A Delhi Obsession

MG Vassanji

In 2012, I had been in Canada just four years and read Indian newspapers online regularly. I discovered an interview of MG Vassanji in India’s Mint newspaper when his novel The Magic of Saida was published.  The interview was competent, or so I thought. It covered all the things that a newspaper reader would want to know about an author.    

I sent the link to Vassanji, thinking that he would be delighted. I told him that I had posted the link on social media. He told me to remove the link. He was actually livid. 

I asked him why, and said, “They have labelled me. Would they have called Margaret Atwood a Christian author? Or Amitav Ghosh a Hindu author? I doubt it; they wouldn’t. Then, why label me as an Ismaili Muslim.”

I didn't quite understand his anger then. But over the years, as I have got to know him a bit better, I have begun to comprehend his irritation over being labelled. 

It is impossible to categorise Vassanji on the basis of faith or nationality because it is impossible to fit him into a specific ethnic, religious, national silo. 

He is like the Indian raita (an Indian dish of finely chopped cucumber, peppers, mint, etc. in yoghurt, served with curries). The Indian raita spreads on an Indian thali, freely mixing with different vegetables and curries in the thali, and in the process, both acquires their taste and gives its own flavour to them.

Ismaili-Khoja culture is a mix of both Hindu and Islamic traditions, blending the streams into a fusion of Sufi/Bhakti. Although today’s generation believes in having a distinct as opposed to a defused identity, the religious songs of the Ismaili-Khojas called Ginans reveal the strong syncretic roots of the community.

To help me understand the unique syncretism that has made him who he is, Vassanji had sent me a review of a book on Ginans. (Ginanic Travails: Conflicted Knowledge)

Over the years, in many a heated discussion about the religious tensions in India that we have had, Vassanji invariably points out the tendency amongst Indians to label people; even Indian liberals are not above the labelling, he would complain. This labelling leads to stereotypical understanding and portrayal of the two communities in general, but especially of the Indian Muslims.

Finally, in 2019, with A Delhi Obsession Vassanji has published a novel that sensitively depicts the insensitive Indian habit of identifying and categorizing people on the basis of their religion. 

The novel is a love story, an illicit love story between a married Hindu middle class woman in Delhi and a Muslim widower from Toronto, who is uncomfortable every time everyone identifies him as a Muslim.

Early on in the story, when the newly-in-love couple visit a shrine, the tension over identity is palpable.

“The shrine was modestly decorated with marigolds and an idol of a god, behind which quietly sat the priest. Mohini covered her head with her sari end, joined her hands and knelt before the idol, Munir looked around nervously, then shakily half-knelt beside her, joining his hands, too. The priest gave them some water, which following Mohini, Munir sipped from his hand, dabbing his head with what remained. The watching priest then gave them each some coarse sugar pellets.

When they were outside, back in the brightness, she turned to him and said, “But you are a Muslim.”

He took a breath, then replied, “If you say so. But I don’t describe myself by a faith.”

He felt stupid saying that, but it was the naked truth.

“But you bowed to our gods.”

“Your gods…Well, I paid my respect to the gods.”

“What are you, then?”

“Do I have to be something?”

“How do people know you, then?”

“As just another person. A friend. A neighbour. An author.”

Towards the end, when the Hindu nationalist rabble rouser Jetha Lal and his brutish acolytes surround Munir at the club, threatening him, Munir exclaims in despair and anger, “I’m a Canadian. Don’t put your labels on me.” To which the uncouth Jetha Lal patiently responds, “Canadian, sir. But you like Hindu women, I see. Better than Canadian women, no?” He waited. “No doubt. But you are Muslim, sir. Mlechha. Different.” 

(The word Mlechha is italicised perhaps to emphasize it, not because it is an Indian word).

A Delhi Obsession is an incisive portrayal of the unbearable intensity of Hindu nationalism that is rapidly transforming India into an intolerant, bigoted place where fear rules. Expectedly, the novel ends tragically; illicit love stories often do. But the end is as unexpected, sudden, brutal as the end of the popular Marathi film Sairat. The end keeps you awake at night, long after you have read the last page. 

I apologise for spoiling the reading experience of those who haven't yet read the novel, but I was horrified by the end of the story. In half a page, it brought alive the horror that is India today.

Jaipur Literature festival - Toronto

The Jaipur Literature Festival came to Toronto with a day-long program at the Young Centre in the Distillery District. Of a dozen or so panel discussions and chats, I participated in three and missed one.

Meenakshi Alimchandani interviewed MG Vassanji on his novel A Delhi Obsession (2019). His ninth novel is an exploration of history, memory, and identity, the broad themes that are integral to everything that he has written.

