A decade in Toronto - 22

L to R: Kumar Ketkar, Sharada Sathe, Mayank Bhatt and Jatin Desai
at the launch of the Marathi translation of Belief

A trip to India is an effective way to put perspective into life. The recent trip – I returned a couple of days – was unique in many ways. After a long time, I was part of a business delegation visiting multiple cities (New Delhi and Ahmedabad-Gandhinagar) on official business. Then, when some of our delegates left for Varanasi, to participate in the annual jamboree of the Indian diaspora, I went home to Bombay to participate in the launch of my novel Belief’s Marathi translation.

Ten days of hectic, whirlwind jet setting may seem glamorous but I’m just too old to handle such an adrenaline rush, and after the first four days into the tour, I was practically immobilized by the pollution in New Delhi and Gandhinagar. Fortunately, I recovered in time for the book launch in Bombay and then had to rest for the next couple of days before returning home.

After a decade out of Bombay, I no longer belong to that city. Yes, it is a part of me and will always be, but I have no place in it anymore. Surprisingly, I don’t feel sad about it at all. The biggest reason, of course, is that people whom I’ve known for all my life, have moved on, and justifiably so. It becomes difficult for them to find time for me at my convenience; I’d think it’d be as difficult for me to find time for them in Toronto, if they visited unannounced and made demands on my time.

Friends at the book launch

However, the book launch turned out to be a tremendous success and most of my friends and some of my family members did manage to find time to be there at the Mumbai Press Club. A special thank you to all those who made time to be with me, and for all those who couldn’t – well, thank you for trying.

During the visit, I met Neerav Patel, the eminent Gujarati Dalit poet. He’s been a social media friend ever since he visited Toronto to be a part of the Festival of South Asian Literature and the Arts in 2015. 

Neerav believes that I should turn my ‘A Decade in Toronto’ series into a book. That’s a flattering thought, but I don’t think my experiences in Toronto are markedly different from those of hundreds of thousands of other immigrants.

But let's leave that for the later. And for now just continue with the saga of recollection.

This week, I’ll focus on authors and books.

In 2014 Ramchandra Guha came to Toronto’s Munk Centre to launch his book Gandhi Before India (which is about Gandhi’s life in South Africa between 1893 to 1915). Guha spoke about Tolstoy’s influence on Gandhi and how the young Gandhi, who had just embarked upon Tolstoy's pacifism, was confident that his practice of non-violence non-cooperation would transform the world.

If interested, read more: Gandhi Before India

That year, MJ Akbar, by then firmly in the Hindutva camp, visited the Munk Centre, and gave a scintillating insight into India, the Empire and the First World War. The lecture was to commemorate the centenary of World War I, and Akbar gave an original interpretation to end of an epoch and the beginning of a new one.

Akbar’s reputation is besmirched and seemingly beyond repair. When I mentioned his name at my book launch in Bombay, in reference to a question, there were visible frowns from my women friends.

I’m too insignificant to defend Akbar and indeed the allegations against him if true are indefensible. However, that shouldn’t take away from his achievements as a journalist, editor, historian and a fine raconteur.

If interested, read more:

India, Empire and the First World War – Part 1

India, Empire and the First World War – Part 2

The two books that I read and loved were MG Vassanji’s India: A Place Within, and his memoir And Home was Kariakoo. Of course, India: A Place Within is a special book; undoubtedly one of the finest on India. “This country that I’ve come so brazenly to rediscover goes as deep as it is vast and diverse. It’s only oneself one ever discovers,” Vassanji says.

If interested, read more: India: A Place Within

That year, I also attempted my first translation of my father’s poem from Gujarati into English. A son’s poem to his dead father remains a favourite because it is applicable to everyone who reach a certain age when angst overrule all other emotions. 

Reading Min Fami – Arab Feminist Reflections on Identity, Space and Resistance was a revelation.

And finally, one of the most insightful sessions on immigrant writing was a six-week program on Exile and Belonging: Stories of Immigrant Experience conducted by Sanja Ivanov then of the University of Waterloo (and now at the University of Toronto) at the Lillian H. Smith branch of the Toronto Public Library (Spadina and College).

