “Nisfol has reached a height and it is no longer specific poems by Proyas” (Futile Effort), speaks of “the shadow of Beauty”: Shelley, nor their manifest content, even though, Shelley's “Opening your eyes you see only a shadow / Of Beauty, vain

Volume 4 Issue 1 March 2017 Volume 4 Issue 1 March 2017 10 11 Critical and Creative Wings Rebirth of the Angel : Tagore's Shelley soul within soul still inspires him. In “Antaryami”, already living and dying, in which none can go beyond him, so mentioned, the lamp and the lute, familiar Shelleyan peopled with stars is the Tagorean universe. symbols, reappear, but as symbols of mutual attraction But there are also those other notes from Shelley, richly between the poetic self and the soul-dwelling goddess. In re-echoed in Tagorean poetry. The characteristic Shelleyan “Jibon-Devata” (Tagore1: 528-29), a much shorter poem, but cry of the soul for the departed and fleeting - the music that in the same style of a passionate monologue, the relationship has been sung, the lamp that has been extinguished, and the is reversed: the poet it is who is the beloved and the soul- flower that has dried up, has no less a pervasive echo in dweller, the lover. These poems, though about a year and half numerous other poems and songs by Tagore. Fallen leaves (from August 1894 to February 1896) separate them, have and flowers, forests swaying in rain and wind and playing on about the same theme and style, and they throw us back by the harp of the soul, rapids and rivers, the eternal and infinite nearly 13 years to Tagore's essay “The True Sharer”, referred universe, the everlasting truth of the life beyond, so to above: “One soul is predestined for the other soul, each for conspicuous in both Shelley and Tagore, prove that they were the other” (Tagore17: 536) . When Tagore's imagination soul mates, one the yathartha dosor of the other. seized an idea, he would express it in a wide variety of poems and songs. Only a few poems by Shelley gave rise in Tagore's mind to numerous waves of passionate thought. It is often not NOTES easy to identify a particular source in Shelley's poetry, but the 1. Such as the essays in Samaj collection included in philosophic make-up of Shelley's mind, his cosmic Rabindra Rachanabali volume 13 (pp. 1-140) and awareness and contemplation of the infinite and everlasting, many others. his intuition of life and death, and his Platonic conception of 2. These old articles are reprinted for the first time in love as of divine origin in the soul before it finds its true Rabindra.vol.17. Page references to these and other correspondence in an earthly beauty, colored Tagore's mind early essays only are to this volume. Translations deeply enough. When Tagore sings of the eternal and the from Tagore's prose and poetry, when not announced, infinite, of super-life and super-death, as also of what is are mine. transient, fragile, and fleeting, as he often does in his vast body of poetry and songs, he may be said to be celebrating the 3. For example, in his American lectures in 1916-17, poetic Platonism of Shelley. I do not, however, suggest that is collected in Personality: Lectures Delivered in all that there is in Tagore's vast and varied poetry, for he America (1917; Indian Edition: Macmillan, 1959), articulated every mood and shade of emotion in love and Tagore talked at length about his conception of poetic worship, in sadness and joy, in love of country and nature, in personality. Volume 4 Issue 1 March 2017 Volume 4 Issue 1 March 2017 12 13 Critical and Creative Wings Rebirth of the Angel : Tagore's Shelley

4. Rabindra. 17: 534-540. 10. Manasi as a collection covers Rabindra.1: 213-337. 5. The titles of the separate collections of poems are 11. Sonar Tori (The Golden Boat) covers Rabindra.1: translated only at their first mention. Tagore's poems 339-450. are not line numbered, but for longer poems, I have 12. Chitra (Beauty) covers Rabindra. 1: 461-537. indicated the line numbers relative to the page in which they occur for easy identification. Unless otherwise indicated, Tagore's poems discussed here Works Cited are all in volume 1 of his collected works in Bengali: Dante Alighieri. The Divine Comedy. London: Everyman's Rabindra-Rachanabali (1961). Library, 1903. Print. 6. This particular poem, and some others, being very Majumdar, Ujjwal. Rabindra-Anwesa [Questing long, are included, as noted above, not in volume 1, Tagore].Kolkata: 1965-66. which contains all Tagore's early poetry, but in Sen, PulinBehari. Rabindra Grantha Panji (A Tagore volume 5 of his Collected Works (Rabindra- bibliography). Kolkata : Visva-Bharati Publications, 2009. Rachanabali). (In English and Bengali) The songs, numerous as they are, are grouped and ---.“Works of Rabindranath Tagore: English”. 372-430. Print. titled like Puja (Worship), Prem (Love), Prakrity Shelley, P. B. Shelley: Poetical Works. Ed Thomas (Nature), Bichitro (Miscellaneous), etc. and Hutchinson 1905; Oxford : University Press, 2nd edition in numbered, as in Gitabitan, the complete collection paperback, 1970. Print. of Tagore's songs. The corresponding volume to ---. Adonais. Poetical Works. 432-444. Print. Gitabitan is number 4 in the collected works, the base text here. ---. Alastor. Poetical Works. 14-30. Print. 7. Forest of the heart is a phrase that derives from ---. “Epipsychidion.” Poetical Works. 412-424. Print. Ta g o r e ' s a u t o b i o g r a p h y J i b o n - S m r i t i ---. “Hymn to Intellectual Beauty”. Poetical Works. 529-531. (Reminiscences) in Rabindra.10:104. Print. 8. Surojit Das Gupta, Dante, Goethe, Rabindranath (in ---. “Mont Blanc,” Poetical Works. 532-53. Print. Bengali), (Kolkata, 1967), 12. ---.”The World's Wanderers”. Poetical Works. 624. Print. 9. Published first in Bharati 2nd year (Aug-Sept, 1878), ---.“Woodman and the Nightingale”. Poetical Works. 562-63. rpt. Rabindra. 17: 174-191. Print.

Volume 4 Issue 1 March 2017 Volume 4 Issue 1 March 2017 14 15 Critical and Creative Wings Rebirth of the Angel : Tagore's Shelley

Tagore, Rabindranath. Collected Plays and Poems of ---.“The Fountain Awakes.” Trans. Hiren Mukherjee. One Rabindranath Tagore. London: Macmillan, 1936. Print. Hundred and One. Ed. Humayun Kabir. (Mumbai: Asia (Containing translations of poems from, Sonar Tori. Chitra. Publishing House, 1966), 2-3. Print. (The title refers to the Kalpana. Shishu. Naibedya. Gitanjali. Gitimalya. Khsonika. number of poems translated.) Kheya. Balaka. Palataka. Etc., and of several plays) ---.”Yathartha Dosor.” vol.17:534-540. Print. ---. Rabindra Rachanabali [Collected Works of Rabindranath Tagore]. 15 volumes. Kolkata: Government of West Bengal, 1961-67. Print. ---. Rabindra-Rachanabali. volume 17. Kolkata: Visva- Bharati, 2001. Print. ---. ”adhunik kabyo”. Rabindra Rachanabali. vol.14: 341- 352. Print. ---. “Bangla Jatiyo Sahitya” (The National Literature of Bengal.) vol.13: 793-806. Print. ---. “Bangalira kobinoy” (Bengalis are not Poets). vol.17: 219-227. Print. ---. “Bangalira kobinoy keno?” (Why Bengalis are not Poets). vol.17: 227-241. Print. ---. Chhinnapatra (Torn Letters). 1912. vol. 11: 1-322. Print. ---. Kobi-kahini (The Poet's Story) vol. 5: 59-89. Print. ---. “Modern Poetry” (in Bengali). English translation of “adhunik kabyo”. A Tagore Reader. Ed. Amiya Chakravarty. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1961. 241-253. Print. ---.“Sahitya roop” (Literary Beauty). vol.14: 395-403. Print.

Volume 4 Issue 1 March 2017 Volume 4 Issue 1 March 2017 16 17 Critical and Creative Wings Children, Burghers and Tamils On Sal Mal Lane: the subaltern's narrative of the ethnic riots*

Children, Burghers and Tamils On Sal Mal Lane: of Sri Lanka from her privileged western geographic distance The Subaltern's Narrative of the Ethnic Riots* to postcolonial audiences reading in English. The Other, represented through the children as opposed to the adults, and Shashi Assella the powerless as opposed to the powerful reverses traditional power relations throughout the narrative of the novel and re- Ru Freeman is a Sri Lankan author living in and writing imagines political agency and subaltern agency in the from the US. She identifies herself as an activist and has narrative. worked in the field of American and international The novel begins with a prologue from an omniscient humanitarian assistance and workers' rights. Her debut novel narrator's viewpoint that emerges time and again and A Disobedient Girl (2009) narrates the life and dreams of a ominously details political and social history that will lead to young woman who goes against the class hierarchies of Sri the ethnic rioting in 1983. The omniscient narrative voice is Lankan urban society to achieve her dreams. The subaltern the voice of Sal Mal Lane, the omnipresent bystander, looking servant woman's voice that has traditionally been subdued at an adult world crumbling with politically imposed ethno- and silenced is thus foregrounded to give life to the thwarted political hatred and the voice of wind and air the innocent and unrequited dreams of the “made-to-be- the lower class” in children play in. The children of the newly arrived Herath urban Sri Lanka. In her second novel, Freeman extends the family are the main characters in the novel. Their play and subaltern's story further. On Sal Mal Lane (2013) explores the their innocent observations develop the narrative and become lives of suburban city dwellers through the eyes of children allegories for the unfolding ethno-national politics of Sri living on Sal Mal lane near Colombo. The voiceless and the Lanka during the early 1980s. But while making the children disempowered are given a new voice through children who the central figures, Freeman also renders them “different” in witness catalytic events of Sri Lanka's ethnic relations leading 1 the narrative. “The only goodwill to be had was among up to the ethnic riots of July 1983 . On Sal Mal Lane, thus children unaware of such declarations, children like the ones becomes not only a historical account of Sri Lanka's ethnic on Sal Mal Lane, children moving into a new home that relations, but also an attempt at re-presenting history from the brought with it the possibility of new friends”3. Unlike the bottom up, through the eyes of children and women. adult Silvas who count the new arrivals, the Heraths, as an This paper argues that Freeman's use of children and ethnic addition to Sal Mal Lane's various ethno-religious other subaltern characters without the obvious political families of Tamil Christian Burghers, Tamil Christians, agency to change the course of the history is a gendered and a Hindu Christians, Muslims and Sinhala Buddhists, for the politicised attempt at re-presenting and re-writing the past children of Sal Mal Lane, it is another addition of new from the point of the neglected Other. Freeman re- playmates. Thus the children still are different. They are Orientalises2 her characters and re-presents the ethnic history

Volume 4 Issue 1 March 2017 Volume 4 Issue 1 March 2017 18 19 Critical and Creative Wings Children, Burghers and Tamils On Sal Mal Lane: the subaltern's narrative of the ethnic riots*

unaware of ethno-religious affiliations that will divide them the other residents on Sal Mal Lane is due to his inability to fit later and they still retain an innocence that is devoid of into their social circles. He acts out in anger because of his politically-fuelled ethnic hatred for most parts of the difference from the others. Sonna is an allegory for the narrative. discontented lower middle classes and the repressed Sal Mal Lane becomes a microcosmic reflection of Sri communities who played a major role in furthering ethnic Lanka's changing political atmosphere. Escalating public tension and disharmony. Raju is the Other because of his tension after the declaration of the prevention of terrorism act “difference” arising out of his physical difference. He is a in 19794 is reflected in the mounting suspicions and subtle child trapped in a man's body and hence he belongs neither to antagonism between the dwellers of Sal Mal lane. The Silva the adult world not the children's. Mr. Niles is “different” family in particular reflects the growing unease among the because of his physical immobility and his ethnicity. His Sinhalese about the other ethnic groups in the country. The inability to participate in any of the adult conversations, due Herath family, on the other hand, is representative of the to his health, forces him to be a silent observer of both the politically conscious and unbiased educated urban middle adult's and children's worlds, except for his interactions with class. Being the urban educated middle class, they are a the Herath children. Freeman's use of these marginal minority who believe in political change and justice. Thus the characters of the Other on Sal Mal Lane questions the agency Heraths become the voice of the people without proper of the subdued Other as well as the visibility of these marginal agency. They neither have the political nor the physical power characters. Through Freeman's narrative and through the to usher in the change they believe in, despite their omniscient narrator in the novel, these marginal characters convictions about justice and racial harmony. In the end, as is define their own identities and their own centres as opposed evident in the crisis that befalls the Herath family, their to the established centre of Sal Mal Lane consisting mainly of convictions do not save them from heartache or the Heraths and, generally, the educated Sinhalese middle disillusionments. class. While the adults become one centre in a multitude of overlapping social circles, Sinhalese families become The characters of Sonna, Raju and Mr. Niles reflect the another centre against which margins are defined. Children, different sentiments of the ethnic Others towards the on the other hand, define their own centres with Devi in the unfolding political tension of the country in the early 1980s. middle and Sonna and Raju become the peripheral characters Sonna, the delinquent Burgher-Tamil teenager, gives vent to to all of these different cores of the power dynamics on Sal his personal dissatisfactions and anger through his ethnic Mal lane. hatred towards the other Tamils, Muslims and Sinhalese on Sal Mal lane. His hatred for Raju springs from his inability to Even violence becomes an act of the Other in the novel. reconcile with Raju's “difference”, while his anger towards Sonna, the already Othered, becomes a perpetrator of

Volume 4 Issue 1 March 2017 Volume 4 Issue 1 March 2017 20 21 Critical and Creative Wings Children, Burghers and Tamils On Sal Mal Lane: the subaltern's narrative of the ethnic riots* violence against another group of ethnic Other: the Tamils on marginal adult characters, that speak for these minority Kalyani Avenue. His involvement in the activities of looting characters. The agency of voicing their own opinions is and burning “Elakandiya mobs” consisting of lower middle limited or nonexistent for the marginal characters in class, that is, of economically and socially disadvantaged Freeman's narrative. But by rendering the socio-politically groups of men, is not fuelled by his ethnic hatred, but is aided powerless children as the main narrators, Freeman by his feeling of being accepted, included and respected. establishes a different kind of subaltern agency. Even Lucas and Alice, the couple who work for middle class Devi, the youngest of the Herath children is the main families on Sal Mal lane, find their ethnic identity not through catalyst in the novel's action. She embodies the innocence of their beliefs, but in their acceptance in certain households. people in Sri Lanka before the rise of ethnic tension. She is the Freeman complicates the ethnic hatred that leads to the agency of power through which Raju and Sonna find violence in 1983 by introducing these in-between characters expression either in Devi's acceptance or in her rejection. such as Elakandiya mob, Sonna and Lucas. They do not Raju receives the recognition and appreciation he was belong and have no strong beliefs. Yet they commit crimes craving for through Devi's unconditional trust while Sonna and aid the rioters and the victims. They become the realises his shortcomings and becomes aware of his status as a voiceless, even in their violence and compassion, because of misfit in terms of the existing social norms because of Devi's their liminal presence, in their ethno-religious societies. lack of interest in him. Through Devi, the powerless girl As Gayatri Spivak has argued in “Can the Subaltern child, Freeman gives voice to the subaltern female figures of Speak?”5 the subaltern agency has been appropriated by the Sri Lankan American women's writing. Devi, unlike Arjie in powers that are operated in different contexts. The agency of Selvadurai's Funny Boy (1994), is not a social misfit nor is she the powerful, which is political and societal, takes away the a male protagonist who has the historical right to retell authority of the subaltern to voice his/her own concerns, thus history. She represents the ethno-political majority by being making history and re-presentation another power play and Sinhalese but at the same time her agency is limited because not the reflection of the subaltern groups. Freeman's rendition of her gender and her age. Freeman uses Devi to illustrate of the powerless in On Sal Mal Lane is a re-Orientalist re- both the subaltern agency of the voiceless as well as her presentation of the subaltern groups. The Niles family and the adherence to the existing female writing traditions of the Nadesan family who are representatives of the Tamil South Asian American women - of giving voice to the women minority of the country are either powerless figures as in the characters. case of Mr. Niles or play an insignificant role in the Devi's agency is further complicated through the development of the novel's narrative. Instead of their voices, narrative voice of the omniscient narrator. Devi is given a it is the voice of the children who are less powerful than the voice and through her character, as has been argued, the less

Volume 4 Issue 1 March 2017 Volume 4 Issue 1 March 2017 22 23 Critical and Creative Wings Children, Burghers and Tamils On Sal Mal Lane: the subaltern's narrative of the ethnic riots* powerful find an outlet for their emotions, in an indirect way. By using the already established (by women writers in But her voice is not that of an individual. Devi is given voice general and South Asian American women writers in through the narrator and in turn through the author. Once particular) forms of using female narrators to recount again the subaltern is given a voice but only through another political and social history, Ru Freeman conforms to the agency that already has political power to represent the existing traditions of Asian and South Asian women's writing under-represented. Thus the subaltern narrative in the novel in America. The subdued female figure is given a voice and becomes a layered rendition of subaltern agency. Despite the the patriarchal norms and practices are thus challenged. But restrictions in Devi's agency, the gender, class and ethnicity by making the powerless female figure that alters the course consciousness, explored in the novel to re-present history, of the narrative a young girl and her companions consisting of change the re-Orientalist elements of exoticising and re- a group of young children, Freeman further complicates the presenting Sri Lanka to the Other into factors that aid re- agency of the female narrators. She gives a voice to the presenting Sri Lanka through the lens of its Others. oppressed, but uses that voice to re-present socio-ethnic On Sal Mal Lane begins with detailed maps of Sri Lanka issues that were perpetrated for the most part by the ruling and of the Sal Mal lane. Through children's activities and powers and patriarchal power structures. Freeman's Other not reactions, class politics, ethnic tensions and political only represents the minority groups within the ethno-social development in the country are recounted. Even the evening makeup of Sri Lanka, but also re-presents the history from the French cricket sessions of the children are used to accentuate point of view of the powerless: children and females. Ru the building of ethno-political divisions in the country. The Freeman expands boundaries of the already established maps, political concerns about history, and the coloniser's female narrator in Sri Lankan women's English fiction and version of recreation: cricket, are used by Freeman to subvert develops a new identity for the Sri Lankan American dominant agency. By using dominant forms of cartographies women's fiction, by giving a voice to the subaltern and by and history to recount the tale of a young girl's life, Freeman questioning the agency of re-presenting the Other. makes the narrative a subaltern's narrative of the under- represented. The established forms of male authority become Notes the tool to establish female agency. Even Devi's influence on *An initial version of this paper was presented at the South others, especially on Sonna and Raju, both of whom attempt Asia by the Bay, Graduate Conference organized by the to achieve dominance through physical strength and form University of California, Santa Cruz, USA from 2-3 May (Raju is an avid body building fan while Sonna draws tattoos 2014. I am grateful for the feedback and comments, which on himself to establish his authority) is evidence of Freeman's helped in the re-working of this extended version. conscious efforts to give power to the powerless, especially rd the female figures. 1. On the 23 of July 1983, thirteen government soldiers were killed in an ambush by an armed group in Jaffna. On the 24th

Volume 4 Issue 1 March 2017 Volume 4 Issue 1 March 2017 24 25 Critical and Creative Wings Children, Burghers and Tamils On Sal Mal Lane: the subaltern's narrative of the ethnic riots*