Vassanji has a rare skill to mask his piercing observations on contemporary society with a wry sense of humour. In his new novel (which I haven’t yet read) he returns to India and to Delhi. His part memoir, part travelogue, part ruminations on identity, religion and culture, A Place Within: Rediscovering India, won the Governor General’s Prize for non-fiction (2009).

He is both an insider and an outsider in India. A product of the syncretic culture, where identities are not rigidly defined, he is forever abhorrent of the Indian obsession to compartmentalise everyone into religious and caste categories.

He describes his unease with identity thus: “I find the labels ‘Hindu’ and ‘Muslim’ discomforting because they are so exclusive. They have not defined people for me in Africa (where we were simply called ‘Wahindi’ Indians), in the United States (where I lived for some years), or in Canada. I refuse to use them this way, perhaps naively and definitely against a tide; but I am not alone. I use the distinction ‘Hindu’ and ‘Muslim’ only in the context, and especially when it has been used by people for themselves or others, as in the Gujarat violence.”

Despite being a two-time winner of the Giller and several prestigious awards, Vassanji is an undervalued and underappreciated Canadian master. The Jaipur Literary Festival organisers did the right thing by having Vassanji talk about his book; they could not have thought of a better way to kick-off the Toronto edition of the festival.

John Ralston Saul is another underappreciated genius. Among the most vocal votaries of the rights of the indigenous people of Canada, Saul’s latest book Comeback argues that Canada would be a better place if it acknowledges and respects the rights of the local people.

In a freewheeling conversation with Daniel Lak (Al Jazeera), Saul spoke about the revival of the indigenous civilisation and culture and how it will be beneficial to Canada’s future, if only Canadians don’t interfere with the natural growth trajectory of the indigenous people.

I’ve read Saul’s A Fair Country (2008), in which he argues that Canada is a Métis nation (as opposed to a ‘western’ nation) that has been shaped by aboriginal ideas of egalitarianism and nonviolence.

The book successfully explains the absence in Canada of the dilemmas of identity, the existence of the ‘other’ in a society of multiple minorities that dominate other western societies.

Finally, William Dalrymple, Suketu Mehta, Pico Iyer and Andre Aciman read passages from their travelogues. Mehta read about the onset of the wonderous Bombay monsoon (from Maximum City, 2005); Dalrymple read a passage From the Holy Mountain (1997), that deals with the affairs of the Eastern Christians; Aciman read about the permanent nature of exile, where an exile continues to search for home and is never able to find one; and Iyer read a passage from his book about the Dalai Lama’s visit to Japan.

I was keen to listen Farzana Doctor speak to Shree Paradkar in Dictionaries of Desire, but it was too late in the evening and I’m now too old to spend an entire day out, even it is for contemporary literature.

Recently, I also went to the Munk Centre to listen Ramchandra Guha speak about the four faultlines of the Indian Republic. Guha is a secular scholar who has written on a number of Indian subjects including the environment, cricket, Indian history and, of course, Mahatma Gandhi.

According to Guha, the four faultlines are:

• Deepening religious division
• Persisting social inequality – caste, gender, tribal
• Environmental degradation
• Degradation of our public institutions

Belief - a novel

Belief, my debut novel, is being published next month. I began writing it soon after I came to Toronto; when I was working as a security guard at a condo in Toronto’s St. Clair West.

Those long and lonely (and cold) night shifts turned me into a fiction writer. The residents of the building supported me in many different ways, and one of them told me about Diaspora Dialogues. Through Diaspora Dialogues I met MG Vassanji, and then began a journey that transformed me as a person.

Writing doesn’t come easily to me, and it became more painful and nearly impossible during the four years I struggled with the manuscript. Many friends helped me in this process. And sometime in 2014, I forced myself to stop revising the manuscript.

Then, I waited for a publisher to publish the novel. Nobody seemed interested. If writing had been hard and painful, looking for a publisher was even more so. Helen Walsh of Diaspora Dialogues suggested I should ask Nurjehan Aziz of Mawenzi House (earlier known as TSAR). I did, and she agreed.

Finally, after a very long time, the novel is ready for its readers.

Here’s the media release from the publisher:

Belief

Mayank Bhatt

TERRORISM: What makes young people give up their secure, sheltered lives and take up causes that are sure to lead to catastrophe, for others as well as themselves? This is a burning question that plagues our times.