We read and discussed five stories by four authors:  Roman Berman, Massage Therapist and The Second Strongest Man (from David Bezmozgis’s collection Natasha and Other Stories); The Inert Landscapes of Gyorgy Ferenc (from Tamas Bobozy’s Last Notes and Other Stories); Squatter (from Rohinton Mistry’s Tales of Firozsha Baag); and No Rinsed Blue Sky, No Red Flower Fences (from Dionne Brand’s Sans Souci and Other Stories).

Let me conclude this blog – hopefully the last for 2014 – with a quote from Tamas Bobozy’s story, which incidentally, captures the quintessential bleakness that all immigrants experience when they return home after living in Canada.

“It was only many weeks later, when I’d fully realized what it was to lose a country – after I had gone astray in the streets of a city I thought I knew as well as myself, after I’d seen the growth of apartments on the outskirts of Debrecen, after I’d stepped onto the Hortobagy and been unable to shake the sense of infinite distance between the soles of my shoes and the ground they stood upon – that I remembered where I’d last seen the smile Akos had worn at the airport. You see, either everything had changed in Hungary, or I had changed, and what was most disquieting about the trip for me was not only that I couldn’t stabilize my sense of being in the country, but that I couldn’t even fix upon the country I was trying to stabilize myself in relation to.

“The greatest nightmare was that both of us had changed – the country and myself – and that we were constantly changing, which made the possibility of us ever connecting again a matter of complete chance, the intersection of two bodies on random flight patterns, ruled by equations so different there was little chance of us resting, even for a second, on the same co-ordinates.”

I began this blog by saying the same thing – about not being able to relate to my Bombay anymore.

Inspire - Toronto International Book Fair

Hindi Writers' Guild

Anindo Hazra & Ted Goossen (seated) with other participants

Sheniz Janmohamed

Inspire – the first Toronto International Book Fair was a major success, both in terms of the participation of authors, publishers and readers.

The three-day festival saw some big name authors discuss their work, they included the perennial favourites such as Margaret Atwood, and also rising stars such as David Bezmozgis.

The festival attracted 400 authors, and thanks to my friend Meenakshi Alimchandani, who was part of the organizing team, I had the privilege of being associated with the festival, facilitating the readings of Canadian South Asian authors.

The authors who read at the South Asian kiosk included Cheran, Cheryl Antao-Xavier, Kumkum Ramchandani, Braz Menezes, Farheen Khan, Samreen Ahsan, Vicky Bismillah, Kwai Li and Fong Hsiyng, Meena Chopra, Tula Goenka, Jasmine Sawant, Sheniz Janmohamed, Anindo Hazra, Pushpa Acharya and the Hindi Writers’ Guild led by Shailja Saksena. Eminent diplomat and author Navtej Sarna also read from his works, but at a different venue at the sprawling Metro Toronto Convention Centre.

The festival gave me an opportunity to meet and make friends. I met the suave Antanas Sileika, who gifted me a copy of his novel Underground; and I also met the enterprising Robert Morgan of Bookland Press.

South Asian panel
{l to r: Jasmine, Anosh, Manjushree, Anirudh, Priscilla (at mike)}

The main South Asian event at the festival was the collaboration between Inspire and the Jaipur Festival. The panel comprised AnirudhBhattacharyya, a veteran journalist-turned novelist; Manjushree Thapa, novelist; Anosh Irani, novelist; Jasmine D’Costa, novelist; Priscilla Uppal, poet, moderated the readings.

Anirudh read from his debut novel The Candidate, which is a breezy satire on the crazier than Rob Ford world of Indian politics. Anosh Irani read from Dahanu Road, and Jasmine D’Costa read from her collection of short stories Curry is Thicker than Water. Manjushree Thapa read from her new novel  Seasons of Flight.

Here’s an excerpt from Manjushree’s novel:

Being Nepali

An American woman, a schoolteacher, earnest and frizzy, once came up to Prema and asked, ‘Mind if I ask where you’re from? Originally, I mean?’ But when she heard the answer she just stammered, unable, perhaps, to admit that she didn’t know where that was.