July 1983, the bodies of the soldiers were brought into an and Development of Orientalism by Orientals”. Modern already agitating capital where organised mobs were ready to Asian Studies. Vol 43:2. 2009. pp 571-590 and Minoli take revenge on the 'Tamils' that allegedly killed the 'Sinhala' Salgado. “The New Cartographies of Re-Orientalism”.The soldiers. The mobs, organised and armed with electoral Journal of Commonwealth Literature. Vol 46:2. pp 199-218. registers, swept through the streets of Colombo, burning 3. RuFreeman. On Sal Mal Lane.Minnesota: Graywolf Press. Tamil homes, ransacking them and killing innocent victims. 2013. p 9 This carnage, known in Sri Lankan history as the 'Black July' ravaged and burnt the capital for two days and then was 4. The Prevention of Terrorism Act of 1978 enacted as a quelled through government and military intervention. The temporary law in 1979 gives the police broader powers to initial lack of response from the government to contain the search, arrest and detain suspects. This act was made into a violence and the lack of police or military intervention to permanent law in 1982. protect innocent civilians has been criticised over the years by 5. Gayatri Spivak. “Can the Subaltern Speak?”. Article historians, political analysts and fiction writers alike. The retrieved from http://www.mcgill.ca/files/crclaw- ethnic riots then shifted to the central areas of the country discourse/Can_the_subaltern_speak.pdf. on 31/03/14. where the Tamil population was largely of recent Indian origin. Though the riots were subdued eventually, the July riot compelled many Tamils to seek refuge by migrating to other Works Cited parts of the world and is marked as the beginning of Sri Freeman, Ru. On Sal Mal Lane. Minnesota: Graywolf Press, Lankan ethnic conflict which devastated the country for three 2013. Print. decades. For further analysis see S.J. Tambiah . Sri Lau, Lisa. “Re-Orientalism: The Perpetration and Lanka:Ethnic Fratricide and the dismantling of Development of Orientalism by Orientals”. Modern Asian democracy.(London: I.B.Tauris. 1986) and R. Wijesinha. Studies 43.2 (2009): 571-590. Print. Declining Sri Lanka:Terrorism and Ethnic conflict: The Salgado, Minoli. “The New Cartographies of Re- Legacy of J.R.Jayawardene (1906-1996).(New Delhi: Orientalism”.The Journal of Commonwealth Literature 46:2: Cambridge University Press India. 2007). 199-218. Print. 2. The presentation of the East to the West and self Spivak, Gayatri. “Can the Subaltern Speak?”. Article exoticisation of the postcolonial subjects themselves. I use retrieved from http://www.mcgill.ca/files/crclaw- this term in relation to how Lisa Lau defined the term, though discourse/Can_the_subaltern_speak.pdf. on 31/03/14. not in total agreement with her definition. For further reference see Lisa Lau. “Re-Orientalism: The Perpetration

Volume 4 Issue 1 March 2017 Volume 4 Issue 1 March 2017 26 27 Critical and Creative Wings 'From gilded dusk to argent dawn' : A Tantric Reading of “The Quest” of Savitri

'From gilded dusk to argent dawn' : Interestingly, Sri Aurobindo's interpretation of the A Tantric Reading of “The Quest” of Savitri Tantric philosophy is succinct. In the entire corpus of his writings, we encounter two places where clear references to Rudrashis Datta tantric philosophy are made by Sri Aurobindo. In one, he interprets 'tantra' as “the great dynamic force of nature” In Book Four, Canto Four of Savitri, Sri Aurobindo which in due course of time lost its “royal pathways and delineates a journey much in the same pattern as journeys to entered stultifying gulleys of self-indulgence, a method of and through the 'underworld' in ancient European classics. unrestrained social immorality”(Aurobindo Synthesis Titled “The Quest”, the Canto describes Savitri's journey to the stages of consciousness - realms in order to face the 245).The reference clearly is to the methodology of a school spiritual consequences of Satyavan's death and also to engage of tantric practices which based itself on intoxication and with the reality of mortality, represented so eloquently in the sexual rites as a means of transcending the physical epic by Yama, the Lord of Death and Justice. The pattern of boundaries of existence. The second commentary of Sri the journey of Savitri through the spiritual realms lends itself Aurobindo in the context of tantra is closer to his vision of the to a Tantric interpretation of the spiritual evolution of man. evolutionary human spirit as he writes: The word tantra is derived from the Sanskrit root tan, In Tantra, it is the prakriti, the nature-soul, the energy, the tanyate, meaning 'to spread'.1 Judged in the context of usual will-in-power that knows, observes, governs the Sanskrit semantics, 'tantra' refers to the scripture or actions by Universe. It was by learning and applying this will-in- w h i c h k n o w l e d g e a n d w i s d o m i s s p r e a d – power, its method, its tantra, that the Tantric yogin 'tanyatevistaryatejnanamanenaiti tantram'.2 Interestingly, pursued the aims of his discipline – mastery, perfection, the suffix - tra denotes 'trayate', which means 'to save'. By liberation, beatitude. Instead of drawing back from implication the act of 'saving' would imply a protection manifested Nature and its difficulties, the tantric against negative nuances of spiritual living, primarily, the confronted them, seized and conquered. But in the end, as trap of 'maya' and the inevitability of death and destruction. is the general tendency of prakriti, tantric yoga largely Applied to the context of the Canto Four – “The Quest”, the lost its principle in its machinery and became a thing of word 'tantra' assumes significance partly because the travel formulae and occult mechanism still powerful when of Savitri through the various realms of the spirit is a negation rightly used but fallen from the clarity of their original of the constrictive nuances associated with 'maya', as also an intention. (Letters I: 45-46) assertion of the act of Savitri to defeat death, save the human world from its inevitability and establish the 'immortal' as a The Canto on Savitri's quest describes a journey which way of the life-spirit on earth. fits perfectly with her vision of confronting 'manifested

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Nature' and its inevitability of death, confronting mortality Sankaracharya's Soundarya Lahari (Wave of Joy) as she through an intense engagement with Yama, the god of Death, traverses through the metaphysical realms of the chakras. and thereby seizing immortality and finally conquering death Verse 11 of Soundarya Lahari describes through repeated by ensuring that Satyavan gets back the life he lost. references to lights and limitless space the attainment of the Essentially, Savitri is a tantric yogin in the Canto with each symbolic abode of the tantric 'sri chakra'3, an Aurobindonean stage of pursuit following Yama's carrying the soul of equivalent of the super-mind. The similarity with the lines in Satyavan: mastery (of his soul's movement through the the Canto which describes Savitri's experience as she attains a realms), perfection (of the pathways leading to the highest similar metaphysical state is too stark to be missed: realms of the spirit), liberation (of Satyavan, and indeed A Voice profound in the ecstasy and the hush humanity, from the influence of mortality), and beatitude They heard, beheld an all-revealing Light. (through Nature on earth celebrating the death of Death as a All time-made difference they overcame; consequence of Savitri's yoga). The world was fibred with their own heart-strings; The three hundred twenty three line Canto has been Close drawn to the heart that beats in every breast, divided into two unequal parts by Sri Aurobindo, with a They reached the one self in all through boundless love. th Attuned to silence and to the world-rhyme, divide after the 258 line. The first part of the Canto is a They loosened the knot of the imprisoning mind; journey of uncertainty marked by the confusion and lack of Or, comrades of the everlasting Will, direction that usually attend any spiritual quest, more so a Surveyed the plan of past and future Time. tantric quest. Significantly, Sri Aurobindo builds up this aura (Aurobindo Savitri 385) of uncertainty with a series of telling images – 'dumb That Savitri here is the equivalent of Sakti as the first revolving wheels' carrying Savitri, the sight of 'dim-masked fully cosmological feminine principle in Vedic-Brahmanical hooded godheads', the 'shadowy keepers' of her spiritual past, tantric tradition is apparent. The Canto covers all the three Savitri's sight of 'inferior stumbling powers', travelling primary milestones in the concept of the development of the through 'slow-hushed wizard nets of fiery bloom'. It is only metaphysical dimension of Sakti through classical tantric after a significant movement through uncertainty, even literature – a creative ability which is a complement to a male chaos, that Savitri has the first sight of a region that is 'gilded' divine principle; the unmistakable idea of a cosmogonic and hears 'a voice profound in its ecstasy' and this happens power possessed by a single human being; and an all around the structural middle of the Canto. Significantly, pervasive divine power latent but not necessarily manifested much of the journey of Savitri in the first part of the Canto has in creation in Nature. The creative ability of Savitri is a correlation with a similar journey by Sakti in apparent in the manner of her negotiation with 'Nature in a

Volume 4 Issue 1 March 2017 Volume 4 Issue 1 March 2017 30 31 Critical and Creative Wings 'From gilded dusk to argent dawn' : A Tantric Reading of “The Quest” of Savitri bold and friendly clasp' as she journeys through the uncertain rapid and direct stroke, the frontal assault that carries areas of spiritual ascension; her cosmogonic power everything before it. Terrible is her face to the Asura, manifested in “sowing in young minds immortal thoughts dangerous and ruthless her mood against the haters of the they lived,/And taught the great Truth to which man's race Divine; for she is the warrior of the Worlds who never must rise/Or opened the gates of freedom to a few”(387); and shrinks from the battle.(Aurobindo The Mother18) the all-pervasive power of divinity revealing itself in her Vivekananda portrays Kali in a similar light: “intuitive knowledge leaping into speech,/Seized, vibrant, Dancing mad with joy, kindling with the inspired word,/Hearing the subtle voice that Come, Mother, come! clothes the heavens,/Carrying the splendour that has lit the For Terror is Thy name, suns”(390).The abiding nuance in the entire quest of Savitri Death is in Thy breath, in the Canto is a blending of force inherent in creation and the And every shaking step subtlety of the mind that is required to understand the Destroys a world for e'er. working of that force. Essentially, while most classical tantric Thou 'Time', the All-Destroyer! Come, O Mother, come! schools dwell more on the aspect of force and the physical Who dares misery love, origin of it, Sri Aurobindo gives to Savitri's tantric exercise an And hug the form of Death, equal mix of force and subtlety of knowledge and perception, Dance in Destruction's dance, with his 'mahakali' interpretation of nature dwelling on the To him the Mother comes. (Vivekananda 4: 384) terrible aspects of creation and his 'mahasaraswati' The 'mahasaraswati' experience in the tantra is almost a interpretation resting on the idea of subtle knowledge and contrast with the 'mahakali' experience: intuition as the tools of appreciation of the workings of nature. In a paragraph strongly reminiscent of Swami A mother to our wants, a friend in our difficulties, a persistent and tranquil counsellor and mentor, chasing Vivekananda's poem “Kali the Mother”, Sri Aurobindo away with her radiant smile the clouds of gloom and interprets the 'mahakali' aspect of divinity in the following fretfulness and depression, reminding always of the ever- words: present help, pointing to the eternal sunshine, she is firm, There is in her an overwhelming intensity, a mighty quiet and persevering in the deep and continuous urge passion of force to achieve, a divine violence rushing to that drives us towards the integrality of the higher nature. shatter every limit and obstacle. All her divinity leaps out All the work of the other Powers leans on her for its in a splendour of tempestuous action; she is there for completeness; for she assures the material foundation, swiftness, for the immediately effective process, the elaborates the stuff of detail and erects and rivets the armour of the structure. (Aurobindo The Mother 21)

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The second part of the Canto is an elaboration of the Works Cited 'mahasaraswati' experience of Savitri, an experience that comes when the 'mahakali' aspect of strife, labour, force Monier-Williams, M. A Sanskrit English Dictionary. 1899. towards ascension of the life-spirit is no longer required since Print. Reprint. New Delhi:MotilalBanarassidass, 2003. Print. the height has been attained. Sri Aurobindo says that Savitri Sankaracharya. Anandalahari. Trans. Sir John Woodroffe, ascends the height and looks down “starlike to some bright Madras: Madras Press, 1961. Print. Beyond” (391). Sri Aurobindo. The Synthesis of Yoga. Pondicherry : Sri The Canto illustrates Sri Aurobindo's subtle negotiation Aurobindo International University Centre, 1955. Print. with the 'kali' and 'saraswati' aspects of Savitri's quest and ---.Letters on Yoga. 2 vols. Pondicherry : Sri Aurobindo given that he was remarkably reticent in elaborating on tantra Ashram Press, 2013. Print. and its inherent mysticism in his philosophical tracts, the Canto on Savitri's quest is the closest illustration we can have ---.Savitri – a Legend and a Symbol. Pondicherry : Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1997. Print. about a nuanced negotiation of Sri Aurobindo's integralism with the physicality and worldliness inherent in the tantra ---.The Mother with Letters on The Mother. Pondicherry : Sri schools of philosophy. Aurobindo Ashram, 2012. Print. Swami Vivekananda. The Complete Works. 9 vols. Calcutta Notes :AdvaitaAshrama, 1989. Print. Woodroffe, Sir John, Trans. Mahanirvana Tantra or Tantra of 1. See Monier Williams. P. 657. the Great Liberation. Madras : Nuvision Press, 1914. Print. 2. Sir john Woodroffe in his 'Introduction' to his translation of MahanirvanaTantra or Tantra of the Great Liberation, 1913, elucidates on the metaphysical aspect of the origin of the Tantras, basing his argument on this Sanskrit sentence. 3. Most schools of tantric philosophy consider srichakra or sriyantra as the culmination of man's spiritual journeys.

Volume 4 Issue 1 March 2017 Volume 4 Issue 1 March 2017 34 35 Critical and Creative Wings READING LOLITA IN TEHRAN : MEMOIR AS PROTEST

Reading Lolita In Tehran : After resigning from her job as a professor at the Memoir As Protest University of Tehran Nafisi handpicked some of her students to come to her home in an informal class where certain Shymasree Basu literary classics would be discussed. Nafisi's effort was inspired by her desire to liberate literature as a discourse Memoirs and autobiographies are texts where personal where the reader would be able to think freely. This was memories are articulated in an attempt to familiarize the becoming increasingly difficult in the Islamic Republic of reader to a discourse which might or might not have socio- Iran. Very early in the memoir Nafisi writes: cultural resonance. Reading Lolita in Tehran is not only a Teaching in the Islamic Republic, like any other chronicle of a teacher who re-interprets literary classics in an vocation, was subservient to politics and subject to effort to stimulate critical minds, it is a memoir where the arbitrary rules. Always the joy of teaching was marred by personal blends with the political. The text becomes a lens diversions and considerations forced on us by the regime- through which the author articulates her discourse on Muslim how well could one teach when the main concern of women's identity in Iran during the late 1980s and early 1990s university officials was not the quality of one's work but and the power of a sisterhood to resist the totalitarian regime the color of one's lips, the subversive potential of a single of the time. The political and the personal blends seamlessly strand of hair? Could one really concentrate on one's job to make the memoir a historicized one. Nafisi writes: when what preoccupied the faculty was how to excise the It is said that the personal is political. That is not true, of word wine from a Hemingway story, when they decided course. At the core of the fight for political rights is the not to teach Emily Bronte because she appeared to desire to protect ourselves, to prevent the political from condone adultery. (10-11) intruding on our individual lives. Personal and political These lines indicate the manner in which the scrutiny of the are interdependent but not one and the same thing. The Republic was an all- pervasive phenomenon. It ranged from realm of imagination is a bridge between them, censoring literature to monitoring the clothes and make up of constantly refashioning one in terms of the other. (273) Iranian women. Nafisi's plan of getting the female students together was an act of resistance to affirm the identity of the Nafisi's book club inspired classes held in the sanctuary of her women and to give them a voice beyond the veil. She refers to home become a safe space where her students articulate their her class as “the color of my dreams”, comparing her attempt ideas and opinions about fictional characters and situations. to that of a painter friend of hers whose works became more The very act of reading, though personal becomes their tool flamboyant in their color to combat the sad reality of living in for navigating, critiquing and resisting the political. the colorless reality of Iran (11).

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Nafisi further adds: a new political form of power has been continuously For a long time I had dreamt of creating a special class, developing. This new political structure, as everybody one that would give me the freedoms denied in the classes knows, is the state. But most of the time the state is I taught in the Islamic Republic. I wanted to teach a envisioned as a kind of political power that ignores handful of selected students wholly committed to the individuals, looking only at the interests of totality or, I study of literature, students who were not handpicked by should say, of a class or a group among the citizens. the government, who had not chosen English literature (332) simply because they had not been accepted in other fields Nafisi's clandestine book club is an attempt to preserve the or because they thought an English degree would be a subjectivity of her students who were increasingly facing a good career move. (10) certain crisis of confidence and felt that they had no Thus her classes are designed to become a safe space for the independent agency. The first text she chooses for her students to air their opinions and a protest on her part against students is Lolita. For her the figure of the title character the callousness of an oppressive regime. Nafisi chooses texts represented entrapment and her fate is that of an individual which are likely to polarize opinions within the class. Dissent whose sense of independent agency has been undermined and freedom of choice are something which the women of the effectively. Nafisi observes: republic are unaccustomed to and this is exactly what their When I think of Lolita, I think of the half-alive butterfly teacher wants to inculcate. pinned to the wall. The butterfly is not an obvious Michel Foucault in his “The Subject and Power” symbol, but it does suggest that Humbert fixes Lolita in identifies three types of power struggles which have been the same manner that the butterfly is fixed; he wants her, a perennially present in human society. They are struggles living breathing human being, to become stationary, to “against forms of domination”, “forms of exploitation” and give up her life for the still life he offers her in return. “struggles against subjection”. The last one, according to Lolita's image is forever associated in the minds of her Foucault, is the most widely prevalent one as subjectivity and readers with that of her jailer. Lolita on her own has no individual agency is denied to an individual. The reason for meaning; she can only come to life through her prison the prevalence of this kind of struggle over that of others is, bars. (37) according to Foucault, the unequivocal authority of the state. The female students who come to her class face a similar state He observes: of disenfranchisement as their selfhood is compromised. The reason this kind of struggle tends to prevail in our Their existence is legitimized as willing subjects of the state society is due to the fact that, since the sixteenth century, and this undermines their sense of independent agency. The class facilitates exchange of independent ideas and the

Volume 4 Issue 1 March 2017 Volume 4 Issue 1 March 2017 38 39 Critical and Creative Wings Reading Lolita In Tehran : Memoir As Protest environment of dissent reinforces their subjectivity as well as In Iran, the state took the veil and imposed it on Muslims their solidarity as women. As subjects of the Republic of Iran and non-Muslims alike, in the same way that Communist their struggles are threefold, following the Foucaltian China or Soviet Union imposed a uniformity of concept. But it is the latter which they enact through their appearance upon their citizens. … For me, the imposition book club participation and it precisely empowers them to became a symbol of the state's attempt to redefine and resist the two former ones. reshape me in its own image, denying my individuality and personal integrity. … One of the worst results of such The loss of one's subjectivity and individual agency as a an attempt is that the victims become complicit in the result of the oppressive policies of the Islamic Republic crime committed against them: for traditional Muslim becomes prominent in the manner the girls' dreams. All the women, their veil became a political and not a religious female students have nightmares in which they find sign. For those who did not believe in wearing the veil it themselves in public places without wearing the veil. The veil meant accepting a lie, participating in a lie, becoming a or the 'hijaab' was a mandatory accessory of the female lie. (O'Reilly 6) citizens of the republic. Nafisi observes: The state and its machinery invade not only the active life Several months into the class, my girls and I discovered but also the subconscious lives of the victims, especially the that almost every one of us had had at least one nightmare women. There is also an incident reported where a student in some form or another in which we either had forgotten relates the incident of a boy who sees a couple kissing in a to wear our veil or had not worn it, and always in these beach and wakes up in a fright, telling his parents he has had dreams the dreamer was running, running away. In one, an illegal dream (46).The dark humour of the incident is perhaps my own the dreamer wanted to run, but she worth noting. Nafisi finds an interesting parallel between this couldn't: she was rooted to the ground right outside her incident and a certain instance in Nabokov's Invitation to a front door. She could not turn around, open the door and Beheading. The prisoner is made to conform to a particular hide inside. (46) rule: The hijaab becomes an instrument of control and the It is desirable that the inmate should not have dreams at Republic endorses it as an essential part of a woman's attire. all, or if he does, should immediately himself suppress Not wearing the veil is construed as an act of insubordination nocturnal dreams whose context might be incompatible against the government. The nightmares represent two fates with the condition and status of the prisoner, such as : of victims against aggressors. They either flee or get trapped. resplendent landscapes, outings with friends, family Nafisi in an interview with Sarah O'Reilly has clarified her dinners, as well as sexual intercourse with persons who in stand on the imposition of the veil. She observes: real life and in the waking state would not suffer said

