Elusive Terrain: culture and literary memory
By Meenakshi Mukherjee, 200 pages, OUP, 2008

Now and then, it is nice to read a book by specialist on topics like literature and culture. Meenakshi Mukherjee is a veteran academic specialising in contemporary Indian literature. Both in the Indian languages and that is more important than just talking about the Indians writing in English. This is what she has done and enjoyed reading the essays compiled into a book.

Some of the topics might interest many readers. Indian films in English, Internal Diaspora, Hindi to Bangla, Literary debates in India in the last half century, Narrating a nation and history and imagined history etc.

The book stirs our thoughts and kindles our imagination. A very pleasant read, indeed.
Almost all the topics interested me, English in an uneven land, that is the way the English language  has come to occupy a central place in the lives of the privileged and the less privileged. There is now widespread learning and the use of this language and now a new India, those living in the USA and UK and making a new life of comfort and exile, yes, the word exile catches the reality, though the use of the word, Diaspora, I found repelling! At least for me! So, readers would find my use of English a bit old-fashioned, old-fashioned I remain in many other aspects as well, in holding on to my own views of  what English language means to me and also how I hold others who write and make a living  abroad.

As I live in India and committed to the success and failure of what India means and I still see the exiles as a class apart from the native Indians.

I give weight more for the native Indians than for others like V.S.Naipaul who have their own bees in their bonnets.

I am not going into the very specific points raised by the author and that is interesting but the point I want to make here is that still, that is even now, after Britain had departed from the Indian shores, there is this perception that in Britain they don’t seem to have come to recognise the Indian literary successes, like Salmon Rushdie and Naipaul as mainstream writers, there is the classifications and categories as black literature, colonial literature etc. There is this racial perception and it seems it is hard to go. She quotes Susan Sontang for writing in the Times Literary Supplement (13 June 2003) saying that English had contributed to the disappearance of many “lesser” languages of the world. I am glad to find Ms.Mukherjee criticises this view. Slave trade first, (for 3 centuries) then, the indentured labour migration saw, Africans and Indians migrate in large numbers and the result is the current race and religious intolerance we noticed in UK and France, to cite just the two advanced countries. There is also the shift in the use of English in India by the new generation to displace jobs in the USA and elsewhere and also the English publishing that sees more English books published in India but not bought by the West but mainly for the domestic readers. She cites a book by Pascale Casanova, The World Republic of Letters (2004) which profiles the racial and other factors that discriminate against writers and literary activities taking three forms, linguistic, literary and political, the last taking on an economic cast.
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Autobiographies are often highly subjective and therefore only partially true in many respects.While biographies are likely to be more reliable and might give a full account of one’s life.

We seem to live at a time when there is an unprecedented change in our lives.Globally it is so.Globalisation is  now almost a cliche.
Our life on the planet has become enriched and I look up life today with full of new optimism.Yes,there are causes for worry.If you are a historian or  champion of international  peace or   disarmament or an environmentalist you have reasons to be worried.There are such great souls.I count Jimmy Carter one such.Then,I also has to contend with Bill Clinton who is anything but a pessimist! He is also on the agenda of  promoting international good with his Clinton Global Initiative.So,there is much to cheer about.
But as any  serious thinker would be  a troubled soul.There is much to decry.There is what I would call as the trivialisation of  truth.
Has reason triumphed?As hoped for Enlightenment thinkers?It hasn’t.
So,anyone who tries to write about himself  or about one’s own times has to first give an outline of what he or she thinks as the core issues of the times.

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Poets and philosophers! When you think of them, what thoughts immediately spring to mind?

They seem to give much life and light to society.Much of our sense of culture and pure aesthetic pleasures, it m is poets and writers seem to be capable of providing.A society without some intellectual strength cant be a society and cant even survive.It is the intellectual backbone,the philosophers,the thinkers and intellectuals bring to bear.
Yet think of their individual and collective lives.How unstable and often so insecure and isolated they live their lives.

Not many genuine poets or writers or philosophers are fortunate enough to get recognition or material rewards in their life times.Most often,the fame and name ,at all,comes too late or too little to be of any use for them or for their families.The posthumous fame,if and when it comes,it is for the society and not for the families concerned.
Yet,how sad and often tragic, their lives!

I have always been interested in poetry. Reading poetry came long after I started writing poetry.This pursuit and passion remained with me all all along.

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“”When will that shore appear from which at last we see..How all this came to pass and for what reason?”

Reading poetry has been my pastime for long.All my life! Now it has become a passion for me and now it has become a serious pursuit.My tastes and temperament had shaped and changed me to read lots of poetry as a pastime.I have no scholarly interest or academic discipline.Thus,what I enjoy is keep going back to my old favourites and also looking out at the new poets. I have been reading poetry,all sorts of poetry,from all around the world for all my life. But in subjects like poetry that touches one’s emotions and passions and even deeply touches one’s inner recesses of the mind and soul poetry seems to give me a fulfilment,as no other arts have given me.In the high school itself I was a sort of budding poet and an artist of sorts! I won prizes for both.But I never took myself serious as a poet or a painter.Yes,my education took me to very different influences and my exposure to poets,actually living,also added to my interest in poets and their works.That is my experience in poetry. May be there are other arts,music,painting and visual and performing arts,dances,Indian as well as the Western ballet and theatre ,yes,I have had some exposure,rather rudimentary in some fields but my interests continue.One’s life’s circumstances limit the opportunities.Yes,being in a city like Paris or London could make all the differences.But being in India has certain limitations.Even in Bangalore where I spend most of my time these days,I have had few opportunities beyond my chosen routines.Thus,I often see Western musicians performing in Bangalore,more so in recent times,more in diverse genres,more rock and less of course the old classical things with which I had some familiarity.Yet,I dont get the time or the right time to go and watch these havily advertised commercial scale artistic activities. Of all these arts and artistic activities,poetry stands out.That is,poetry you can enjoy and appreciate in your privacy,your chosen ambience.Those poetry volumes, dusty,crumbling pieces of papers,Eliot,Yeats and many others give me the most secure feeling of familiarity.So,poetry remains my favourite reading pleasure.