Most Americans did better. They would say, ‘Oh’ or ‘Wow’ or even ‘Cool’ and nod in a friendly manner. Sometimes Prema would help them out by adding, ‘It is near India,’ or ‘Where Mount Everest is’ or ‘You heard of the Sherpas?” so that they might say, ‘Geez, that’s real far,’ or ‘I could have sworn you were Mexican / Italian / Spanish,’ or ‘You speak very good English.’ And then she would smile: ‘Thank you.’

Every now and then, though a response would stop her. One day, a woman on the bust heard her say Nippon and expressed her disgust at the practice of eating raw fish: ‘That’s like eating you-know-what!’ she exclaimed. Another man, a dark-skinned grocer, South Asian himself, baffled her with, ‘Aren’t you usually from Pakistan?’ It was Prema’s turn to stammer. She had also learnt that to the foreign ear, the country’s name could sound like ‘nipple’. More commonly, though, what Americans heard was Naples, as in: ‘I love pasta,’ or ‘My husband and I went to Rome for our honeymoon, but we never made it to Naples.’ 

Exile and Belonging: Stories of Immigrant Experience - II

Rohinton Mistry

Recently, I attended a six weeks program on Exile and Belonging: Stories of Immigrant Experience conducted by Sanja Ivanov of the University of Waterloo at the Lillian H. Smith branch of the Toronto Public Library (Spadina and College).

I couldn’t attend the concluding session because of extraneous disturbances not under my control.

I blogged about the series in February, but the observations in that blog were primarily derivative and based on just one session. The subsequent sessions gave the series new meanings, and new insights.

With each new author the group discussed different aspects of the theme of exile and belonging.

David Bezmozgis

 

We read and discussed five stories by four authors:  Roman Berman, Massage Therapist and The Second Strongest Man (from David Bezmozgis’s collection Natasha and Other Stories); The Inert Landscapes of Gyorgy Ferenc (from Tamas Bobozy’s Last Notes and Other Stories); Squatter (from Rohinton Mistry’s Tales of Firozsha Baag); and No Rinsed Blue Sky, No Red Flower Fences (from Dionne Brand’s Sans Souci and Other Stories).

Each author deals with the issue of exile and belonging differently, each is steeped in a specific cultural milieu, and each is situated in Canada (in fact, in Toronto – and I guess the Toronto Public Library must have insisted on that).

Each of the story is deeply disturbing, even if it occasionally some scenes in the stories evoke chortles or at least an amused smile (especially Squatter).  

In all the stories, the newcomers are unable to adjust to a new life, a new thinking, to their changed circumstances. They become so alienated that their own people seem alien.

In some cases the – as with Gyorgy Ferenc in Dobzy’s story and the Caribbean woman in Brand’s story – the characters experience mind-bending turmoil and become paralysed with fear and loathing.

In No Rinsed Blue Sky, No Red Flower Fences, Brand describes the transformation thus:

Dionne Brand

“Returning home her imagination tightened the walls of the apartment giving them a cavernous, gloomy look. She would lie on the floor and listen for footsteps in the corridor outside. The phone would ring and startle her. The sound would blast around in her chest and she would pray for it to stop never thinking to answer it. It would course its way through her arms so that when she looked at her fingers they would seem odd, not hers or she, not theirs.”  

And while Dobzy’s story is about the father Gyorgy Ferenc, and his utterly hopeless spiral into a world that cannot exist, a great insight into the immigrant’s perennial dilemma is revealed towards the end of the story when Gergo (the narrator) returns briefly to Hungary. 

He describes his experience thus:

Tamas Dobozy

“It was only many weeks later, when I’d fully realized what it was to lose a country – after I had gone astray in the streets of a city I thought I knew as well as myself, after I’d seen the growth of apartments on the outskirts of Debrecen, after I’d stepped onto the Hortobagy and been unable to shake the sense of infinite distance between the soles of my shoes and the ground they stood upon – that I remembered where I’d last seen the smile Akos had worn at the airport. You see, either everything had changed in Hungary, or I had changed, and what was most disquieting about the trip for me was not only that I couldn’t stabilize my sense of being in the country, but that I couldn’t even fix upon the country I was trying to stabilize myself in relation to.