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individual to come near, which individual will therefore similar to our revolution, which had come in the name of be considered by the law to be guilty of rape. (46) our collective past and had wrecked our lives in the name The state therefore effectively negates an individual's of a dream? (144) subjectivity to the extent that his dreams are also prescribed to Literature, as Nafisi discovers empowers one to critique the him and a strict compliance is expected. pitfalls of idealism. The dream had a similar potency over the Nafisi's sense of claustrophobia grew as she was imagination of the Iranians as the dream of Daisy had over subjected to further restrictions while teaching at the Gatsby and in a similar manner the dream was shattered as university. It is only while teaching literary texts at the book well. club is she able to feel free. A similar freedom is felt by her Foucault had noted that struggles against individual students when they are at the book club. After Nabokov Nafisi subjection were the most pervasive kind of struggle one revisits Fitzgerald, Austen and Henry James and each of these encountered in the contemporary reality and this is Nafisi's authors offer the feeling of a 'safe space' to her as well as to her observation as well. However, Nafisi decides that the class students. Nafisi's comments on the completion of The Great would be an attempt to reclaim one's selfhood and assert Gatsby are rather pertinent. She remarks: individual agency over subjection. Yes, the novel is about concrete living relationships, a While reading Austen's Pride and Prejudice she notes man's love for a woman, a woman's betrayal of that love. how the novel accommodated the voices of dissent-a whole … It is also about loss, about the perishibality of dreams spectrum of it- to create a discourse at once rich and once they are transformed into hard reality. It is the polyvalent. Nafisi writes: longing, its immateriality, that makes the dream pure. One of the most wonderful things about Pride and What we in Iran had in common with Fitzgerald was this Prejudice is the variety of voices it embodies. There are dream that became our obsession and took over our so many different forms of dialogue: between several reality, this terrible, beautiful dream, impossible in its people, between two people, internal dialogue and actualization, for which any amount of violence might be dialogue through letters. All tensions are created and justified or forgiven. This was what we had in common, resolved through dialogue. Austen's ability to create such although we were not aware of it then. … multivocality, such diverse voices and intonations in He [Gatsby] wanted to fulfill his dream by repeating the relation and in confrontation within the cohesive past, and in the end he discovered that the past was dead, structure of the novel, is one of the best examples of the the present a sham, and there was no future. Was this not democratic aspect of the novel. In Austen's novels there are spaces for oppositions that do not need to eliminate Volume 4 Issue 1 March 2017 Volume 4 Issue 1 March 2017 42 43 Critical and Creative Wings Reading Lolita In Tehran : Memoir As Protest

each other in order to exist. There is also space-not just Universal sisterhood, defined as the transcendence of the space but a necessity –for self-reflection and self- “male” world … erases material and ideological power criticism. Such reflection is the cause for change. We differences within and among groups of women, needed no message, no outright call for plurality to prove especially between First and Third World women … our point. All we needed was to read and appreciate the However, … the real challenge arises in being able to cacophony of voices to understand its democratic craft the notion of a political unity without relying on the imperative. (268) logic of appropriation and incorporation and, just as Nafisi's lectures on Austen had to be suspended because the significantly, a denial of agency…What we need to do is University authorities did not appreciate such a multivocal articulate ways in which the historical forms of environment where individual subjectivity was respected. oppression relate to the category 'women' and not try to When the book club starts the students welcome this deduce one from the other. And it is here that feminist multivocal environment of Nafisi's book club. Earlier while solidarity or coalition makes sense. (116) talking about her class Nafisi had remarked: Reading Lolita in Tehran articulates these voices which It allowed us to defy the repressive reality outside the together perform the function of assertion of human agency. room-not only that, but to avenge ourselves on those who The Book club forms a site of resistance as well as controlled our lives. For those few precious hours we felt empowerment. Authors and texts which defy a strict free to discuss our pains and our joys, our personal hang connotation and codification are chosen for discussion. –ups and weaknesses; for that suspended time we Nabokov, Austen, Fitzgerald and James are studied as models abdicated our responsibilities to our parents, relatives and through which the students learn to debate and dissent. Thus friends, and to the Islamic Republic. We articulated all that happened to us in our own words and saw ourselves, the students are trained in the concept of dialectics as a for once, in our own image. (57) literary exercise. Nafisi remarks to Sara Reilly: Like Austen's self-contained communities the book club Our class was not political; its subversive nature was becomes a safe space and it empowers Nafisi and her students defined by our attempt to create an atmosphere in which to be liberated from the repressive discourse of the Iranian we retrieved what we lacked in public, open spaces and Republic. Chandra Talpade Mohanty while discussing the open relations. It was an assertion that life had not issue of feminist solidarity has stressed the need to articulate stopped because the state had ordered it to. The alternate histories rather than strive towards Universal existential resistance to imposition of power is also one sisterhood: of the most potent ways of resisting tyranny. (O'Reilly7)

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Nafisi immigrated to America but empowered her “memoir problem” is thus widely and significantly students to always assert their own agency. As an affirmation inscribed in late-twentieth- and early-twenty first- of the power of individual voice she uses the letter of one of century culture, in its literature, its social developments, her students as an epilogue to the memoir: and in how we seek to express and define the self in the Five years have passed since the time when the story contemporary world. (108) began in a cloud-lit room where we read Madame Nafisi's memoir captures the problems of negotiating female Bovary. …Hardly anything has changed in the nonstop subjectivity and agency in the last quarter of the twentieth sameness of our everyday life. But somewhere else I century and is a chronicle of her success in empowering her have changed. Each morning with the rising of the students to do the same with success. routine sun as I wake up and put on my veil before the mirror to go out and become a part of what is called reality, I also know of another “I” that has become naked Works Cited on the pages of a book: in a fictional world I have become fixed like a Rodin statue. And so I will remain as long as Fass, Paula S. “The Memoir Problem”. Reviews in American you keep me in your eyes, dear readers. (343) History 34.1 (March 2006): 107-123. Print. Manna, the writer of the letter, was one of the group of Foucault, Michel. Power. Ed. James D. Paubion. NewYork : students who attended the reading club classes. She has The New Press, 2000.Print. become a practicing poet and discovers an alternative and a Mohanty, Chandra Talpade. Feminism Without Borders: more powerful existence while writing her verses with a Decolonizing Theory, Practising Solidarity. New Delhi: poet's persona. Thus every student chooses his/her own voice Zubaan, 2006. Print. with which to subvert the state's power and assert his/her own individual agency. Nafisi, Azar. Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books. London: Harper Perennial, 2003.rpt. 2007. Print. Paula S. Fass has observed in “The Memoir Problem” that the appeal of a memoir in contemporary reality is more as O'Reilly. The Secret of 'Durable Pigments': Azar Nafisi talks a history document. She writes: to Sarah O'Reilly. P.S,: Ideas, Interviews & Features. 1- 32.Print. Like all forms of writing, memoirs are deeply implicated in complex issues of representation, and most of these writers use their reflections to deal with and overcome issues related to the authenticity of the self today. The

Volume 4 Issue 1 March 2017 Volume 4 Issue 1 March 2017 46 47 Critical and Creative Wings The echoes of Indian philosophical thoughts in the literary oeuvre of W. B. Yeats

The Echoes of Indian Philosophical Thoughts as a person. In one of the Letters written in August 1892, Yeats in the Literary Oeuvre of W. B. Yeats said, “I choose to persist in a study which I decided ... to make next to my poetry, the more important pursuit of my life ... The Rupa S. Deshmukhya mystical life is the centre of all I do and all that I think and all that I write” (qtd. in Ellmann 94). The well acclaimed poet W.B.Yeats's poetical works have been interpreted from the point of view of art, culture, Spirituality in the true sense of the term was reflected through postcolonialism and the Irish literary movement. He comes certain modes of writing and further, it continued to be a under the rubric of writers who grapple with several forces prevailing force in some of Yeats's works. It also seeped into related to the anxieties of the modern world. In the his life as his friend Katharine Tynan once remarked, “Yeats introduction to The Cambridge Companion to W. B. Yeats had an uncanny way of standing aside and looking on the Majorie Howes has asserted, “Few modern writers have game of life as a spectator” (qtd. in Jeffares181). This careers as varied, long and complex as W.B. Yeats. Born in observation forms the basis for discussing the reverberations 1865, he produced works that arguably belong to each of the of Indian philosophical thoughts in his life and oeuvre. Other three major literary historical traditions: the Romantic, the than the occult, the ideas which can be explored in his oeuvre Victorian and the Modernist” (1). His dexterity in using are the concepts of self and Atman. Tied up with the concept images and symbols places him among the most renowned of self is the search for identity and wisdom to understand the poets of the world. There is, however, a renewed dimension to universal force looming large over one's life. his works which deserves not only critical acclaim but also a Some of the major influences on Yeats’s life have come sensitive approach and that is his preoccupation with the through his interaction with the Bengali Brahmin Mohini Indian philosophical thoughts. Chatterjee, the monk Purohit Swami and Nobel Laureate Yeats's association with mysticism and occultism was Rabindranath Tagore. Yeats wrote an introduction to Tagore's reinforced after meeting, interacting with and pondering over profound opus Gitanjali. He declared that he read Tagore the philosophy of several Indian schools of thoughts. The every day and “to read one line of his is to forget all the quest to discover something beyond intellectual mechanisms troubles of the world.” While appreciating deeply the energy of the mind was possible through these dynamic interactions. he derived from Tagore, he has also admitted the Madame Helene Blavatsky, founder of the theosophical awkwardness he experienced while reading Tagore. In the society, was instrumental in giving vigour to his philosophy. Introduction to Gitanjali he relates his experience of reading Her mysticism and notions of the occult inspired Yeats and Tagore: these inspirations continued to guide him through his journey Volume 4 Issue 1 March 2017 Volume 4 Issue 1 March 2017 48 49 Critical and Creative Wings The echoes of Indian philosophical thoughts in the literary oeuvre of W. B. Yeats

I have carried the manuscript of these translations about this paper. The word 'Dialectic' comes from Ancient Greek with me for days, reading it in railway trains, or on the top and it is a method of argument for resolving disagreement of omnibuses and in restaurants, and I have often had to that has been central to European and Indian Philosophy. This close it lest some stranger would see how much it moved dialectical approach is also discerned in the Bhagavad Gita. me. These lyrics-which are in the original, my Indians tell In the Gita, Krishna says that no Dharma is bereft of me, full of subtlety of rhythm, of untranslatable blemishes. One must persevere to find answers in one's own delicacies of colour, of metrical invention, display in Dharma. This does not negate the importance of reason but their thought a world I have dreamed of all my life long. reason alone cannot be the sole deciding factor. As it is clear (263) in the Gita, “Better in one's own Dharma, though imperfect, The philosophy of Mohini Chatterjee and Purohit Swami than the Dharma of another well performed. He who does the shaped his worldview and led him towards a spiritual path. duty ordained by his own nature incurs no All these overt and covert influences in Yeats’s oeuvre will sin”(Chidbhavananda XVIII: xxxxvii). The phrase 'though be expounded with the aid of the Vedantic philosophy and imperfect' implies that there is an inherent flaw in the system essentials from The Bhagavad Gita. This paper is thus an of practices but one has to be devoted to one's Dharma. Other attempt to locate and further the understanding of Indian than Dharma, the transience of life is also beautifully philosophical thoughts in his literary oeuvre and it will delineated in the Gita. Sri Ramakrishna said, “If the word explore the manner in which Yeats's works resonate with Gita be rapidly repeated it would sound ,'Tagi, Tagi…And Hindu mythology and notions of Self. Tagi is a modification of Tyagi- the man of renunciation. As Indian thought has been concerned with various Renunciation of the phenomenal existence is the gist of the philosophical ideas it is significant to understand that it deals Gita” (qtd. in Chidbhavananda 170). with the philosophy of religion , exploration of the nature of The ephemeral aspect of life and, subsequently, the mind and the cosmos, the nature of reality which is question of life and death is something Yeats derived from his metaphysics, logic, epistemology or the nature of knowledge, familiarity with the Gita and other Indian philosophical the notions of morality or ethics. Howes avows, “Yeats's traditions. Though Christian principles were introduced to thought was profoundly dialectical; for nearly every truth he him early on, he could not reconcile with the idea of absolute made or found, he also embraced a counter-truth; a evil. His preoccupation with self-discovery lent a spiritual proposition that contradicted the first truth, was equally true, force to his works and reinforced his faith in the eastern and did not negate it” (1). The term Dialectical needs an thoughts and they continued to prevail in his works. A. G. explication to further the understanding of certain ideas in Stock has succinctly pointed out, “Indian philosophy helped

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Yeats to find an intellectual justification for and put into order Who holds the world between His bill and much of his confused beliefs and experiences, something that made us strong or weak neither Christianity nor science has been able to do” (12). Is an undying moorfowl, and He lives beyond the sky The rains are from His dripping The year 1885 had been a turning point in Yeats' life and wing, the moon beams from His eye. significantly influenced his literary odyssey because of his (Yeats (The Collected Poems) 9) association with a Bengali Brahmin Mohini Chatterjee. What Yeat's took away from his conversations with him was a The speaker succinctly draws attention to the grandiose doctrine of withdrawal from worldly matters, “that all action nature of the creator and brings home the reflection of the and all words that lead to action were a little vulgar, a little creator in each and every being. These lines also resonate with trivial. Ah, how many years it has taken me to awake out of The Bhagavad Gita where Krishna declares: that dream!”(qtd. in Jeffares27).Yeats in his letters confirmed …among those who illuminate I am the Sun the influence Chatterjee had on him, “It was my first meeting …. among the orbs of heaven I am the moon with a philosophy that confirmed my vague speculations and …. among high peaked mountains I am Meru. seemed at once logical and boundless. Consciousness, he …. of the things that move not I am the Himalayas. taught, does not merely spread out its surface but has, in …among serpents I am Vasuki. vision and in contemplation, another motion and change in …I am the lion among wild animals ; height and depth” (Yeats (Autobiographies) 98). among birds I am Garuda …among flowing streams I am the Ganges. Chatterjee drew Yeats's attention to the illusory nature of (Chidbhavananda (The Bhagavad Gita)163-6) life and this has been captured in the poem “The Song of the Happy Shepherd” where imagination takes on a life of its Along with the omnipresence of the Almighty, the own. The world of action is nothing but a 'painted Toy'. concepts of reincarnation and karmic laws are also elucidated Another idea which Yeats has beautifully translated in his in the Gita. These ideas are also embodied in Yeats's poem poetry is the concept that every creature is an image of God. “Kanva on Himself”. Kanva mulls over the intricacies of life His poem “A Prayer for my Son” reflects this as he says his and suffering and reaches a point of reconciliation regarding son is an incarnation of God. This image of God is also human existence which is tied up with the phenomena of joys reflected in his poem “The Indian upon God”. Yeats was and sufferings, birth and death. This poem directs Yeats's familiar with Chatterjee's translation of the Gita and thus we creative force in understanding spirituality. hear echoes of this doctrine in the words of the moor fowl that In the quatrains of the poem “Quatrains and Aphorisms”, sees its own image in the Almighty: Yeats has vociferously declared:

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Long thou for nothing, neither sad nor gay; … Is not thy body but the garnered rust Long thou for nothing, neither night nor day. of ancient passion and of ancient fears?" Not even 'I long to see thy longing over', Then wherefore fear the usuary of Time, the ever- longing and mournful spirit say. Or Death that cometh upon the next life-key? (Yeats (The Collected Works) 534) Nay, rise and flatter her with golden rhyme, This quatrain echoes the philosophy of a tradition which is For as things were so shall things ever be. (Yeats (The Collected Works)527) replete with the nuances of mind that strives to seek something and meanders in endless pursuits. The sense of true Indian philosophy laid a platform to recognize the transience of life and the eternal nature of the soul. The idea of eternity of freedom cannot be fathomed without the acceptance of the soul gave solace to Yeats whenever he remembered the detachment. The overtones of detachment in the aforesaid impermanence of the forms. quatrains hint at Mohini Chatterjee's influence in shaping Yeats' spiritual thoughts. Yeats wrote a poem titled “Mohini Another significant area which displays the influence of Chatterjee” which resonates with the aforesaid lines: Indian philosophical thoughts is mythology. Our myths are replete with stories about the eternal nature of the soul. I ASKED if I should pray. Mythology has always been a part of traditional cultures and But the Brahmin said, 'pray for nothing, say the similarities between different cultures with reference to Every night in bed, their myths have been an area of importance. Ajay Kumar in 'I have been a king, his article “Indian Mythic Vision in W. B. Yeats and T. S. I have been a slave, Eliot” writes about the influence of Hindu mythology on Nor is there anything. Yeats. The myth of re-incarnation, a characteristic feature of Fool, rascal, knave, That I have not been, the ancient wisdom literature, has been poetized as well as And yet upon my breast dramatized by Yeats (Kumar 112). A myriad heads have lain. Kumar points out that Yeats's poem “Leda and the Swan” as (Yeats (The Collected Poems) 209) well as his play The Hearne's Egg pay tribute to ancient It throws light on the imperishable and everlasting quality of Indian myths by alluding to the Indian concepts of Godhead, the soul. In his poem titled “Kanva on himself” Yeats re-incarnation and Samadhi. The recourse to ancient culture expresses a similar idea. The following lines of the poem find and myth is taken “in reaction to the emergence of spiritual their resonances in The Bhagavad Gita: and religious crisis in life” (Kumar 113).

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Yeats's association with Purohit Swami opened a new from sorrows. Human beings get locked in the web of illusion world for him. It enabled him to reflect on the philosophy of or the Mayajal. Swami Yatiswarananda asserts: religion and the Upanishads. The Herne's Egg is influenced The power of 'Maya' is such that we go on spending our by Purohit Swami's teachings. Yeats himself said, “Shri precious time in all sorts of ridiculous things and create Purohit Swami is with me and the play is his philosophy in a newer forms of bondage forgetting the supreme ideal of fable, or mine confirmed by him” (Jstor 46-52). He wrote the liberation. Sri Ramakrishna's parable of the fisherman's introduction to Swami's The Holy Mountain and stated that it net and the fish is clear in meaning. A way out of net is was one of those rare books that are fundamental. He also open, yet only a few fish escape through it. The rest bury translated The Ten Principal Upanishads in collaboration themselves in the mud thinking they are cosy and safe with Swami. there. The world we think the most secure place The four hermit poems by Yeats have explicated the nuances disappears from our eyes when death overpowers us. If of Indian thought and the influences of Purohit Swami. Life is real, death too is real. Salvation in Hinduism Through the poem “Meru”(1935) Yeats elucidates how the means freedom of the soul from all the sorrows. ...A man quintessential representation of man finally resolves his inner who has attained this lasting freedom is called a seeking into the hinterland of the Upanishads which is jivanmukta. (564-565) symbolized by the Mount Meru. The mount Meru is the These ideas are part of our reality and existence. In a 1935 ultimate abode of enlightenment and the poem also reflects essay, introducing a translation of the Mandukya Upanishad, Yeats's disillusionment with the western civilization and deep Yeats explained the Vedantic vision of reality: abiding dwelling in the Indian philosophy. Whereas we are fragmentary, forgetting, remembering, Hermits upon Mount Meru or Everest, sleeping, waking, spread out into past, present, future, Caverned in night under the drifted snow, permitting to our leg, to our finger, to our intestines, Or where that snow and winter's dreadful blast partly or completely separate consciousnesses, it is the Beat down upon their naked bodies, know That day brings round the night, that before dawn 'unbroken consciousness of the Self,' the Self that never His glory and his monuments are gone. sleeps, that is never divided, but even when our thought (Yeats (The Collected Poems)248) transforms it, it is still the same. (Yeats (Essays and Introductions) 480) It is evident from the aforesaid poem that one has to move beyond the craving for material existence and strive for the At this point, it is significant to understand the three states of union with the divine and only then can one seek liberation consciousness, namely, the waking state, the dream, and deep