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Indian character, the Indian mindset have haunted and disturbed me for long.  Unless we study and understand how the Indian character had evolved through the ages, how our character is shaped by our long history of oppression and suppression, we can’t understand ourselves fully.  We can’t in turn understand the world outside also fully! 

We are living in a world of great stirrings, everyone is aware of his or her self identity.  That is okay!  But then literature and poetry has to respond, respond to the great questions of the day.  I hope I have sufficiently explored the modern world, the external and the internal world of modern man, my own self in these poems.

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The coming of the Dravidian politics is seen by many uncritical elements as a great blessing.  I consider the opposite is true!  The illusion of Tamil supremacy stands disproved! 

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Let me state at the very beginning that for me literature and arts are intrinsically tied up with politics. There is no literature existing in a vacuum. Literature occupies a public space that very few of the current crops of writers seem to acknowledge. More so with the new crop of the expatriate Indian writers in English. Thought and action can lead to some rare mental awakening and this we have seen in many writers, even in recent times.

I just now read through a book review on two collections of literary essays by two literary giants, one the South African novelist and Nobel Prize winner, J.M.Coetzee and another by the Peruvian writer and a Presidential candidate in his country, Mario Vargas Llosa. Says the reviewer at one place:” Politics in a literary work may be in Stendhal’s formulation like a pistol shot in the midst of a concert. But even Coetzee’s essays we see that literature cannot exist independently of politics and mankind’s countless other pursuits. The fascination with power or the concerns with transforming mankind or societies or grappling with the history of nations, fate of individuals, everywhere when we rise above the mass of concerns and scenarios, you reach out to the struggles for truths, values and principles that sometimes end up tragically. Sometimes, you turn out to be prophets or some such colossal figures. Only politics and power can give any piece of writing and literature those rare heights of exploring the higher truths, metaphysics of living and death.

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(V. Isvarmurti (Vadamalai Media P.Ltd., Pichanur, Coimbatore 641 105. - 2004) Page 310 Rs. 200)

Readers exposed to the political pulpit of Tamil
Nadu in the last century might drop Kavithaigal into the Dravidian slot with electrical ease, once they open the volume and read the epigraph!

Tamil : My Askesis
Tamil is my god
Tamil is my askesis
Tamil is my dharma
Tamil is my culture
Kural : My Beginning and My End.
Kural is my life!
Kural is my skin!
Kural is my beginning!
Kural is my end!

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The close friendship that existed between Aurobindo and the poet is well brought out. The daughter had watched how much Aurobindo too sought the company of the poet,rather than the poet sought after the company of the great yogi and seer. There was a violent storm and heavy rain and Pondicherry was devastated. The next day Bharati and the 12 year old daughter went to visits Aurobindo. “Babuji welcomed father with much affection. The two conversed together for long. Babuji did japa the whole night without bothering about what happened around him. While all the other things were intact, the photograph of his wife Srimathi Mrinalini Devi was smashed. That pained Aurobindo much. After two days, there came news from Bengal the dear lady passed away” (page 74) The editor of the volume says no one who wrote of Aurobindo so far had bought out the close association of the yogi and poet as the 12 year old girl who often accompanied her father to the ashram had done. Very true! There were many nights when the poet would visit the yogi and both would spend almost the whole nights together reading the Vedas and discussing such high matters. The Mother, formerly Mira Richard along with her husband once visited Bharati in his home. This anecdote is also interesting.It was Bharati who taught the mother not to shake hands of strangers and he showed her the Indian way of saying namaskar and from that day onwards the Mother adopted the practice (page 203). More interesting is her observation on Aurobindo and Bharati. Says she:”It is difficult to write on the sort of relationship that existed between the two. It is impossible. Mahakavi Bharati imagined himself as Arjuna, nay, he had the mental resolve and mental faculty to imagine himslef as Lord Krishna.Aurobindo understood this side of the poet’s character and he admired his friendship with the poet”(page 203).Only an innocent and at the same time an intelligent young girl of just 12 could make such observations!

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I believe but book selling, in my opinion, is a greater art and science and cultivated good manners!

My book reading and book buying habits had grown over the years and changed radically too. Now, I am time conscious and therefore make quick glancing through the new books I see in the bookshops and make up my mind whether to take the new ones seriously or reject them.
Since so many new books are turned out by the book industry one has to be careful not to be misled by the many sales promotion tricks indulged by the charmed circle of book reviewers, glossy magazines and also the passing fashions in books.

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