“The greatest nightmare was that both of us had changed – the country and myself – and that we were constantly changing, which made the possibility of us ever connecting again a matter of complete chance, the intersection of two bodies on random flight patterns, ruled by equations so different there was little chance of us resting, even for a second, on the same co-ordinates.”

As I said, unfortunately, I couldn’t attend the last session and so missed my chance to thank all the wonderful participants and Sonja Ivanov, the amazing program instructor.

Sonja conducted the series with deft competence and confidence, giving opportunities for all the participants to dwell on the subject, giving each of us time to explore and expound on the theme.

Read the previous post: Exile and Belonging: Stories of Immigrant Experience - I

Exile and Belonging: Stories of Immigrant Experience - I

I have enrolled for Exile and Belonging: Stories of Immigrant Experience, a six-part study series conducted by Sanja Ivanov of the University of Waterloo at the Toronto Public Library’s College Street branch.

We will be reading short stories by four authors David Bezmozgis (Natasha and other stories), Tamas Dobozy (Last Notes and other stories), Rohinton Mistry (Tales from Firozsha Baag), Dionne Brand (Sans Souci and other stories)

“The six-week literature course will explore the diverse manners in which contemporary authors portray immigrant experiences in Toronto. Close reading of the selected literary works will provide an insight into the roles of ethnicity, class, race, language, and place in the negotiations of identity and sense of belonging.”

The second session of the series was a discussion on Bezmozgis’s two stories – Roman Berman, Massage Therapist, and The Second Strongest Man – from his debut collection Natasha and other stories.

(“The book is a collection of linked stories about the Bermans, a Jewish family from Latvia adapting to their new life as immigrants to Canada. The central character is Mark Berman, who is a young child when the family first arrives in Canada.”*)

The discussion – interesting as it was – also conclusively proved that writing and reading although intricately linked are actually very different activities. Just as writing is linked with the personality of a writer, so is reading.

Yes, incredible though it may sound, reading is dependent upon a reader’s personality.

Let me explain this: The world that the writer creates is not necessarily the world that her readers create reading the writer’s creation.

The participants (readers) in the program had read the stories in their own individual (even individualistic) ways, each interpreting and relating to them differently.

As Angela Carter has said, “Reading a book is like re-writing it for yourself. You bring to a novel, anything you read, all your experience of the world. You bring your history and you read it in your own terms.” **

Another interpretation of the changing relationship between the author and the reader is offered by Daniel Neville (Nevolution –  http://nevolution.typepad.com)  while explaining the concept of complexism developed by generative artist and theorist Philip Galanter.

(Generative artist and theorist Philip Galanter (http://philipgalanter.com) has created the concept of Complexism - the application of a scientific understanding of complex systems to the subject matter of the arts and the humanities.)

Neville states, “Galanter provides an easy method to understand the shift between the relationship of these three entities (the author, text and the reader). It places an equal emphasis on all three, allowing all to be part of the same process. Modernism - taking a lead from the Enlightenment - sought to view the author as being in complete control of the text; the reader merely an afterthought.

"The shift that occurred through Postmodernism inverted this relationship away from viewing the author as in control of the text, to viewing the reader as able capable of many interpretations. In the Modernist relationship, there is no reader, in the Postmodern relationship, the author is dead. There is a missing actor in both examples.

"Galanter sees the relationship requiring all three components to make it work. This does not deny the role of the author in regard to the “totalising masterpiece” nor does it deny the readers ability to create their own meaning with the text.

"It holds all three as existing within the same relationship, giving each an equal status. We see the role of the individual as not just a Designer/Producer, nor as just an Author/Consumer, but instead acting as an Editor/Prosumer. By being situated between the two texts, the text that he/she reads that informs the text that he/she creates.”

More on this in the coming weeks.

---

First illustration by Laurence Musgrove (taken from: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lemusgro)

Second illustration taken from http://nevolution.typepad.com

* Taken from Wikipedia

** Taken from Teri Windling’s blog Myth & Moor