Volume 4 Issue 1 March 2017 Volume 4 Issue 1 March 2017 56 57 Critical and Creative Wings The echoes of Indian philosophical thoughts in the literary oeuvre of W. B. Yeats sleep state. Deep sleep is a consummate state closest to the Vijaya. Her prayers are answered and though Vijaya goes 'higher self'. With waking, we break the solidarity and resume through an internal battle, he establishes complete loyalty into fragmentary living. A unitary ground is attained at the towards Anashuya. fourth stage also called Turiya or transcendental stage or what This simple story within a poem gives scope for an Yeats calls 'unbroken consciousness of the Self.' The great exploration of self with reference to Hindu theories of Self. mystic Ramana Maharshi defines Samadhi as Waking-deep Human personality is analyzed in terms of two principles, sleep state or Jagrut Sushupti. This explanation is in sync namely, Prakriti and Purusha. Prakriti refers to matter with Mohini Chatterjee's version of the Upanishads titled as whereas Purusha symbolizes spirit. In Hindu philosophy, this Man: Fragments of Forgotten History which incorporates his synergy between matter and spirit is part of the universe and interpretation of the levels of consciousness dealt with in the the same is reflected in the understanding of human beings. Upanishads. However, both these elements are significant and hold a Yeats’s poems like “Man and the Echo” and “A Dialogue similar stature. Both Prakriti and Purusha are living of Self and Soul” convey highly powerful idea of self- substances - fundamentally equal, except for dormant examination and search for self. Michael O'Neill states “A faculties in the one, and wakened faculties in the other. Dialogue between Self and Soul is a debate between self, Amrita and Anashuya stand for the purushic and prakritic whose allegiance is to this world, and 'Soul', who wishes to poles of Vijaya's personality, respectively. Just as water is focus on a world beyond conflict, body and thought” (167). needed to make a pot of dry mud, the combination of Siva and Shakti is necessary for the creation to come into being. In our An interpretation of the concept of self along with the Hindu mythology, the symbol of Ardhanareeshwara is the idea of Prakriti and Purusha is rendered beautifully in the confluence of Prakriti and Purusha. poem “Anashuya and Vijaya” which appears in the collection of poems Crossways. The female Anashuya appears in In his introduction to The Holy Mountain (1934), Yeats writes traditional Hindu mythology. She epitomizes a woman free of the duality of Purusha and Prakriti and it is clear that Yeats from jealousy and envy. She is the wife of an ancient Rishi in sees in this a version of his own Principles and Faculties, Hindu mythology. The poem here is about the nuances of love primary and antithetical, Solar and Lunar, Daemon and and virtues like faithfulness and loyalty towards one's human (Yeats (Essays and Introductions) 461). partner. The scene is laid in a little Hindu temple within a An interesting concept in the Hindu philosophy which is forest. Anashuya is distressed because of Vijaya's also tied up with mythology is Avatar. This word Avatar does relationship with a village damsel Amrita. She appeases all not have an English equivalent. The Sanskrit word Avatar the gods of the Himalayas to rejuvenate her relationship with “represents the descent of God into the human world by

Volume 4 Issue 1 March 2017 Volume 4 Issue 1 March 2017 58 59 Critical and Creative Wings The echoes of Indian philosophical thoughts in the literary oeuvre of W. B. Yeats becoming a human being or one of the other creatures of this contraries there is no progression” (qtd. in Arkins 6) had world” (Philips 12). In The Bhagavad Gita, Lord Krishna, always fascinated Yeats and was used as a force in his who is also one of the ten avatars of Lord Vishnu, says that writings. Howes has succinctly captured the power of Yeats's whenever there is loss of religion and evil increases in the poetry by avowing that it resides to a large degree in its world, he incarnates to re-establish religion and faith into the willingness to make visible internal struggles and world (Chidbhavananda IV: vii). vacillations, between such poles as self-delighting art and Yeats's “The Second Coming” is the second coming of Christ political conflict, public and private spheres, love and hatred, and it visualizes a phenomenon which will lead to horrid faith and doubt, natural and supernatural, the interior self and ramification of the world falling apart and this finds its dramatized mask, detachment and desire. The one always resonance in many religious and philosophical roots. It engages with the other, like partners in a dance (145). resonates with the Narasimha Avatara. In the story of the Our mind itself is a sea of conflicting thoughts and ideas Narasimha Avatara, Hiranyakashipu is the demon king who and it can seek a state of being unruffled and achieve oppresses Lord Vishnu's worshipper. He is bestowed with an composure only by divine intercession. The fact that Yeats invincible spirit and immortality by Lord Brahma. However, was associated with profound ideals shared by Mohini he tortures his own son Prahalada, a staunch devotee of Lord Chatterjee, Purohit Swami and Tagore bears witness to the Vishnu. Lord Vishnu assumes the mammoth proportions as enormity of philosophical ideas influencing his literary Narasimha -body of man and the head of lion-and tears oeuvre. This paper has attempted to navigate the readers Hiranyakashipu to pieces through his nails. Thus, the through the terrain of Indian philosophical thoughts in violence here is to wipe out oppression. Similarly, the violent W.B.Yeats's literary oeuvre. The rich traditions have not only imagery in “The Second Coming”– 'a gaze blank and pitiless shaped his world view but have also enabled him to initiate as the sun'-hints at an upheaval in the world due to human his journey of self-discovery. To remain surrounded by follies. It is observed that order comes only after chaos and masters who are brimming with insights provides motivation this poem has highlighted this idea through its imagery. The and spiritual force for enlightening oneself as a poet. The struggle between good and evil comes across in various poet, after all, is an artist who serves a greater purpose, one of mythological and religious readings and this recurs in Yeats's the significant goals being elevating the consciousness. oeuvre. Rabindranath Tagore has rightly said, “Yeats was capable of The juxtaposition of good and evil has given a special comprehending the world through untrammelled power of direction to his philosophy. Blake's dictum “Without his soul” (Williams 69).

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Works Cited: Literature 4.1(2013):17-18. Web.9 August. 2016. Singh, Suman. “Mohini Mohan Chatterji's influence on Arkins, Brian. The Thought of W.B. Yeats. Oxford: Peter W.B.Yeats” .ShodhSanchayan. vol.3.2(2012): Web. 9 Lang, 2010. Print. August.2016. Bloom, Harold. Yeats. New York: Oxford UP, 1970. Print. Stock, A.G. W.B.Yeats: His Poetry and Thought. New York: Cambridge UP, 1961. Print. Ellmann, Richard. Yeats-The Man and the Masks. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1979. Print. Swami Chidbhavananda. The Bhagavad Gita .Tirupparaitturai : Sri Ramakrishna Tapovanam, 2005. Print. Howes, Majorie. Introduction. The Cambridge Companion to W. B. Yeats. Ed. Majorie Howes & John Kelly.New York: Swami Yatiswarananda. Meditation and Spiritual Life. Cambridge UP, 2006. 1-2. Print. Calcutta:AdvaitaAshrama, 1979.Print. Izzo, David Garrett. The Influence of Mysticism on 20th Tagore, Rabindranath. Gitanjali, Song Offerings .New Century British and American Literature. United States: Delhi: UBSPD, 2003. Print. McFarland, 2009. Print. Williams, B.L. “Overcoming the 'Contagion of Mimicry': Jeffares, Norman. A. W.B. Yeats: Man and Poet. New York: The Cosmopolitan Nationalism and Modernist History of Palgrave Macmillan, 1996.Print. Rabindranath Tagore and W. B. Yeats”.The American Historical Review vol. 112, No. 1 (Feb., 2007): 69-100. Jstor. Kumar, A. “Indian Mythic Vision in W. B. Yeats and T. S. Web. 8 August 2016.

Eliot.” Journal of Literature Culture and Media Studies. nd 2.4(2010): 108-114. Print. Yeats, W. B. The Collected Poems of W.B.Yeats.2 ed., Great Britain: Wordsworth Poetry Library, 1994. Print. Marsh, Janet Zimmerman. “The influence of Hinduism in William Butler Yeats's 'Meru'.” Yeats Eliot Review 22.4 ---. Autobiographies: The Collected Works of W.B.Yeats. Ed. (2005): 16-18. Academic OneFile.Web. 20 September. 2016. O'Donnell and Archibald. New York: Scribner, 1999. Print. O'Neill, Michael. The Poems of W.B. Yeats: A Sourcebook. ---. Essays and Introductions. London: Macmillan, 1961. London: Routledge, 2004. Print. Print. Philips, A.B. “God Becomes His Creatures”. Did God Web resources: Become Man? Islam House. 2007.Web.8 August 2016 . http://www.yeatsvision.com/vedanta.html Saxena, Shweta. “A mythical interpretation of Yeats' The http://www.hermitary.com/lore/yeats.html Second Coming”. International Journal of English and http://www.golden-dawn.org/bioyeats.html

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Mahasweta Devi's Aranyer Adhikar: We discover in the cited lines above how Mahasweta tries to A Metahistorical Novel? account for the admixture of presumably factual elements with fictive thematic resonances. This paper will address the Tapati Talukdar contradictions in the writer's initial introductory proposition in section I that would also discuss the aesthetic/moral imperative behind attaching an appendix and its significance. In the introduction to the novel Aranyer Adhikar (The The second section would be devoted to categorising Aranyer Forest's Right), published in 1977, Mahasweta Devi declares Adhikar (The Forest's Right) which may probably be at the outset that the name and rebellion of Birsa Munda in the described as a 'metahistorical novel'(one of the modern forms history of India's struggle for independence are “memorable of the Documentary Novel). The discussion has followed the and significant.” Birsa had to fight, according to her, not only definition of the generic term as provided by Barbara Foley in against the exploitation perpetrated by the British the article “The Documentary Novel and the Problem of administration but also against the feudal system prevalent Border” taken from her book Telling the Truth (1986). Foley then. She thinks a proper appraisal of his uprising is posits the genre of metahistorical novel under the broad contingent on the knowledge of the tribal history of the times category of the 'Documentary Novel' which preceding and contemporaneous with him. For Mahasweta, locates itself near the border between factual discourse “commitment to historical objectivity is a prerequisite for a and fictive discourse, but it does not propose an writer as well as a contemporary social being. Our society eradication of that border. Rather, it purports to represent never pardons us if we fail to keep that pledge.” She claims reality by means of agreed-upon conventions of that her “Birsa centric novel is the outcome of that very fictionality, while grafting onto its fictive pact some kind pledge” (Mahasweta Devi (Introduction to Aranyer Adhikar) of additional claim to empirical validation. (Foley 393) 4). Section III of the article would try to discuss Mahasweta's Still, to conform to the norms of writing a novel, approach in view of what Hayden White writes about the Mahasweta writes in the next paragraph, she has to close the dominant tendency of historical narratives. It also narrative with Birsa'a death. She has to incorporate an incorporates the concluding observations of the article on appendix after the formal end of the novel “to emphasize the Aranyer Adhikar. continuity of life and rebellion that do not stop with the death I of the leader. Rebellion endures leading to revolution” (4) To contest Mahasweta's insistence on observing Mahasweta expresses her immense debt to Kumar Suresh historical 'objectivity', we may argue first that objectivity Singh's book Dust Storm and Hanging Mist documenting the turns out to be a myth even for the historians as scores of life and rebellion of Birsa Munda (4). *

Volume 4 Issue 1 March 2017 Volume 4 Issue 1 March 2017 64 65 Critical and Creative Wings Mahasweta Devi's Aranyer Adhikar: a Metahistorical Novel? historical narratives bear testimony to. Besides, a novelist unearthing of abundant empirical data to support his does not have the obligation to show fidelity to historical anthropological study of the cultural changes in the lives of records as he/she enjoys the freedom to tinker with facts. the primitive Mundas brought about by successive intruders. Secondly, the historical records available to Mahasweta are But he questions the methodology adopted by him, seemingly derived from what Kumar Suresh Singh gathers to To be sure, the historian with an almost idolatrous write the first draft of his monogram “Birsa Munda and his veneration for the recorded word will feel uncomfortable Movement in Chotanagpur 1874-1901” (Sarasij Sengupta with Singh's method of juxtaposing folk literature and 80). The book Dust Storm and Hanging Mist: Story of Birsa the oral tradition with official and missionary records, Munda and his Movement (1966) is based on Singh's journalistic accounts, and correspondence. (published monogram. He collects the material from diverse sources like online 01 March 2011) songs, oral history, legends, myths, interview with people who knew Birsa and his companions, and from a manuscript There is an ethnographic study of the Mundas as well by believed to have been written by Birsa's co-fighter Bharmi Sarat Chandra Roy in his book The Mundas and their Munda, and also from reliable records like Government Country (1912). But Roy's ambivalent attitude is reflected in documents, missionary records, District Gazettes from the way he, as Rycroft puts it, “fosters both a primordialist Ranchi and Singhbhum and newspaper reports of that time and sympathetic perception of 'the Mundas', revealing his (Sengupta 80-81). Daniel J. Rycroft observes in the same vein own stance between the ideologies of insurgency and but more critically : counter-insurgency. ...The missionaries were seen by Roy as 'acknowledged authorities' on 'tribal' India.” The orientation Singh's work ... uses multifarious source materials, of this book significantly differs from that by Singh as bringing together folkloric, missionary and official attested by Roy's letter (1912 b) to A.C. Haddon, the then archival material. The assimilating national slant of his Reader of Ethnography in the University of Cambridge, work fails to differentiate the validity of these sources, seeking the latter's endorsement on citing the effusive and does not critique the hegemonic structures that often comments of E.A. Gait (“a Raj census-maker”) who writes produced them. (64) the preface of the book (Rycroft 57). But Roy's greatest He (Rycroft) has, rightly, gauzed the secret of Singh's contribution seems to lie in his publication of Birsa Munda's overwhelming impact, “His [Singh's] work has ... seeped into photograph in 1912 in his book referred to above that might the decolonising imagination of urban India, and has since have led to the subsequent recognition of and quest for Birsa. inspired an award-winning novel, Jangal Ke Davedar (Rights However, Mahasweta does not mention the book or to the Forest) ... by Mahasweta Devi. (64) photograph in her introduction referred to above and In his review of Singh's book The Dust Storm and interviews. Hanging Mist David Kopf appreciates the author's diligent “The historiography of Indian nationalism,” as Ranajit

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Guha rues, “has for a long time been dominated by elitism- imagination (XI-XII). If the Mundas had had no script the colonialist elitism and bourgeois nationalist elitism” (37). authenticity of what Singh recovers as Bharmi Munda's The political contribution of the people does not, therefore, manuscript becomes suspect. feature in what Guha calls “un-historical historiography” We get fictitious biographic details of Birsa and (Guha 40). Mahasweta is also aware of this as she resents to encounter imaginary characters in Aranyer Adhikar that may Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak in an interview, “Tribal history be adduced to show how facts have been commingled with is not seen as a continuity in Indian historiography. .... Yet it is fiction. We wonder if Mahasweta has been able to stick to the still continuing, the tribals are still being evicted from their 'pledge' she makes in the initial part of the introduction. What land. Indeed, Birsa Munda comes late. His movement was strikes us is the dominance of a fictitious character in the from 1895 to 1900. Before that there were many tribal appendix the inclusion of which is justified in the second part rebellions. The first Santal rebellion was Baba Tirka Majhi's of her introductory observation. Mahasweta cites novelistic rebellion (1780-85). ... Tirka Majhi's name does not come aesthetics in attributing what may be described as a circular into official histories” (X). Thus we find that historical structure to the main narrative of Aranyer Adhikar by opening documents do not lend much support to what Mahasweta and closing it with Birsa Munda's death. It is doubtful if the claims to have achieved by her 'objective' presentation of same logic can be applied to justify the inclusion of the Birsa Munda. appendix. Besides, the appendix incorporates many topical Of course, for Mahasweta, history does not reside in elements like the protracted arguments (that occupy almost written records only. In the interview referred to above, the thirteen pages of the novel) of Barrister Jacob with the writer clearly says to Spivak about the sources of tribal Magistrate Strachen Kutts when the former seeks bail for history she embodies in her fiction, “If we have to know thirty- three Mundas from among the arrested two hundred about tribals, we have to go back in tradition, re-read and seventeen Mundas as published in The Bengali. It is something that is not written, or written in human beings difficult not to wonder whether their arguments and generation after generation” (XIII). Mahasweta laments to counterarguments reflect what Mahasweta calls the perennial Spivak that there is none to write about these hapless folks. flow of life and rebellion as the writer's main objective seems Lack of their own script prevents them from writing about to underline what Jacob calls “deliberate miscarriage of them. It is their songs which capture the stream of events and justice” (Mahasweta Devi ( Aranyer Adhikar) 295). But we carry on the continuity of life and rebellion (XI). This may read Mahasweta's message in Jacob's reiteration to accounts for the extensive use of songs in Mundari dialect in Amulya Abraham, the writer of the notebook in the appendix, Aranyer Adhikar followed by translation in Bengali. that “Birsa must have been a force” (294) as demonstrated by Mahasweta admits to Spivak that she has read “between the his lasting impact on the Mundas. And this is what renders unwritten lines of the tribal story, the tribal experience, and Birsa no less intimidating even after his death to the British the songs” and has thus put a premium on the role of the bureaucracy than when alive.

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It is likely that Mahasweta borrows from Singh the idea visits Sali, a close associate of Birsa, who is reduced to of adding an appendix at the close. The additional space of the penury as her husband Donca Munda has been deported for closing section which is not integrally related to the focal life by the British Government for killing Constable narrative betrays how Mahasweta blends recorded Raghuniram and setting fire to the police station at Khunti. documents with imaginative insights. She chooses a fictitious He is moved to hear that she is ready to undergo all hardships character like Amulya who befriends Birsa during his short for the sake of her leader Birsa even though she has a son to stint at Chaibasa Missionary School and later becomes the look after but no means of sustenance. She is convinced that Deputy Superintendent of Ranchi Jail where Birsa is kept Ulgulan (the great tumult) will go on ceaselessly and that confined to a solitary cell and dies. The imperatives of Bhagwan (Birsa is able to convince the Mundas that he is the annexing the appendix appear to be manifold: to furnish messiah who would establish the Munda raj and put an end to tangible official documents like the proceedings of the Home their suffering) would never fade from the collective Department of the Munda rebellion; to relate the farcical trial memory. Sali echoes the message imparted by Birsa that of the Mundas specifying dates and months and the recurs like a refrain in the narrative. This is probably how punishment meted out to them; to underscore the undying fire Mahasweta wants to convey the perpetuation of life and of rebellion Birsa's leadership has ignited among the Mundas rebellion in her narrative. who neither fear death nor merciless torture by the police; to Mahasweta has added a different dimension to the plot of represent the commendable role of newspapers like The Birsa's Ulgulan by incorporating the appendix devoted Bengali and The Statesman in harping on the helplessness of exclusively to Amulya's notebook. Critics, however, differ as the imprisoned Mundas; to show the dedication of Barrister to the indispensability of the appendix. Of course, it signals a Jacob as Defence Counsel for the Mundas despite being an shift from the narrative point of view and instils documentary English man ; to highlight the deep scar his death has left in features without blurring the borders between facts and the heart of his mother; and also to perpetuate the message of fiction. Mahasweta dispenses with the conventional device of the writer used as the leit-motif of Birsa that he is able to closing her novel with the protagonist's death by introducing transmit to his followers. Amulya appears to take upon the notebook, rendered, conforming to the generic norms, in himself the onerous task of recording whatever he knows the first person. This mode of presentation imparts about the developments before and after Birsa's death so that immediacy to the narration and creates the illusion that he can leave the documents in his notebook for the benefit of Amulya is engaged in a long conversation with the departed posterity. As a protest against the injustice perpetrated on his Birsa addressed as 'you'. He pays his homage to Birsa and friend Birsa and other Mundas he resigns from the underscores the legendary role Birsa plays to intimidate the Government job of a Deputy Jailor. He sacrifices the comfort formidable British administration. Thus Mahasweta of living in Ranchi and seeks refuge in Birsa's home at enshrines the spiritual victory of Birsa and his followers as Chalkad amidst the flora and fauna of nature. Accompanied she believes, somewhat like Browning, that it is one's brave by Dhani Munda, the oldest among the Munda rebels, he Volume 4 Issue 1 March 2017 Volume 4 Issue 1 March 2017 70 71 Critical and Creative Wings Mahasweta Devi's Aranyer Adhikar: a Metahistorical Novel? and unrelenting effort that ushers in real victory even if it reception of the message of the narrative through Amulya's leads to defeat. Through Amulya the writer appears to express closing entry. her views that death of the hero is only physical annihilation The appendix makes the narrative end-stopped by as his spirit lives on to inspire the survivors. This is what encapsulating the ongoing process through these sentences. Amulya hears from the river flowing below him, from the It reminds us of Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young stony land, from the shrub and from the high wavy hills Man that incorporates the diary the protagonist Stephen surrounding him as he keeps writing flanked by the cool writes in the closing section. But it does not end the novel as breeze. Like perennial nature and her cyclic rotation, Birsa's Stephen's literary career appears to take off after his Ulgulan, as Amulya seems to hear from around him, will invocation to the mythic Father Daedalus in the closing entry, never stop/ can never stop as long as humans inhabit the earth. “27 April: Old father, old artificer, stand me now and ever in But at the end some ambivalent note creeps into the narrative good stead” (Joyce Portrait 253). Both Joyce and as we read Amulya adding somewhat sceptically, Mahasweta have switched from the third person of the main I hear what nature's agents are saying to me. I cannot narrative to the first person at the appendices to conform to believe at the moment what I hear. But, Birsa, maybe if I the generic norms of writing a diary and a notebook keep hearing it and go on seeing your mother [who respectively. The use of the first person has enabled both to believes she would someday be transformed into the resist conventional closure as echoing Shimomura, a mythic stone mother] I would be able to believe character from Zulfikar Ghose's Triple Mirror, we may say, everything one day. So let me listen to the refrain now: “You can't write about yourself and then say The End” (qtd. There is no end to Ulgulan. Birsa will never die. There is in Chelva Kanaganayakam 112). The continuity voiced at the no end to Ulgulan. Birsa will never die. There is no end to close helps Mahasweta's Aranyer Adhikar transcend the Ulgulan. Birsa will never ... temporal and spatial setting and hints at its potential to evoke Let me listen to it. If I do not learn the art of listening how debates and discussions on Birsa's legacy in future. can I believe it? (Mahasweta Aranyer Adhikar 304) II Mahasweta’s objective here appears to suspend the The 'Documentary Novel', as Foley has traced its origin, disbelief of the modern readers in her message. This might be made its appearance in the seventeenth century. Since then the rationale of choosing a fictitious character who is novels have been written combining historicity with educated and rational in temperament. Amulya's closing fictionality but such novels do not belong to the mainstream address to Birsa may be a device to introduce some sort of tradition of the novel that primarily rests on fictionality. This indeterminacy in his response to the latter's motto that all is why the appellate 'fiction' is attached to such narratives. In Birsaites (his followers) blindly subscribe to. This is how all its phases, the documentary novel has aimed at telling the Mahasweta is able to instil an air of uncertainty into the truth which it claims to be empirically verifiable. It cannot be

Volume 4 Issue 1 March 2017 Volume 4 Issue 1 March 2017 72 73 Critical and Creative Wings Mahasweta Devi's Aranyer Adhikar: a Metahistorical Novel? regarded, as Foley insists, as a minor subgenre to be pushed to generic conventions (Foley 404). We would try to discuss the margins of novelistic production in any age (393). The Aranyer Adhikar to see if it conforms to Foley's specifications documentary novel has established itself as a fully- fledged of the documentary novel and also if the discourses of distinctive genre that boasts of having factuality can be separated from those of fictionality. It needs ... some specific and verifiable link to the historical to be added that we may not always agree with her and that the world. (Whether or not this link succeeds in being discussion may not remain confined to Foley. 'extratextual' in a larger sense remains to be seen.) It There exists, as Spivak writes, “an active relationship implicitly claims to replicate certain features of actuality between historical and literary representation as discursive in a relatively direct and unmediated fashion; it invokes formations” (222). The difference between cases of historical familiar novelistic conventions, but it requires the reader and literary events arises from what Roland Barthes calls “the to accept certain textual elements – characters, incidents, effect of the real” (qtd. in Spivak 223). Historical or actual documents – as possessing referents in the representation will always appear more real than literary or world of the reader. (Foley 394) fictional representation as the two words 'history' and 'story' in The metahistorical novel, as Foley argues, exploits both English stand for “the true and the sanctioned non-true,” factual and fictive discourses, the factual constituting its respectively (Spivak 253). Aranyer Adhikar springs from the historicity and the fictive contributing to its fictionality. But “effect of the real” as it deals with Birsa Munda who did exist her overriding concern is the need to respect the borderline as various official documents, missionary records and the between fictional and nonfictional discourses. This is why photograph referred to above bear witness to. Similarly, most she does not wholly subscribe to M.M. Bakhtin's contention of the Birsaites (followers of Birsa) mentioned in the narrative that the boundaries between fiction and nonfiction are appear to be real as testified by Singh. As an example we may perpetually changing (Bakhtin 33). In the article referred to refer to the report of the then Deputy Commissioner of above, she has invoked a number of critical theories including Ranchi, Mr. Streatfield, as cited by Singh in his book Birsa the poststructuralist ones but finds all of them inadequate to Munda (published in 1983) which shows the aggressive role capture the distinction between the discourses of factuality of a Birsaite Gaya Munda, and his family (consisting of his and those of fictionality. For Foley, there is “no specifically wife, son, two daughters-in-law, three daughters and his linguistic essence of fictionality that is immediately grandson) during his encounter with them. This is how perceptible in the particulars of a text” (404). She cites Victor Streatfield narrates in detail how he was assaulted by them Lange to underscore the role of “contextual analysis” to with the traditional weapons at their disposal: determine whether we are in a fictional or a nonfictional field ... we [Gaya and I] rolled into a corner ... I on top ... I was (qtd. in Foley 404). Ultimately she relies on the hammered from behind by one of the ladies ... I thought at “competence” of the reader and his/her familiarity with

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the time it was with an axe ... but Sub Inspector Iltaf administration. The tribals reacted to these developments Hussain tells me it was Gaya's wife, the most ferocious in the form of a series of uprisings in an attempt to throw harridan of the lot, with a lathi: it was probably this old out the intruders from their homeland. The process of dame who flung the axe at the Sub Inspector ... I may add armed resistance and revitalization movements aimed at at least two of the women had small babies in their left reconstructing tribal society continued sporadically, arms while brandishing arms with their right. (qtd. in finally blending and culminating in the last uprising of the Singh 107-8) Mundas, the Ulgulan ... led by Birsa Munda (1874-1901) ... from December 1899 – January 1900 in the Ranchi and This authentic account speaks volumes about how the northern Singhbhum districts of Bihar. The uprising was Mundas irrespective of their sex, age and encumbrances took suppressed, ending in the surrender of the insurgents, part in the great uprising (Ulgulan) from December 1899 to followed by the capture and death in captivity of Birsa January 1900 in the Ranchi and northern Singhbhum districts Munda. (Chotti Munda and his Arrow XXIII-XXIV) of Bihar. Mahasweta also corroborates the confrontation Even a Raj-commissioned survey conducted by E.T. between Gaya's family and the Deputy Commissioner in Dalton testifies to the fact that the central plateau of the detail and cites part of the above mentioned report sent by the Chotanagpur Administrative division was inhabited by “semi D.C. from Bondgao to the Commissioner in Ranchi on 7 –savage Mundas [who] have lived there for ages under January 1900 (Aranyer Adhikar 230-32). She underlines the conditions ill-calculated to develop good qualities ... There courage of Gaya and the women in their resistance to the has been a continued struggle to maintain what they consider extremely powerful opponent equipped with sophisticated their right in the land ...” (qtd. in Rycroft 55) We gather from arms and ammunition. That the D.C expresses his the cited parts above that the super structure of the novel appreciation and wonder to encounter such heroic rivals may Aranyer Adhikar is built on verifiable historical data. But be fictive or true but such assertions, as Foley argues, graft what puzzles us is the title of the novel which concentrates on onto the documentary novel's 'fictive pact some kind of the forest. Mahasweta here deviates from Singh's account that additional claim to empirical validation.' posits the locus of Birsa's uprising in land instead of forest. Spivak provides us the background information leading She has, of course, made her main narrator Dhani Munda to the Ulgulan foregrounded in Aranyer Adhikar by recount the history of the Mundas' chronic deprivation of their Mahasweta: rights to land and forest as a consequence of continual eviction by series of intruders. It is through Birsa Munda's The second half of the eighteenth century saw the conscious and subconscious layers of mind that the disintegration of the tribal agrarian order in India under a omniscient narrator initially brings in the context of the forest steady influx of non-tribal people – land hungry peasants shortly after the narrative unfolds itself. and unscrupulous traders - accelerated by the local administration acting in collusion with the British Aranyer Adhikar opens with the date 9 June 1900 on which Birsa Munda vomits blood at eight o'clock in the Volume 4 Issue 1 March 2017 Volume 4 Issue 1 March 2017 76 77 Critical and Creative Wings Mahasweta Devi's Aranyer Adhikar: a Metahistorical Novel?

morning and loses consciousness. It is followed by the date 3 fire then because the Mundas are by nature casual as such February (presumably of 1900) on which he is arrested and fires may lead to the burning of forests. The memory of fire the narrator's observation that till the fourth week of May evokes in his mind his dream of Ulgulan with which he (1900) no case has been filed against him. The narrator then aspired to ignite the mind and blood of the Mundas. It is documents his death at nine in the morning. This meticulous through Ulgulan that Birsa dreamt to restore the ravaged recording of date and time appears to be dictated by forest to her pristine state so that she can once again provide Mahasweta's desire to conform to 'history' (whatever be the succour to them. The forest is like mother, like his own source of that history). With these pieces of 'objective' mother who gives shelter to her children. This explains why information the novelist weaves her story of the legendary he sought to reclaim the forest from the aliens (6). This is how hero Birsa Munda who understands everything even in his Mahasweta contextualizes Ulgulan with the forest's right. unconscious state. He is able to revisit the day of his capture Mahasweta takes resort to what may be described as flash in that condition. The narratorial observations follow back to narrate how Birsa's forefathers Chutia Haram and interspersed with Birsa's speech: Nagu founded habitation in a virgin landscape which was Rice is a rare dream in the life of the Mundas as they named Chhotanagpur after them. To make the rendering are destined to take gruel (boiled grains of china grass) convincing she assigns the task of narrating this part to the only. In some way or other rice has controlled Birsa's life. aged Dhani Munda. And it is Dhani who tells other Mundas Birsa often showed the audacity to ask, 'Why should the in the jail about the series of aborted tribal rebellions like the Munda live on gruel only? Why should they not eat rice Hul, Santhal and Mulkui rebellions he took part in. He also like the dikus (the intruders)'? On 3 February Birsa was focusses on the extent of exploitation the Mundas have been caught because they [Parami and Sali] were cooking rice. subjected to since long by the continual influx of dikus or He was sleeping when Parami was cooking rice and intruders in their own villages. The owners were reduced to smoke wafted from there to the blue sky drawing the bonded labourers by the moneyed usurpers. What Dhani attention of those spying on him. (Aranyer Adhikar5) relates is factual as far as the Santhal, Hul and similar other rebellions are concerned and also the suffering of the Mundas This is how the narrative of Aranyer Adhikar proceeds and other tribes is also corroborated by Singh in his book and with historical dates derived from Singh and fictive details Spivak (referred to above). The fictive part seems to consist in imagined by Mahasweta. From the outset the writer tries to the reference to Birsa's forefathers to whom the origin of invest Birsa with nobility to elevate him in our estimation. Chhotanagpur is traced back. Similarly, Dhani's quest for the Birsa is not offended with those who assist his capture to get Bhagawan (God) who would redeem their land and forest the fabulous amount of five hundred rupees as reward but he from the clutches of the dikus who include the powerful is angry with himself for falling asleep. The unconscious countrymen as well as the Raj administration may also fuse Birsa wonders now whether they (the Mundas) put out the fiction with fact. The complicity of the Hindu outsiders with the British rulers in unleashing torture on the black races of Volume 4 Issue 1 March 2017 Volume 4 Issue 1 March 2017 78 79 Critical and Creative Wings Mahasweta Devi's Aranyer Adhikar: a Metahistorical Novel?

India is a historical reality. Similarly, the Raj administration's superstitious beliefs and controlled by the deities Haram Asul greed to exploit the natural resources of the forested and and Singbonga. Mahasweta documents this phase partly mineral rich districts of Bihar and Odisha (formerly Orissa) is from what Singh records and partly taking resort to borne out by the implementation of the Indian Forest Act of imagination. As Christian Missionary schools welcome 1878 that robs the Mundas and other tribals of the sources of tribal children, Birsa seeks admission to Chaibasha German their sustenance. Mission after having some exposure to education in two It is in recounting the life of Birsa from his birth onwards smaller schools. As Singh puts it, “Birsa's long stay at that the novelist allows free rein to her imagination. Birsa is Chaibasa from 1886 to 1890 constituted a formative period shown as distinctly different from his siblings and other of his life. The influence of Christianity shaped his own Munda children from his childhood itself. In fact, the child religion” (37). Birsa has to leave Chaibasha Mission as a shows the promise of greatness by displaying unusual traits punishment for vehemently protesting against Father which add to the anxieties of his mother Karmi. The Notrott's accusation of the Munda Sardars, or “chiefs” of precocious child mesmerizes the birds and animals by betrayal. The role of the Munda Sardars is very important as playing his flute in accompaniment of his twilla (a musical they started Mulkui or “Sardari Larai” in 1858 which sows instrument made with the outer cover of gourd with strings the seed of Ulgulan. Their prolonged struggle was legal and fitted into it). Birsa grows mature enough when he is barely peaceful and their protest was mainly against the Church eight to understand their struggle for survival as they cannot which along with the dikus intruded into their age-old even afford to have adequate quantity of salt to make the agrarian system on the plea of their large scale conversion to ghato worth eating. Hence the child Birsa wants to grow up Christianity. They were falsely promised by the Church to fast to put an end to the suffering of his mother who has to help them recover their lost land through petitions to the sacrifice a lot to feed them. Such details that Mahasweta Government (Spivak 375). The conflict of the Munda builds up are likely to be fictional but in the context of the Sardars with the mission rises to a climax leading to their impoverished tribal existence they create the impression of mass desertion of both the missions- Protestant and Catholic factuality. This is what Lange, as cited by Foley, stresses on - when they realize the complicity of the mission with the Raj when he substantiates 'contextual analysis', “The invented administration. Birsa's initiation into the Sardar politics speeches in Tacitus are clearly part of a non-fictional imprints on his mind some awareness of his Munda identity intention; the actual letter which Rilke incorporated in Malte and his pride in his lineage. The narrative of Aranyer Adhikar Laurids Brigg assumes, within the purposes of the novel, a is replete with references to the Munda Sardars' non-violent distinctly fictional character” (qtd. in Foley 404). mode of protest. Still we need some extra-textual Birsa's urge to explore the world alien to the Mundas information as given above to situate them properly and also generates in him the strong desire to study and thus to liberate to understand how they change the course of their struggle him from the stifling life of the Mundas inhibited by under the leadership of the charismatic Birsa.

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Birsa's insatiable thirst to know more takes him to a crucial junctures of the narrative contributes to its Vaishnavite ashram where he studies Indian classics for two fictionality. The dying Birsaite Sunara breathes his last years. Conforming to Hindu religious rites he starts listening to the song that he often sang and taught Birsa to worshipping tulsi (basil) plant and wearing sacred thread. But sing. Sunara told Birsa that the song forges a fraternal bond he has to leave that ashram as the Munda Sardars like Bharmi, between the singer and the listener/s. Such stuff proclaims its Dasso and others do not allow him to live the life of a recluse. fictive content and the discourse it is clothed in is Moreover, Dhani Munda has been following him since unmistakably fictional. childhood telling him that he is their dreamt redeemer who Mahasweta's objective to create an image of Birsa larger can lead them in their struggle against all intruders. All these than life seems to make her oblivious to the circumstances combined with the dire poverty of his parents give rise to prevailing around the last two decades of the nineteenth restlessness in him. He visits the forest to seek solace but this century. She endows Birsa with rationality that may only visit proves transformative as it drives home to him that the partly be attributed to his exposure to missionary education. forest, the primal habitat of the Mundas, no longer belongs to He studied there for too short a period to impart lessons on not them. Mahasweta devises a long dialogue between Birsa and only cleanliness to prevent cholera but also to advise his the Mother Forest who gives vent to her pent up woes for being “raped” by successive intruders and for her inability to disciples to practice abstinence and follow methods of birth keep her children in her lap (Mahasweta Devi (Aranyer control. His spirited campaign against priesthood, belief in Adhikar) 90-1).The Forest Mother asks him to be spirits and black magic makes him a modern crusader who “Bhagawan, the Earth's Father” and predicts his own convinces his followers to worship him instead of their suffering and eventual extinction to make all Mundas happy traditional deity Sing Bonga. Such apparently anachronistic (91)*. Birsa comes out of the forest proclaiming himself as details point to the seemingly dubious sources of the Mundas' messiah and all Mundas welcome him as their Mahasweta's material that can only form the stuff of fiction. Bhagawan. His experience in the forest, particularly his Birsa even shares with the Birsaites his dream of a utopian interaction with the 'Forest Mother', is not supported by Munda Raj under his leadership when there would be no Singh's account. The very language of the exchange makes it individual ownership of land as it would belong to the evident that this phase of Birsa's life is a product of the community. Mahasweta's idealistic urge makes her blind to novelist's flight of fancy. Here we differ with Foley who the reality that Birsa is a flesh and blood creature with his insists that there is no linguistic essence to fictionality or normal share of sexual desire. She deviates from Singh in this factuality. Similarly, Mahasweta's reiterated resort to the respect as the latter shows that Birsa had more than one wife, mythic origin of the Mundas centuries ago renders the as was the prevalent Mundari custom, and a number of discourse fictional as “Myth deprives the subject of all relationships. The fictional discourse here defies factual History” (Barthes140). The exploitation of songs mostly evidence. This example, too, betrays how linguistic essence celebrating Birsa's life and also invoking his ancestors used at betrays fictionality.

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Mahasweta says in an interview, as recorded by Sohini own Ulgulan. Instead, we find Narasingha Munda and other Ghosh, that the legendary life of Birsa Munda casts a spell on Birsaites retorting to the Commissioner's exhortation to them her for leading a mass movement (156-7). She has to surrender. Even the sound of gunshots fail to frighten young documented how Birsa inspires the Mundas to participate in Birsaites like Hathiram, his twelve year old brother Hari, and the Ulgulan with their traditional weapons like bows and Gauri with her child on her back who advance with their arrows coated with deadly poison (prepared by boiling weapons and, expectedly, they are bayoneted to death like poisonous fruits).We cannot but wonder how and why his many other Birsaites. When this massacre is taking place, rationality fails him in devising the basic strategy of “Birsa is being removed from the site by the Birsaites” encountering sophisticated arms and ammunition with (Mahasweta Devi (Aranyer Adhikar) 243)*. We wonder if primitive set of weapons. This leads us to define the exact role Mahasweta's use of a passive construction has the objective of of Birsa in the much vaunted Ulgulan which takes place in showing the loss of agency of Birsa at the crucial moment. It Shaila Rakab Hill on 9 January 1900. Singh derives clues is tantamount to Birsa's retreat from the site of action to save from Bharmi Munda's account and poses the pertinent his skin. His leadership appears to remain confined to question of Birsa's role during the Ulgulan that proves to be preaching only and thus he emerges as an enigmatic leader. an enigma to the historians. He guesses that Birsa was not Mahasweta has consciously avoided this contentious issue by present during the encounter (Singh Birsa Munda preface 1: glorifying his role all along. She has succeeded in her mission XI). But Mahasweta does not follow Singh in documenting as we find the process of deification of Birsa has started with this important phase probably because her aim is to his initial imprisonment in 1895 and it is consolidated in his fictionalise the life of Birsa. We never see Birsa in the final capture in 1900. Even the attempt of the administration forefront of any encounter and see instead ordinary Mundas to explode the myth of Birsa as the incarnation of God by of both the sexes and even children facing the bayonets. In the adopting various means proves futile. Mahasweta has given Ulgulan the death toll touches almost four hundred as free rein to her imagination in drawing a number of characters reported in The Statesman of 25 March 1900 (Mahasweta who consistently refer to Birsa before and after his death as Devi (Aranyer Adhikar) 245). Ironically, Mahasweta's their Bhagwan. They go on citing him and reiterating narrator captures Birsa justifying to himself in some sort of a Mahasweta's message- 'there is no end to Ulgulan' and soliloquy his calling himself the Mundas' God as he has 'Bhagwan is immortal'. Subsequent development in the form dispelled all fear from their mind to face the formidable foe. of militant movements in different tribal belts has The thoughts that stream in the interior of his mind reveal his appropriated the mythic status of Birsa to address their awareness of the futility of their venture to fight with bows continuing exploitation. Mahasweta perpetuates this image and arrows against bayonets wielded by the British force. He by blending history with imagination in Aranyer Adhikar. The accepts defeat before making any effort to confront the epithet 'metahistorical' as interpreted by Foley may probably enemy and his passivity reduces him to an onlooker of his be applied to the novel.

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In drawing the trajectory of Birsa's life Mahasweta has produce, precisely, an ordered reality. White follows not consistently followed Singh as in Singh the focus is on Schiller in thinking of the beautiful as orderly and the historicising Birsa but Mahasweta's construction of Birsa sublime as that which resists ordering. (213-4) seeks to blend historicity with romanticism. In investing Mahasweta constructs an ordered reality in which she Birsa with qualities that are more imaginary than real, tries to make the evolution of Birsa into a Bhagwan Mahasweta appears to have been motivated by her urge to comprehensible to the readers. It appears to be her political transform her protagonist into an ideal Munda to cater to the ideology that makes her “impute a meaning to history” but by sentiments of the modern Mundas. This is what Sengupta doing so her narrative seeks to make history's “manifest stresses on when he says Mahasweta has consciously imbued confusion comprehensible to either reason, understanding, or their leader with idealistic qualities to help the Mundas aesthetic sensibility”. This mode of representation of overcome their feeling of helplessness and alienation from “objective” historical realities can never “serve as vision for a the mainstream (91). The iconic status that Birsa has been visionary politics ...” (White qtd. in Chakrabarty 214).White conferred on by the people of Chhattishgarh and Bihar as the imagines a specific kind of historical subjects or agents who centenary celebrations of Ulgulan and institutional are able to take responsibility for the future they choose. Thus recognitions point to indicates the extent of his popularity. he echoes the existential view of the human subject by Singh may be the seminal force but Mahaswta's contribution attributing to him/her the capacity to be political. Chakrabarty also deserves mention in making Birsa Munda an icon to the reads into this basically western concept some resonance of tribals. what happens in South Asian narratives of resistance and III domination. In Subaltern Studies, the basic premise is that the Aranyer Adhikar, like the Subaltern Studies, appears to peasant or the subaltern was political from the moment they be a politically motivated work. Citing Hayden White we rebelled against the institutions of the Raj (Chakrabarty 216). may contend that Mahasweta has “politically domesticated” Similarly, Mahasweta's Birsa appears to be 'political' from the historical facts to write something akin to a historiography of moment he assumes the role of a redeemer. This faith in the the Mundas. Dipesh Chakrabarty explains what White political capability of the subaltern is a product of what implies by the “political domestication of historical facts”: Chakrabarty calls a “European inheritance, romanticism” (219). Mahasweta romanticizes Birsa seemingly to make her White prefers the vision of history as 'sublime' – novel more literary than historical as the Subaltern volumes something innately disorderly and hence constitutionally appear to have done by turning the historical subject into a incomprehensible – to the usual vision of the historian literary object. That appears to be her strategy of making the who sees the historical process as containing some inner appeal of her protagonist more enduring. order that it is the job of the historian to discern. That is the usual function of the historical explanation: to Despite Mahasweta’s romanticization of history, she

Volume 4 Issue 1 March 2017 Volume 4 Issue 1 March 2017 86 87 Critical and Creative Wings Mahasweta Devi's Aranyer Adhikar: a Metahistorical Novel? deserves applause for writing a novel on the first stirrings of Seagull Books, 1997. VII-XIX. Print. repts. 1998. 2001. nationalism in the tribal belt. She owes her Sahitya Akademi 2007. 2008. 2011. 2014. 2016. award and wide recognition to Aranyer Adhikar. The novel's Chakrabarty, Dipesh. “Subaltern History as Political enduring impact on the Indian imagination is manifested in its Thought”. Discourse Democracy and Difference: translation into many regional languages including English. Perspectives on Community, Politics and Culture. Eds. M T And the several reprints of the original book in Bengali Ansari & Deeptha Achar. New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, underscore the extent of its popularity among Bengali 2010. 213-29. Print. readers. Samik Bandyopadhyay's observation on Mahasweta's acclaimed novel Hajar Churashir Ma (Mother Devi, Mahasweta. Aranyer Adhikar. Introduction. By of 1084) can probably be applied to Aranyer Adhikar, Mahasweta Devi. Calcutta: Karuna Prakashani, 1977. Print. “Mahasweta's flight from time to timelessness, or a point in repts. 1979. 1979. 1920. 1920. (This edition shows reprints time extended to future history, is a narrative device growing till 1920.) out of an attitude that may be related to Gramsci's favourite ---. Chotti Munda and his Arrow (Chhoti Munda O Tar motto (as he puts it in his letter from prison to Tatiana, dated 6 Teer). Interview with Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Trans. November 1932): 'pessimism of the intelligence, optimism of Gayatr Chakravorty Spivak. Calcutta: Seagull Books, 2002. the will'” (X). Despite featuring Birsa Munda's tragic life and IX-XXVIII. Print. the aborted Ulgulan, Aranyer Adhikar leaves the optimistic message that goes on reverberating in our mind: 'there is no ---. Interview with Sohini Ghosh. Mahasweta Devi's end to Ulgulan' and 'Birsa has conquered death'. Aranyer Adhikar: Quest for Realism. Ed. Sohini Ghosh. Calcutta: Pustak Bipani, 2005. 156-7. Print. *As no translated version of Aranyer Adhikar was available I had to translate the introduction and cited parts of Foley, Barbara. “The Documentary Novel and the the novel in my article. Problem of Borders”. Essentials of the Theory of Fiction. Eds. Michael J. Hoffman & Patrick D. Murphy. 2nd.ed. London: Leicester Univ. Press, 1996. 392-408. Print. Works Cited Guha, Ranajit. “Preface – On Some Aspects of the Bakhtin, M. M. The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. Historiography of Colonial India”. Selected Subaltern Ed. Michael Holquist. trans.Caryl Emerson & Michael Studies. Ed. Ranajit Guha. Oxford Univ. Press, 1988. 35-44. Holquist. Austin: Univ. of Texas Press, 1981. Print. Print. Bandyopadhyay, Samik. Introduction. trans. Hajar Joyce, James. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Ed. Churashir Ma (Mother of 1084). Mahasweta Devi. London: Chester G. Anderson. USA: Viking Penguin Inc., 1964. Print. USA: Viking Penguin Inc., 1968. Print. repts. 1968 (twice).

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1969 (twice). 1970. 1971. 1972. 1973. 1974 (twice). 1975. Journey 1976. USA: Penguin Books, 1977. Print. Kanaganayakam, Chelva. Counterrealism and Indo- Sohini Sengupta Anglian Fiction. Canada: Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press, 2002. Print. In a deep dark endless flannel of a tunnel, enveloped in an K o p f , D a v i d . h t t p / / w w w. C a m b r i d g e . Org/core/journals/journal-of-asian-studies/article/the dust- agonising burning fire, leaving him charred n drained. storm –and- the –hanging –mist –a study –of- birsa –munda You grin n ask me how am I... (pub. Online 01 March 2011. P. 745) a spike of invisible shards of wood sprayed all across as if to Rycroft, Daniel J. “Capturing Birsa Munda: The test her lustful zeal for life... a series of such splinters are laid Virtuality of A Colonial-Era Photograph”. Indian Folklore all over... Research Journal 1.4 (December 2004): 53-68. Retrieved by Wikipedia on 4 February 2015. a stumble here, a volume of wounds there… shoving into the Sengupta, Sarasij. “Birsa Munda: the Construction of a alley of vacuum, rafting n suckling the despair of Hero”. Mahasweta Devir Aranyer Adhikar: Bastabatar hopelessness... Sandhan (Mahasweta Devi's Aranyer Adhikar: Quest for a cry of your aging breath undiminished by the promise of Realism). Ed. Sohini Ghosh. Calcutta: Pustak Bipani, 2005. settlement, 80-94. Print. a wail of despondent sigh increasingly hurling one into the Singh, Kumar Suresh. Birsa Munda and His Movement quagmire of a quandary n self-pity, 1874-1901: A study of a Millenarian Movement in Chotanagpur. Calcutta: Oxford Univ. Press, 1983. Print. a yell of insatiable desire to rock higher with the missing dash Sontag, Susan, ed. A Roland Barthes Reader. London: of feel for the positions of the wheels of the dream, Vintage, 1993. Print. a call of opulent confusion succeeding into ever-increasing Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. “A Literary web of numbing pain, a battery of political demagogues Representation of the Subaltern: Mahasweta Devi's coursing through the vein and languishing n railing at the Stanadayini (1987)”. Indian Literary Criticism: Theory and unfortunate turn of events, Interpretation. Ed. G. N. Devy. Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 2002. 220-258. Print. a teardrop for leaving the new founded hearth while leaving the ancient one, a shriek for piecing together of sustained self- ---. 'Telling History' – An Interview with Mahasweta notion and a play of mutual recrimination erupting into an Devi. Trans. Chhotti Munda and his Arrow. Mahasweta Devi. Calcutta: Seagull Books, 2002. Print.

Volume 4 Issue 1 March 2017 Volume 4 Issue 1 March 2017 90 91 Critical and Creative Wings A Fall to Hope unforeseen drudgery of separation, a nudge for a space in A Fall to Hope civilizational rapidity- an ever stable handicap, a yearning for slightly tasted ambrosia of desolation of non- Sohini Sengupta attainable claustrophobic pleasant certainty, a thrashing for a long cherished material unbroken fluidity Blood thick cloud of convolution losing and rising amidst the warp and weft of now or then, coursing through the vein of hope and angst, a tenuous gazing at an apparent stain which never cut the net a layer of deep mucky nectar has some solace there ... of possibility, a repetitive no of perpetual recurrence ... surging again and again assuring an amalgam of no return and a sail into sensational uncertainty which just lived on hope, a return. a floundering to leave a necessary imprint with certainty of A life - if a gift, if a ..., if a sure mine of intellectual stir... certainty, how much more is ever to penetrate for that all blissful void of a spasm of leaving the comfort and living in terrapin of life& death which assures an unalloyed flow of love ... sudden blast of reality dawning to a nascent heart ; a state in its purest refinement calls for that look, touch caress, kiss a contemporary cry into the eyes of terror licking the milk of unfounded blood, pieces, chunks, functioning either through An adieu which says not to go but to rest a restless promise of hereafter or bustling and ploughing Perhaps for an insightful return. ... deeper gleefully into the concretes of sands.... May be a trap but an aeon of agonising moan of a teen to an old man Rest There. I shove and swing into the swollen protrusion of bludgeoned Perhaps of a child too pain, but lo you grin and ask me how am I and I see myself through His 'smile n smirk' the way AM I.... A brutal shaft of lightning shell Perplexing at every turn; A mirage of restless promise hitting and missing What we may seek for... An apparent hopeless promise of cheerful hope with a series of accolades laden with shackles of gore thick snare of convolution. One last bright and shining look and It curls into an ever resting abode of melt. ...

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Sermons From Nowhere 5. Sundays are slowly becoming sundays Chirantan Sarkar Till I learn to cry. This afternoon we sit alone 1. As long as the church bell rings to underline a serene ending. A cloud in my head is not a cause for distraction. O lord, do not take us away from this riot of colors. Like wind and memories it arrives through the cracks of this place. 6. It also arrives like a broken ship coming from the distant seas. Close to me is the air you breathe. Let it stay here, sleep for a while and take me somewhere It's travelled a long way through the pines. Between me and my ancient shadow at dusk. This is how the pines moan and Cast their shadows on the clueless slopes of the valley. 2. Close to me is your hair quietly spreading over the clouds Nothing is coming our way except the music of the wood. to fill my head. Trees are like tales: Tales molded in the form of songs. Raindrops oozing from the holes of the abandoned branches Give us the smell of the hairy gypsies and their wide smiles.

3 Under this skull you have another skull And beneath those eyes you've other eyes With which you repair your nightmares, make the houses Disappear in the night and sing a song That's neither blues nor a rock, but always something else.

4. I eat, therefore I exist. The candle falls over and the shadow pounces on my empty shoes. Time is an excess, a left-over, a letter you've failed to post. I'll eat irresolutely, watch your death and like a frog Stop thinking and burning my soul.

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A Short Story about Despair reproach on a Friday evening, he would quote one of his favourite film dialogues from Satyajit Ray's 'Nayak'- 'ektai Ranadurjay Talukdar life, ektai chance' (one life, one chance). Some great man had said,'live every day as if it's your last day on earth'. Brawjoe took it literally; he even bought a poster with the quote and Brawjoe Bagchi woke up after fifty years. He felt strange at hung it on his bedroom wall. first, but when he saw that the sun was still the same, burning up the Kolkata sky at eleven in the morning, he was When he was diagnosed with liver cancer in 2015, Brawjoe's convinced that things haven't changed much all these years. friends were not surprised. It seemed as inevitable as Drops of sweat made his shirt wet, and Brawjoe felt a sudden Brawjoe's four pegs on weekdays. When the doctors told him urge to strip and run naked. he had less than a year to live, Brawjoe took an impulsive decision. He had seen people in his family wither away in the So it was true! All the money he spent all those years ago onslaught of cancer, dumped in a heap on a hospital bed, didn't go to waste. He had to sell his own house, his estranged pathetically waiting to die and still longingly pumping their wife's jewellery and illegally sell his father's farmhouse veins with chemo with the false hope of a miracle. Brawjoe without his knowledge. All for a little over a million dollars. would have none of that. He resigned from his job. Alcohol, Well, in 2016, that was the price one had to pay to have a shot debauchery and dope had finished off a large part of his at being brought back to life. savings, but he still had enough to live like a king for a year. Between the years 2000 and 2015, Brawjoe, by his own His wife had left him several years ago and had gone away exalted estimate, had consumed over two thousand litres of with a friend of his. A friend who would always score great alcohol. 4 pegs a day on weekdays, which would usually keep dope, but ended up stealing his wife eventually. Brawjoe felt him sober, unless he followed it up with a joint of marijuana. no anger. He never felt any emotion particularly strongly. He And on weekends, his usual way to keep count of the pegs didn't feel particularly close to his parents. In his life, they would be to see how many cigarettes he had smoked. Brawjoe were just there- like that old painting of Jamini Roy stuck in was a man of principles- a cigarette a peg, never more, never his drawing room, which didn't mean anything to him, but he less. There have been weekends when he had finished a felt good having it around. twenty's pack, passed out in a whorehouse, woke up with his Brawjoe went on a trip of a lifetime. He travelled along the puke all over him, and happily trudged off for a big brunch Himalayas, something he had always longed to do. He started that also included unlimited alcohol. Life, to Brawjoe, was to off near Turtuk, a village on the India-Pakistan border in be lived every moment. When he would be drunk beyond Kashmir. Six months later, when he was finally brought to

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Kolkata in a delirious state, he was found in Arunachal a place where the family got together every month. The Pradesh. He had a beard like Tagore, and smelled like a indulgent father had ensured that the farmhouse was in blanket that hadn't been washed for years. Brawjoe's name, and Brawjoe made sure his father paid a Brawjoe's parents arranged for palliative care for him. The price for his misplaced indulgence. He sold off the farmhouse doctors gave him three months. Brawjoe hated it. Here he to a rich Marwari businessman, who was pleasantly surprised was, a fifty kilo skeleton withering away on a rotten bed, at the sheer lack of negotiation on the seller's part. stuck in his parents' clutches. II It was then that Brawjoe fell in love. It was the nurse who Brawjoe realised he could not strip, even if he wanted to. He cared for him, as part of the palliative care. Ahanaa was her was strapped to the bed, and it wasn't even part of any sexual name. Her parents had added the “a” at the end of her name, foreplay. A bored looking doctor came over with a few gaping on the family astrologer's advice. The extra “a” was supposed interns, who looked at Brawjoe the way Brawjoe would look to be a harbinger of good fortune for her. Brawjoe found it at lengurs in the Alipur Zoo when he was young. fascinating talking to her. She would tell him about the last The sun was shining through the transparent roof. Brawjoe wishes of the people she had been with. And the commonest hadn't ever seen a hospital like this, assuming this was even a regret she had heard was that people wanted to live longer. hospital. The doctor, however, spoke the same gibberish that Brawjoe wanted to just tuck his head on her lap and sleep. He he had always been used to. Brawjoe always secretly wanted to kiss her, make love to her all night till they would be suspected that doctors and lawyers spoke in gibberish just to too exhausted. appear important. Brawjoe made up his mind. He had a friend in cancer With a condescending look, Brawjoe asked the doctor, “So, research, who had been telling him for some years that a cure I'm actually back? What year is it?” for cancer is only a few decades away. All he needed, Brawjoe “It's the year 66”, said the doctor, nonchalantly. convinced himself, was to freeze himself up, and be resuscitated whenever they found a cure for liver cancer. “What? So I'm back in time? But it doesn't make any sense. Cryonic suspension was easier than it was before. You needed The world didn't have such facilities in AD 66”. a good deal of money, and there were agencies in India who “AD 66? What's that?” would do the rest. “Anno domini, you know”. Brawjoe set to work. He sold off whatever he had. His father One of the interns giggled, “Hey, he speaks Latin!”Brawjoe had a farmhouse about a 100 kilometres from Kolkata. It was felt like slapping him.

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The doctor explained, “We have done away with the concept “Cigarettes? Which year are you in, friend? They have been of adding 2000 before years. It was taking up too much space banned over ten years ago.” in our databases, and after the last worldwide system crash, Looking at Brawjoe's flabbergasted face, the man with the everything has been shortened.” deadpan face leaned forward and whispered, “you can always Brawjoe felt disgusted. “Can I just go now?” he asked. go to New town phase 48. I'm told that some underground “Of course, you can check out any time you like. All your fees bars there still sell vintage cigarettes.” are paid for in advance, when you signed up 50 years ago.” Brawjoe trudged along. He walked several miles towards his Brawjoe tried to add wittily, “but I can never leave, right?”, house on Southern Avenue. He didn't have much of a choice. but no one got the Hotel California reference. They all stared There were no taxis on the road. Some sort of an advanced at him blindly. elevated railway system seemed to manage the metropolis' public transportation system. He also saw lots of saucer like III contraptions in the sky, which looked like Tata Nanos without Outside, on the road, Brawjoe felt strangely liberated. The wheels. These contraptions would come down on the road, doctor had told him that he was 36 all over again, and he could and the passengers would touch the door with their fingers live for well over a hundred years. That was the life and get in. It looked like a highly evolved version of the radio expectancy in India now. He could begin it all, start with a taxis Brawjoe used to take back in the day. clean slate, with a clean bill of health. He could live his life to Brawjoe's house was still there. He knocked on the door. The the fullest, again. sense of familiarity made him happy. His parents were no But along with the sense of liberation, there was a throbbing longer there, but his sister was still alive. She was old, over 80 pain in his head. A craving for something that he couldn't quite years old, and very frail. Even though they were meeting after pinpoint at first. He soon realised he needed a cigarette. 50 years, Brawjoe found his sister unusually cold. Brawjoe walked along the streets. The area looked like Park Apparently, no one in the family had forgiven Brawjoe for Street, but there was not a single soul on the road. His selling that godforsaken farmhouse. favourite cigarette stall, right ahead of Olypub, was not there Brawjoe went in search of his friends. Most were dead. The anymore. It had been replaced by a very small departmental ones who were alive seemed very distant. He finally managed store. to find Aritra, his oldest friend. After Brawjoe was frozen, “Can I buy a pack of cigarettes? What are the brands Aritra became close to Brawjoe's nurse, Ahanaa. He made her available?” he asked at the counter, directing his questions to drop the extra “a” and got married to her. Ahana was no more, an expressionless man. she passed away five years ago.

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Aritra didn't drink anymore. Alcohol consumption was linked IV to Aadhar cards now. Everything you did was linked to When Brawjoe had gulped down his thirtieth peg, smoked his Aadhar, apparently. Drinking more than two pegs a week thirtieth cigarette (bought at a fortune from the very shady meant a fine of a million rupees. The measure of a peg itself was only 25 ml now. New Town Phase 48) and finished almost a kilo of mutton rogan josh (which he had cooked himself), he did not wait for Brawjoe begged Aritra for some cash. Aritra smiled. There the police to arrive. According to the current penal code was no cash anymore. Shortly after Brawjoe was frozen, a provisions, he had researched, he would spend about 34 years cashless revolution began in India. Many died, but those who in jail for his indiscretions. survived it vowed never to use cash again. India was a rich country now. There were no farmers, all food was processed When the police found Brawjoe Bagchi after two days, he and machine produced and usually tasteless. The word was hanging from the ceiling, a noose round his neck, his eyes “vegetarian” had been added to the Constitution's preamble a protruding and his middle finger pointed upwards. He was couple of decades earlier. One could still get meat, but since it found naked. It was the first suicide in India in over fifteen was also linked to the Aadhar card, it was rationed to 100 years. grams a year. And because it was also machine produced, it tasted like stale rubber, in Aritra's words. The good part though, according to Aritra, was that there were no gays or Muslims any more either. It was compulsory to be a heterosexual Hindu, and a bill had recently been passed in the lower house of the parliament to add the words “heterosexual” and “Hindu” also to the Constitution's preamble. Pollution control was taken very seriously. Everyone was allowed a certain amount of carbon footprint (linked to Aadhar, of course), but exceeding the permissible amount meant you had to stay home till your footprint came down to an acceptable level. Aritra had gone slightly overboard during his son's fifth wedding recently. He had gorged on processed paneer and had taken out his vintage car for a quick spin. He has been under compulsory home arrest (senior citizens were allowed a 25% discount) for the last one month, and is required to be home for another three months.

Volume 4 Issue 1 March 2017 Volume 4 Issue 1 March 2017 102 103 Critical and Creative Wings Climbing Kosciuszko: Because it is there!

Climbing Kosciuszko: Because it is there! this nice little box (remember the tag of the Seven Summits, mate!). So next summer, I was up with a motley group of Ayan Adak friends to walk to the top and scream a-la-Hillary 'Because it is there!' For all those of you who have made it to the Kosciuszko We were blessed with a sunny day in an apparently cloudy summit, you might be asking amusedly 'What? climbing!' I - rainy week as the summit walk is quite windy and cold and a do admit – it's not a climb exactly to the highest point of warm sun suddenly seems so cheery. There is a cable car at the Australia (2228m), but more like a walk in the park. Actually base and it takes about 10 minutes. It offers wonderful views a very long 13.5 km walk in the park for the return hike. Add of blue hued mountains far away not to mention the quaint in a few more kilometres of hurt-my-knee-and-toes if you do little alpine town of Thredbo. You can hike all the way from not prefer the cable car that takes you to the start of the walk. Thredbo as well, but I would recommend taking the cable car Whatever, ignoring the kilometres, a summit is a summit to spend more time at the top – if you are still eager after 14 – a badge to display proudly that you have ascended to one of kms of walk, just walk downhill for the experience and enjoy the seven summits – an admirable club of conquering the the track. You will also find the Eagle's Nest Café at this highest peaks in each of the seven continents. Some avid starting point – that is believed to be the highest café in the enthusiasts claim that pronouncing the peak is tougher than entire continent. hiking it – so they happily substitute the Kosciuszko in The walk is actually quite comfortable and goes along Australia with the much higher Carstensz pyramid (or steel frames laid on the track just until the end. While it makes Puncak Jaya) in Indonesia replacing continents with the walk definitely easier, it does remove the natural feel, but continental shelves (and thus trying to rob us hikers of our 15 then stems the erosion of the apparently sensitive ecosystem seconds of fame). Nonetheless, it is a good experience to just at the top. It also hints at the steps taken by the proactive go for the walk and boast to those who do not yet know that it tourism department here to popularize and commercialize the is a climb to a hillock in the backyard! hike and the result is quite apparent. I ended up walking with My fascination with Kozzy started last Winter when I had hundreds of ramblers (including toddlers and kids who even been to Thredbo, the nearest town, to see the winter snows of overtook the unhealthy me). At times, it actually felt like a Australia. This part of the Great Dividing Range – the Snowy merry pilgrimage along a long sinuous track – I just missed Mountains – receives ample snow; naturally it is not possible the coffee and snacks counters on the way. to tread all the way to the peak. But being the experience But the landscape is beautiful, albeit in a sparse way. collector I am, I couldn't resist the temptation of ticking off There are no trees to be found throughout the walk at this height, just little shrubs and alpine flowers sporting romantic

Volume 4 Issue 1 March 2017 Volume 4 Issue 1 March 2017 104 105 Critical and Creative Wings Climbing Kosciuszko: Because it is there! names such as the billy button, the mountain celery, alpine seeing a large lake fascinatingly called Cootapatamba. Like marsh marigold, mint bush, anemone buttercup and the silver other alpine lakes here, it was once a cirque – a hollow formed snow. Then there are the occasional streams snaking around, in the hills by glacial erosion and later becoming a catchment creating swampy bogs to beautiful blue rivulets along the area to form a beautiful lake in the mountains (called a tarn). It way. If you are lucky, you might even spot a pygmy possum or was nothing significant – just a small body of water, but one a bright hued flame robin enjoying the altitude on a quiet day. that magically changed colours from moss green to muddy And then there are the boulders – piled, striated, cracked and blue and then sapphire blue as you walked on and changed the lying like age old sentients watching time pass by. Long ago, angle of viewing it. I think what fascinated me once again was during the glacial ages, these were dragged on for miles by the its antiquated past and the immense changes in the landscape moving glaciers – today, they lie pell-mell all over the hills it must have seen once. For the record keepers, yes, it is the and create a beautiful, at times surreal, lunar landscape of highest altitude lake in Oz. The name is, as you would have empty plains and piling rocks, accumulated consecutively guessed, aboriginal in origin. (Talking of names, the peak every winter, when melting snow seeps into the cracks, itself was named by a Polish explorer, Paul Strzelecki, who freezes inside, expands and cracks and splinters these to decided to name it rather arduously after the Polish national smaller pieces. To be honest, such an expanse moved me, and hero Koœciuszko – I am confident any aboriginal name would for a brief moment, I went astray from the normal path to have been equally tongue twisted and heavily multi-syllabic.) climb a rocky hill afar, seeking my solitude away from the The way to the end is scenic all along – just before the madding crowds. It felt ethereal to imagine this same place summit, another dirt track joins the path from Charlottes Pass hundred and thousands of years ago – left alone to itself, all so and would be an excellent choice for those wanting a natural quiet except for the gushing streams and whistling winds. And feel under their sole instead of the steel grilles. yet it opened up to the ancient aboriginals who claimed that this was where their spirits lived and danced in the bare and I finally reached the top after 3 hours of slow steady raw beauty of this endlessness. For hundreds of years, these walking after infinite clicks on my camera in a desperate tribes have also been congregating here to feast on the attempt to hold on to all the raw beauty that was afloat. Bogong moths in summer and to conduct their spiritual rites. Reaching the top was my moment of satisfaction. So what if it It took some time to break my reverie of ancient aborigines is way easier than the Aconcagua? It is beautiful and deserves dwelling in caves here and dancing with their primeval spirits a walk, just for the serenity, for the ancient images it evokes in under the starlit sky. I had to walk along and, of course, place a the mind, for the sonata of the wind and the waters under a tick on my coveted seven summit check box. smiling sun. Yes, it deserves a walk just because it is there! The other moment of redemption that I had here was on

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Bali High parasailers had taken to the sky, while jetskiers, kitesurfers and boats ferrying scuba diving and snorkeling enthusiasts Kunal Sinha crisscrossed the azure waters. Our twelve year old daughter and I strapped on life vests and took to the sky for a stunning When Sangeang Api volcano erupted in southern panoramic view, as the boy enjoyed his first ever jetski ride. Indonesia in July 2015, our family's collective anxiety level We rode the wave slide together; a magical underwater world rose as sharply as the ash clouds that disrupted flights and shut filled with coral and fish was revealed when mother and down Bali's Ngurah Rai airport. Mercifully, our prayers were daughter went snorkeling out in the ocean. We spent another answered and we were on an Air Asia flight bound for the day at the Bali Safari and Marine Park in Gianyar – getting Island of the Gods. close to nearly sixty species of wildlife from different parts of For a family of lesser mortals with varied interests – from Indonesia, India and Africa, holding a python, feeding history and culture to adventure sports, from yoga and cockatoos and learning about the tussle between elephants aromatherapy to retail therapy, from nature to eclectic music – and humans for precious habitat. Majestic white tigers lazed Bali offers it all. So, we gave it a full nine days, soaking in a on the gazebos; their hunting instinct sadly lost in captivity. fully sensorial experience, which our seven year old son Many of the safari park's inhabitants take to the stage in the encapsulated as, “Nothing to worry about, just keep soaking it!” captivating, hour-long Bali Agung show, a colorful retelling of an old Balinese folk tale. Our beachside hotel in Kuta provided the base for the first part of our vacation: frenetic exploration, adrenalin rush, At Waterbom, the kids and I plunged through wet slides cultural immersion. We spent a day exploring the amazing and tunnels, got spun around, boomeranged and splashed on seaside temples of Tanah Lot – being buffeted by the waves rides – before taking it easy on the Lazy River and the pool. while making the short sea crossing to pray at the shrine; and My wife chose to give Waterbom a miss, spending a few in Uluwatu, marveling at a picture perfect sunset as the kecak hours at a spa and massage center – always hard to choose dancers enacted scenes from the Hindu epic Ramayana. It's a amongst the countless spas all over Bali, and emerging as spectacular clifftop setting at Uluwatu, set seventy metres invigorated as us. above sea level, where the waves pound the jagged rocks For every meal, we chose a different kind of eatery. The below. sight of the new moon rising on Id-ul-Fitri night against a An hour long ride through the winding, resort lined painted purple and orange sky at Jimbaran beach was simply streets of Nusa Dua brought us to Benoa. Scores of marvelous. We made our choice of fresh red snapper and jumbo prawns, which were grilled to perfection – ikan bakar,

Volume 4 Issue 1 March 2017 Volume 4 Issue 1 March 2017 108 109 Critical and Creative Wings Bali High at Ganesha restaurant. A simple but filling lunch of bubur volcanoes can be seen rising above a lava field, a green carpet ayam (savory rice porridge topped with shredded chicken, of plants, molten rocks and blue-green lake water. The lake shallots and soy sauce), mie ayam (noodles and bravy braised itself is a popular fishing spot, and also home to hot springs at chicken) and satay on another day was as satisfying as the Toyobungkah, where the healing waters are reputedly heated succulent pita wraps, filled with chicken, feta and fresh by the core of the volcano. vegetables at El Greco, a Greek restaurant on JL Kartika. In the shadow of Mount Agung rises Bali's most sacred Kuta's marketplace overflows with inexpensive tourist temple, Besakih. The main temple has existed in its current kitsch, but the surfer gear is always a good bargain. form since 1343 A.D. There are three temples here, dedicated Nevertheless, it never hurts to give the local economy a to the trinity of Hindu Gods – Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva. Our helping hand by buying some of the fragrant, floral soaps, driver, Dewa, had brought along sarongs and sashes for us to candles and lotions, even if to take back as gifts. wear – even though these are available for purchase or rent at If Kuta was busy and brash, Junjungan – a suburb of Ubud the local shops leading up to the temple. We offered prayers at where we spent four days in a charming villa amidst rice fields one of the shrines. It is customary to hire a temple guide for and a grove of coconut, frangipani and banana trees, was the service, and haggling for a price is common. idyllic and serene. We had all of Swara Hari Villa to ourselves. In Ubud, we explored several art and handicraft villages We bought fresh vegetables, fish and meat from the local that dot the countryside, their wares spilling out on the streets. market, and cooked them using redolent Balinese spices. Batuan village is home to many artists and art galleries, Celuk Ubud town center was a fifteen minute car ride away. We is the centre of silver jewellery, and Jl Raya Andong is lined explored the town's charming streets, lined with shops where with shops selling masks, lanterns, musical instruments and local designers showcased their fashion designs. Cafes other home décor items at ridiculously bargain prices. At invited you to sit down and spend time with a book (there was Ubud Art Market, you can find bright silk scarves, even a second hand bookstore in one of the alleys!). One handwoven hats and baskets, statuettes, kites and tableware night, it was utterly delightful to hear a local band perform made of shell and wood. It was all too much of a temptation, Sonny Rollins numbers at Ubud Jazz Café. and we ended up buying quite a bit to embellish our home. One day, we went up to Lake Batur to enjoy the For our final dinner in Bali, we stepped into a local panoramic views of Kintamani, past orange groves laden with warung called Bintangbali, only to discover that it was one of fruit as groups of bicycle-riding tourists whizzed downhill. the highly recommended restaurants on Tripadvisor. We From various vantage points - such as the village of endorse wholeheartedly! The babi guling (roast pork) fell off Penekolan – Mount Batur and Mount Agung, two dormant the bone, the balado terong (grilled eggplant topped with

Volume 4 Issue 1 March 2017 Volume 4 Issue 1 March 2017 110 111 Critical and Creative Wings Memories Of Magura chilli sauce) was fiery, and the pepes ikan (fish steamed in Memories Of Magura banana leaves) left a tangy taste that lingered as we walked back to our villa. Adhir Biswas Translated by Amit K. Das As we headed out to the airport on our last day in Bali, we saw small groups of children going about the streets playing musical instruments and performing the Barong dance. It [Translated from Bengali with minor changes for literary embellishment by Amit K. Das after the kind permission from was a fitting reminder that, for all their exposure to foreign Mr. Manan Mondal, editior, “Partition Sahitya, Desh, Kala influence through tourism, the traditions of Bali will survive Smriti;, Gangchil, Kolkata – 700 111 (2014)] and remain attractive to families like ours. Our village Magura in the Jessore district of East Pakistan is about three miles west of Jessore town. Through the north flows the river Naba Ganga. There, enclosed among the bamboo thickets and the “doa – dighi” (large tank) was the Hindu dominated 'Sa – para', [a locality] – and there in its middle was the Napit bari [barbar's home]. That was our identity there. The higher castes of our village treated us as aliens as we were poor as well as of humble origins. Thus our house with its dwellers stood isolated from the rest. The house consisted of four fairly large rooms on four sides, enclosing a courtyard. The rooms had termite-eaten bamboo walls plastered with a coating of mud and tin roofs overhead. The room on the west was my elder brother and his wife's. On the east were the kitchen and the husking pedal in a shed under a few coconut palms towering over the shed and a few bushy lemon trees growing in the loamy soil. But the most treasured tree was that of the guava such that no one else in the village had. For this I was specially favoured by my classmates of the Nandol school. For them I carried guavas to school. The best I secretly kept to myself in case Kalpana should ask for one. She stood first in the class and I second. But she never asked for any. Why should she ? She was the daughter of a Brahmin priest - much higher than me in the social scale.

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Even in my childhood, I had no intimate friends. Nor any After the vacation the new class was to begin. The room elders' love was bestowed on me. My friends were the bushes, for our class VII was just in front of the government shrubs and Nature. I could copy the call of different birds and dispensary and the large pond, facing our school. Sitting know each of them by their call. And sometimes I would run inside the class we could see the swans lazily drifting in the with my fishing rod to the large pond. If any water snake pond of the SDO Bungalow. happened to come near, I shooed them away. Sometimes I II even watched long at their mating with wonder struck eyes. I didn't fear them. For we had many other things to fear. Occasionally I heard men of our locality speaking about going away to India - not openly, but in a hushed manner. One In 1965, I was in class V. Even at that age I became a day I saw father speaking clandestinely to Kalida in a soft supporter of Fatema Jinna because I had heard the elders say murmur and looking around him as if afraid to be seen that not Ayub Khan, but Fatema Jinna was with our people. speaking to him. And while ordering a new shirt, I took care to ask the tailor to stitch it in the college students' shirt style. Because college Kalida's profession was to carry on illicit trade across the meant you are a real student, and in those days in East border of India and East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). I had Pakistan, students enjoyed many privileges. It meant a half – heard that such traders carried gold from East Pakistan and sold it at one Bara Bazaar (the large market) in Calcutta (now free ticket in public transport and a proud walk in front of the Kolkata). From India, they brought in N.C. Tobacco, EPR written uniformed police of the then regime. Boroline, Pen, Ballon, Shindoor (red vermilion), and After my primary schooling , I was admitted to High thousands of other such things. There was a craze for Indian School – Magura Model High School in class VI. As I was goods. good in studies, the teachers made me captain of the class. I Not only goods, but Kalida also acted as a facilitator to befriended Wahbuddin Mansoor. He invited me to his house help men cross the border without valid papers. For each man in the Eid. His abba (father) gave me a ganjee (vest). May be he took 400 rupees – a huge sum for poor people like us in seeing my dress, he guessed at our economic status. He said, those days. Father might have been trying to bargain with him “Come during the next Eid. I'll buy you a dress.” I was greatly for he was shaking his head and finally saying 'no' with an touched by his kindness. They never teased us for being emphatic gesture of his hand. But Kalida insisted arguing that Hindus or for being poor. he would have to shell out a large sum to the officials of both In our own place, I often heard the word Malayan being sides of the border. used by our Muslim neighbours. I could'nt understand its The sky seemed to break down on father – where was he meaning, but could feel that it was a derogatory remark about to get so much money? That night he called my elder brother the Hindus. I often noticed that my father used to become aside and suggested to him to go and speak (directly) to the morose whenever he heard that word. And then he'd say, “We officials at the border check post. At the most they'd say 'No'. can't stay here for long. This land is not ours any more.” After all, Kalida was an agent and he's asking for an incredible amount.

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Father was correct. Brother returned jubilant after his I had seen Tangra Mia of Palla who was lean and thin as meeting with the border police – the East Pakistan Rifles. well as tall. It was said that he led a band of men who would They'd be charging only Rs 200 per head – what more, if one fight with, quarrel, or even kill anyone if you pay him. Many could bring four persons, his passage would be free. people in the area got killed but no one was arrested. Tangra It was as if a victory was won! Brother was too happy to Mia was a leader of the Muslim league. control himself. Father cautioned him to control his In our neighborhood there is a village – “Barela”. It had emotions. Because if others came to know of the deal, they'd its own team consisting of the Namo Sudra (lower caste men) set enemies against us. who had their own weapons and a daring threatening spirit. III Tangra Mia, it was said, was a bit hesitant about them. That Mother had passed away two years ago. Now that we were the Hindus of all the surrounding villages could live on here finally going away to India, we all felt her absence all the was due to the moral strength offered by this band of Barela more. Father said, “All is Luck ? your mother was ill – fated. Namo Sudras. Beyond our village, were stretches of miles of Had she died in India, her ashes could have been immersed in endless green fields down to the horizon. In between were the holy Ganga ( ie. Ganges) – she would have been blessed in some lone 'babla' trees and date palms. In the middle of the Heaven.” However, I didn't feel it that way. Even as I fields here and there stood some lonely scare crows with remember the last look of her – laid on the funeral pyre with blackened earthen pots for their heads ! Their shoulders an oil stained pillow under her head at the 'saat doar Burning offered a perfect perch for the finge (a species of birds) to rest ghat' I felt she'd still be with us wherever we go ! on. In summer, dust and in rainy season, slushy mud covered Not only my elder brother, but also my father began the muddy roads. That was the kind of road connecting our recently to find out who all among our neighbours wanted to village to our maternal uncle's home at Ramdevganti. The cross over to India. Secretly, because if the local touts found it distance was about Fourteen miles. The bus fare was eight out they'd obviously murder my brother. annas only. But hardly did we take the bus. Walking all those My brother set off for my maternal uncle's village to fourteen miles was our most cherished sport because father search out such men. My uncles helped in finding out willing used to compete with me in that walking only to lose to me. people. Just Rs 200 to cross to a new land of hope! so cheap! Father said, if all went well, then he'd start going to the offer was tempting to many. My uncle assured them that Calcutta to his cousin’s house and at each visit he'd carry my brother would guard them to safety. pieces of luggage to keep them in his custody. When all our My maternal uncle's village is in the midway of Pabla belongings would thus be despatched there, we'd all move Satrujitpur and Batajore on the straight right hand road that together to India. That would be our new home and new branches off from the main road connecting our village country. Our quest for a new home would end then. Magura with the capital Dacca. Its name is Ramdevganti.

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IV brought oranges home. And that betrayed the secret. For there was a craze for oranges here as you never found them here. Nobody talked openly now. Not even father or my elder Oranges, apples and grapes grow only in India. I knew that. brothers. Whenever I stopped in the midst of my study to eavesdrop, they would lower their voices to a whisper so that I Ayub Khan had passed a law banning the registration of couldn't hear them. the Hindus' property. Mean while, somehow our neighbours had got the hint that we were leaving for India. They kept Shortly, we'd leave. Had mother known that before she coming to us, offering a throw-away price - a meagre Rs 1200 died! For she used to hold my hands and say, “Follow your for our house and land, at the most. Actually the Hindu father and brothers.” But she never told me to follow her. neighbours were thinking that since we couldn't sell our Why ? Now that the time to leave was approaching, I felt the property by deed, we'd be obliged to leave it and go for loss of my mother all the more ! whatever they gave us. I did not go out to play with my friends any more, but just Father didn't want to sell our property to any Muslim. But saw them playing in the field. The guavas ripened on the tree. our Hindu neighbours now not only lowered their offer, but The big black ants trailed the branches to the fruits before some even threatened to inform the police. We hoped to sell it they dropped off. I had no desire to pick them anymore. The at a reasonable price so that we could buy a house in the new white ants covered up the wooden frames of the doors with country. When that hope was about to be dashed, a kind scales of mud. I did not shake them off to break their homes! Muslim approached us as God send. He offered us 2700 What was the use of clinging to anything? These friends, the rupees for our property. My younger elder brother counted guava tree, this very home – everything was going to be lost to the bundles of 100 rupee notes with prints of Kayede Azam [ me very soon! Nothing would remain mine anymore! Md. Ali Jinnah]. Alone I roamed about the Town Bazaar. I picked up the V thrown away cigarette packets from below the windows of our college hostel. I had heard, in Kolkata , boys play with We were all greatly surprised. Because Bhombol chose to cigarette packets. There, in Kolkata, these packets would bear sleep on the steps that night. Never before had he done that. memories of my deserted country, my birth place, the He was used to sleeping among the burnt out cinders of the Nomany Maidan (field), the Model school and college and kitchen. “Why is he sleeping here today”? father asked, the happy times I had spent with my friends. I too had the same question. As I sat down beside him I did not go to school regularly these days. Father did not patting his head and shoulders, my elder brother kept egging scold me or force me to go either as he used to do before. me on, “Go to sleep now. We'll have to wake up early and leave before others get up. Do not make your heart heavy by My elder brother meanwhile had been to Kolkata several caressing Bhombol as you know you'll have to leave him in times. None ever told me anything, but I could guess it right. the morning.” Each time he came home after several days of absence, he Father also said the same.

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Bhombol was walking ahead of us. Did he guess BOOK REVIEW anything yester–night because of the extra large whole CHILLIES AND PORRIDGE: WRITING FOOD fish–head that I had given to him at his night meal? Father was not coming with us during this visit. He came Ed. Mita Kapur to see us off and so my brother asked him to go back. My Noida: Harper Collins India, 2015. other elder brothers had already left for India. Now I would be P. 271. Price: INR 499 leaving with another elder brother. Next time my chhotada (youngest among my elder brothers) would be crossing over DISCOURSING ON THE PLEASURES OF THE TABLE: with father and his family. I was determined to move to India before January because the session for the new class would The nineteenth century French gastronome Brillant Savarin start from January. had famously remarked that he could tell a man's character if On my head was a small sack filled with things that father he was told what he ate. Food and its associated activities of had stacked into. Brother had a large bundle to carry. We'd cooking and eating have been primal activities. Ironically take the first bus to Jessore and get down at Churamonkathi. enough, food writing gained legitimacy and respect as a From there to Kapotaksha river and then to Mashle border. distinct discourse very late. The earlier writings on food were Then the wooden bridge and after that … generally thought to have only a niche value and that too for The winter mist and the fading darkness of the night seasoned gourmets. But from the second half of the twentieth made our sights hazy. Suddenly I couldn't see Bhombol in century food literature has become an area of considerable front. I stopped to look back. “Where's Bhombol?” academic interest and includes not only cook books but also I saw him standing still at the back. He wasn't following food memoirs, anthologies and critical treatises which us anymore. interrogate the connections between food, the individual palate and the culture in which it is cooked and eaten. “Bhombol”, I called. Contemporary culinary discourse is a complex one but, But he didn't come running to me anymore, as he used to unlike other discourses, it does not require a sufficient do. He kept standing there still. amount of critical knowledge to navigate it. Thus it is accessible and facilitates ease of access for the lay reader. Mita Kapur's anthology understands this vital aspect of food literature and the selection of articles are a mix of the quotidian and technical, the personal as well as the cultural. As the title indicates, it is as eclectic as the combination of

Volume 4 Issue 1 March 2017 Volume 4 Issue 1 March 2017 120 121 Critical and Creative Wings Book Review chillies and porridge: spicy as well as sweet. In her Editor's complements her astute observations as she ends with the Preface, Kapur states that food is a Proustian remembrance as scenario whereby a Bengali belle would be scandalized if it entails an addiction to flavours as well as serving as an asked to put rajma in 'cholar dal' but would willingly use emotional connect. The anthology, according to her, was wasabi paste in 'chorchori'. planned without conscious 'geographical mapping' in that the The procuring of produce, going to the market shopping editor chose to include articles which addressed the concept for the staples of the menu are an important part of any of 'taste' which was a subjective phenomenon. person's food journey. “Walks with Lyla” by Niloufer The opening article of the anthology, “Porridge” seeks to Icchapuria King and “Game for Food” by Saleem Kidwai understand the humble dish through its complex history of address this aspect of food and emphasize the fact that evolution and its eternal appeal as a wholesome dish that understanding the ingredients is the most vital step in the sustains the eater/s. Janice Pariat cites examples from literary planning of our meal. Bulbul Sharma's “Chilli High” records texts to underscore the concept of porridge as restorative the essayist's fondness for green vegetable and how its heat is “soul food”. Soul food not only nourishes but comforts. The always a welcome sensuous pleasure to her palate. The article sets the keynote for the anthology and all the recollection of her craving for a green chilli in the most contributors delineate their peculiar understanding of food unlikely of places and meals allows us to understand the deep enmeshed as it is within a host of personal and subjective connection between food and sensuous pleasure. “The memories. “Tia Rosa” by Wendell Rodricks and Bachi Bengali Bonti” by Chitrita Banerjee describes the utilitarian Karkaria's “Bongs, Bawas and Bigotry” evoke the nostalgic kitchen tool and recalls the ease with which she found her associations of particular dishes which remain perennial mother using it in the kitchen to chop, dice or julienne favourites simply because they cannot be replicated with a vegetables : a skill which would put the knife-wielding skills similar alchemy of flavours. Rodricks talks about his Goan of international master chefs to shame. heritage and the unforgettable flavours of the Christmas cake “Unseen Food” by Nilanjana S Roy, “India: The New cooked by Tia Rosa which became the talk of the parish. Junk Food Frontier” by Tara Deshpande Tennenbaum and Karkaria's article starts with her personal reminiscences of “Burmese Day” by Kai Friese are journalistic articles with a growing up in Calcutta as a Parsi. She tackles the subject of factual bias. Roy's article observes and describes the 'culinary purity' and the ways in which Indian communities cornucopia of street food on offer on the occasion of a rally in cling to their traditional dishes without bastardizing them but West Bengal. She tries to expand on the idea of a food unaccountably throw in foreign flavours to create their own paradise in the context. “A Table for Three” by Sumana, 'global desi' or 'glocal'. Karkaria's famed wry humour Jayaditya and Bikramjit is a novel effort and weaves the food

Volume 4 Issue 1 March 2017 Volume 4 Issue 1 March 2017 122 123 Critical and Creative Wings Book Review memories of the trio and their evolving relationship with food BOOK REVIEW with their careers taking them to different corners of the ONE PART WOMAN (2010) country. The free flowing conversation between the three is refreshing and adds to the rich variety of the anthology. By Perumal Murugan Trans. By Aniruddhan Basudevan “The Theatre of the Table” is a fitting epilogue to the anthology. Anita Nair observes her parents' marriage through Gurgaon : Penguin Books India, 2013. Pages. 247 (including author's note). their ritual of sharing breakfast: a mundane activity which Price: INR 299 ironically sustains the love in their marriage. Kapur's selection is commendable and the reader gets a taste of the A Superb Fictional Rendering of a Factual Ritual: eclectic associations of food through the anthologized articles. However, the anthology does not include articles The publication of Perumal Murugan's novel which talk about food taboos in India and the manner in Maadhorubaagan in Tamil by Kalachuvadu Publications in which food is a marker of class and privilege. It also does not Tamil Nadu in 2010 did not seem to have much impact on the include articles that examine how the role of cooking, Tamil readers as attested by the lack of publicity of this superb assigned to women, ensures a certain gender stereotyping. fictional work. But the translation of it as One Part Woman These are the two flaws in an otherwise intelligently and its subsequent publication in 2013 got wide publicity as compiled collection. the print media's effusive comments bear witness to. This speaks volumes about the magic wielded by English that is capable of unravelling the treasures hidden in our own Shymasree Basu languages. But the irony is that the English translation fetched only transient fame to the writer as the proactive moral police of our society soon got into their favourite job of hounding the author for defamation and obscenity. Bent on demolishing the writer they intruded into the realm of aesthetics and forced the writer to sign an unconditional apology in the presence of the local officials at Namakkal in Tamilnadu. Murugan had to buckle under their collective coercion and gave vent to his anguish in a Face Book post that the writer in him is dead. But, thankfully, the fundamentalist fatwa failed to stifle his voice for long because of the timely intervention of the Madras High Court in 2016. He was resurrected as he was directed by

Volume 4 Issue 1 March 2017 Volume 4 Issue 1 March 2017 124 125 Critical and Creative Wings Book Review the court in unambiguous language to resume writing. The middle of the narrative. The story takes a dramatic turn from verdict of the court has rejuvenated him as well his readers. this point and is propelled to its climax. Murugan has What led to the outrage of the religious bigots can be presented a custom that appears to be still in practice as the gathered from what Murugan records in his author's note. He author's note indicates but has shown sufficient restraint in says what he discovered about his home town Tiruchengode fictionalizing it. This is how the plot of One Part Woman while searching for historical information about the place: develops: The moment this town revealed to me one of its secret The story unravels the predicament of the couple and springs, it was wonderful. In the villages around details the series of rituals they observe and sacrifices/ Tiruchengode, there are people who are referred to as offerings they make to propitiate the gods and goddesses. 'god-given child' and 'god's child'. I had presumed that When all other measures fail, they are left with the only they were called so simply because they had been born alternative, that is, to send Poona to the festival. This issue after prayers to the god. But during my search I chanced triggers a crisis in their life of marital bliss. Kali cannot upon the connection between the temple festival and believe his ears when he hears his own mother making such a 'god's children'. In some way or another, this society proposal. His terrible shock is poignantly rendered in his continues to sustain primal human emotions. ... During monologue, “Amma, why did you struggle so hard to bring my field research about Tiruchengode, I discovered many me up? Just so you could push me into this terrible fire? You things. This novel came from the creative urge sparked by could have killed me even before I came into this world” that research. (Murugan (author's note) One Part Woman (Murugan One Part Woman 96). He is surprised when he 244-5) comes to know that Poona's parents are also keen to send their daughter to the festival with this avowed objective. He is too One Part Woman is a fictional work drawing on the age- confused and scared to broach the matter with Poona, who, he old custom of the chariot festival in the temple of is sure, would vehemently refuse. His absolute trust in her Ardhanareeswara, the half-female god, on the fourteenth day fidelity gives rise to this hesitation in him. He gathers the of which women are allowed to have consensual sex with courage to ask her if she would listen to her mother and his strangers to get rid of sterility. It is the association of god with mother to go to the festival on the day the gods retreat, but “his the custom and the involvement of women in it that heart was thumping, waiting for her reply.” She replies, to his Murugan's detractors found vilifying for god and insulting for utmost shock, “If you want me to go for the sake of this women. The novel, however, documents in the earlier wretched child, I will” (Murugan 108). Poona realizes his chapters the travails of a childless couple Kali and Poona who adverse reaction and tries to placate him up by assuring that are continually subjected to ridicule and humiliation by their she would not do anything against his will. She, however, friends and acquaintances in the society. Murugan cannot fathom why Kali is so hurt and goes on revisiting the strategically posits the context of the chariot festival in the numerous occasions on which they have had to suffer

Volume 4 Issue 1 March 2017 Volume 4 Issue 1 March 2017 126 127 Critical and Creative Wings Book Review humiliation and insults for being childless. She finds nothing Poona has confusing dreams that may strike us as wrong in seeking recourse to the last resort left to them. premonitions of their imminent alienation, “There was one in However, a fissure develops in their twelve year marital which she walked a long distance with a child across her harmony as Kali goes on being haunted by Poona's words shoulder. ... Why was Kali never part of this particular vision? even though he behaves normally with her. Where had he gone? Did he abandon her thinking that she didn't need him when she had a child?” (Murugan 165) The It is Poona's brother Muthu, Kali's friend since his climactic experience she undergoes is her final spotting of a bachelor days, who can convince him to send Poona with him suitable companion who impresses her by his glowing and to her parents’ place during the festival. Kali has to accept his smiling eyes, his carelessly combed hair, and his grinning invitation to visit his in-laws' on the fourteenth day and stay lips. “It occurred to her that this was her god. ... It was unlike for two days. Muthu chalks out the plan to send Poona to the any other face that had stayed on in her mind. 'This is how I festival with his parents and accompany Kali to a remote expected you to be, god', she thought” (223). She discovers place to take toddy and enjoy the night gossiping. The some likeness between the boy and Kali and feels narrative of One Part Woman opens with a partial rendering momentarily morose. But soon her diffidence gives way to of Kali's final visit to his in-laws' place that brings in its trail her urge to surrender herself to him with the thought, “He is memories of the time gone by. The detailed delving into the my god. My job is to go where he takes me” (225). past follows leading to the eventful fourteenth day of the Kali has an antithetical experience in store for him. He festival. Kali and Muthu set out for the secret hideout as gets up very early and decides to return to his in-laws' place so arranged by Muthu. As soon as they leave Poona and her that he can enjoy the company of Poona. He regrets leaving parents hurry up to start for the festival as planned. her and going instead with Muthu to drink toddy. His stream The narrative appears to betray some weakness in its of thoughts as captured by the novelist displays abundant use development at this point as we find Poona believing the of irony, apparent to us as we are aware of Poona's redemptive unbelievable as it is this issue that has soured their experience. The authorial comment, “Thoughts of Poona relationship and, as a result, their sexual life has lost much of excited him” (233) is followed by the intimate rendering of its attraction and satisfaction. Muthu can easily convince her Kali's thought, “Lying on the cot under the Portia tree, Poona that Kali has agreed to everything as it is a “religious matter” was beckoning him with outstretched arms” (Murugan 234). (Murugan 141). Poona does not even doubt the veracity of He is aware of the enormous power wielded by Poona over what Muthu says. Besides, when Kali arrives Muthu is not him and it is for her that he has forsaken the company of his home. He spends time with Poona and had he changed his friends and relatives. The ultimate solace he derives emanates from his absolute trust in her as he interprets her emphatic stand regarding Poona's visit, he would, at least, touch on this assertion, 'I will go if you want me to', as not, 'I will go' but as 'I issue while talking to her. Poona has been depicted as an will do anything for you.' “Thinking of her, his body acquired intelligent girl and so, for her to unquestioningly accept speed” (238). Muthu's version does not seem convincing.

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From a distance the Portia tree looks to him like “an One Part Woman delves into the depths of human umbrella of shadows” and “darkness itself.” We wonder if the relationships focussing on intimacies and intricacies in concrete manifestations of 'darkness' engulfing the tree he conjugal life. The raptures of the sex life of Kali and Poona has planted in his father-in-law's house give us any are artistically rendered. Varying moods of a childless premonition of the horrifying experience awaiting him. woman are deftly reproduced. It is Kali's strong personality When he reaches the house enveloped in silence, he can that enables him to dissuade his mother from arranging his hardly believe his eyes to see the house locked from outside. second marriage as per the norm. Portrayal of characters is The absence of the bullocks and the cart confirms to him his admirable. Both Poona and Kali and his mother are suspicion. His outburst is rendered thus, “'You whore!' he individualized. The novelist shows from the outset how shouted. 'Have you really gone? Have you gone despite my religious beliefs seep into the consciousness of characters. saying no?'” (239) He returns to his home and yells once The characters' absolute reliance on the efficacy of the visit to more, ... “'You will not be happy. You have cheated me, you the festival on the last day is also reiterated. Kali cannot whore ...'” Outpouring his curse he falls down to the ground. subscribe to it probably because it concerns his own wife or But he appears to get back his sanity when reality impinges his conception of conjugal relationship has a strong ethical on him as he becomes aware of the rope lying on the ground base. beneath him. The novel closes inconclusively with the following words, “He looked above. The branches of the The translator Aniruddhan Basudevan deserves applause Portia tree had spread themselves across the sky” (Murugan as the novel does not read like a translated work. The 240). craftsmanship of a translator counts considerably in reproducing the language of the original by retaining what The Portia tree planted by him seems to signal to him an may be called the earthiness of the speech and monologues of ominous sign through its shroud of darkness, but the tree characters, which constitute an asset of the work. Similarly, planted by one of his forefathers appears to soothe him (or, the description of the locales appears to be adroitly rendered. should we say, help him transcend his base self?). We wonder The editor has also done an excellent job as the work is if Kali would be able to overcome his possessive instincts flawless as far as editing is concerned. In conclusion, we must regarding his wife. The question keeps peeping into our mind reiterate that we could gain access to Murugan's fiction if his love for Poona would enable him to condone what she because of Basudevan's mediation. One Part Woman betrays does. Besides, it is not only Poona but he too shares her once again that the literary works by Indian authors can easily yearning for a child as demonstrated on a number of compete with their Western counterparts. occasions and, particularly, in his offer to a couple of lower caste to adopt their youngest child when it is born (Murugan 199). The open-ended novel One Part Woman gives rise to Tapati Talukdar multiple queries which contribute to making it a great work of art. Volume 4 Issue 1 March 2017 Volume 4 Issue 1 March 2017 130 131 Critical and Creative Wings Contributors' Profile

Contributors' Profile University. She is a poet writing in English and has published her poems in different journals including Critical and Dr. Kalyan Chatterjee retired from the University of Creative Wings. Burdwan as a Professor in English. He is a renowned scholar Dr. Chirantan Sarkar is an Assistant Professor at Asannagar having numerous publications in international and national Madanmohan Tarkalankar College. He is a poet in Bengali journals. He is now an authority on Tagore. with two anthologies of poems to his credit. He has published Dr. Shashikala Muthumal Assella is a Lecturer (Visiting) at his poems in reputed Bengali magazines like Desh. the department of English, University of Kelaniya, Sri Ranadurjay Talukdar, an MBA, is working as a Director in Lanka. She was awarded PhD by the University of E&Y, Mumbai. He is an avid reader and a blog writer. Nottingham. Ayan Adak, an engineer and MBA, is a Consultant with E&Y, Dr. Rudrashis Dutta is an Assistant Professor of English at Australia. He is a poet with a published anthology of his Raigunj B.Ed. College. He is a Visiting Faculty in the Post- poems to his credit. He writes short stories and travelogues graduate section of English at St. Paul's College. He was too. awarded PhD by the University of Calcutta. Kunal Sinha is currently Executive Director- Advisory at Dr. Shymasree Basu is currently an Assistant Professor in Kantar Insights, Mumbai. He is a regular contributor to English at Vidyasagar Evening College, Kolkata. She is a reputed marketing and advertising websites. He is the author Visiting Faculty at the Post-graduate department of English of six books. at Narasingha Dutt College, Howrah. She completed her PhD from Jadavpur University. Amit Das did his M.Phil from the University of Kalyani. He is an Assistant Teacher in English at Sodepur High School. Dr. Rupa S. Deshmukhya is an Assistant Professor in English at Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan's Hazarimal Somani College of Arts and Science, Shri Manubhai Maneklal Sheth Junior College of Arts & Science and Jayaramdas Patel College of Commerce and Management Studies, Mumbai. She has completed her Ph.D. from the University of Mumbai. Dr. Tapati Talukdar is a retired teacher of Barasat College. She is a former Senior Fellow in the Department of Culture, Govt. of India. Ms Sohini Sengupta, an M.Phil from Jadavpur University, is presently pursuing her PhD as a JRF at Barasat State

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