Rafiq is a young man whose family fled the 1993 violence against Muslims in Mumbai. His father Abdul is a sceptic in religious matter and a liberal, a former labour activist in India. His mother Ruksana is devout and practicing though also a former activist who worked with poor women. The family was reduced to humble circumstances after arriving in Toronto and with Rafiq working as a web-designer, is only now beginning to look up. They proudly own a house in Mississauga.

One late afternoon Rafiq’s father and his sister discover some files on Rafiq’s computer that strongly indicate that he is part of a Muslim-radical plot to bomb public places in Toronto.

Belief examines the radicalization and alienation among a section of young Muslims living in western societies, the interplay of attitudes on both sides that is leading to an ever-widening chasm.

It does this not polemically but by setting it within the intimacy of a family situation to accentuate the difficult material conditions and the conflicts of belief, values, and hope that immigrants face in a new country.

Mayank Bhatt immigrated to Toronto in 2008 from Mumbai (Bombay), where he worked as a journalist. His short stories have been published in TOK 5: Writing the New Toronto and Canadian Voices II. In Canada he has worked as a security guard, an administrator, and an arts festival organiser. He lives in Toronto with his family.

Contact

Nurjehan Aziz

naziz@mawenzihouse.com

Sabrina Pignataro

marketing@mawenzihouse.com

416-483-7191

You may buy the book from the publisher or Amazon or from me.

Also, visit my new website and the Facebook page for updates

Trenchant yet compassionate

Earlier this week I attended a roundtable discussion of the shortlisted authors for the RBC Taylor Prize at the Toronto Reference Library. Of the five shortlisted works, I’ve only read MG Vassanji’s memoir And Home Was Kariakoo – A Memoir of East Africa.

The other books are:  

They Left Us Everything, by Plum Johnson 

One Day in August: The Untold Story Behind Canada’s Tragedy at Dieppe, by David O’Keefe

The Last Asylum: A Memoir of Madness in our Times, Barbara Taylor

Boundless, by Kathleen Winter

The prize that will be announced March 2.

Mark Medley, the books editor of Globe and Mail moderated the discussion.

The discussion was lively and engaging, and highlighted the increasing popularity of memoir, a genre that is often ignored or not taken seriously by the literary gatekeepers. The authors explained their reasons for writing the book, and delineated their (different yet similar) approaches to writing nonfiction, the availability and accessibility of material for research to augment their arguments, and their desire to reach out to a larger audience to enable a deeper and better understanding of their subject.

Medley’s questions were specific for some authors and general for others, and made me wonder whether he had read all the five books. But he was able to sustain interest of a packed audience at the library’s atrium on a cold February evening.

Vassanji’s memoir is an insider’s story of a changing Africa, and covers a large terrain, both physically and metaphorically. It’s not an easy book to read because it challenges many preconceived ideas especially of readers like me who have not visited Africa. And I’m sure the book would make a reader familiar with Africa even more uncomfortable (just as Rediscovering India – A Place Within had made me).

Vassanji is both trenchant yet compassionate in And Home was Karikoo.

Here’s a passage from the memoir (a long one) that exemplifies this duality of emotion – anger and melancholy:

In 1961 as the “winds of change” ushered in the country’s independence, a euphoric slogan was heard around the country. Uhuru na kazi, meaning “freedom and work.” The idea was common sense. We had our own flag and anthem, we had our beloved president; no longer were we an insignificant part of the British Empire, a pink smudge on the map, overseen by the colonial government and His Excellency the Governor, in a hierarchy where the white man, the bwana, was superior. But freedom came with responsibility; there was a price to self-respect and dignity: hard work. We should have to work for ourselves to make progress. In the years that followed, growing up in the postindependence heyday, we schoolboys and schoolgirls of the nation were exhorted by another slogan: be self-reliant. Jitegemee – “Help yourself.” And yet another one: Nyerere’s words: “It can be done, play your part.” There were many self-help projects in the country. It was implicit in the mood of those Cold War years that it was shameful to be reliant on other nations more powerful and consequently to be subject to their demands. The British and the Europeans were, after all, the former “colonial masters.” What sort of independence was it if we had to go to them, begging bowl in hand, in order to feed ourselves? If they still told us what to do? In 1965 West Germany stopped its military aid to Tanzania in protest against an East German consulate in the country; the country said, So be it, and refused to accept all West German aid. The conflict was resolved in a few months, but the East German consulate remained, standing large and solid, on Upanga Road. Tanzania did need military aid from West Germany, especially after the scare of the army mutiny of the previous year. But this was a matter of principle. We ran our own country.

What has happened since then? A new term came into circulation, donor; it denotes a benevolent foreign entity that looks after you; and the head of the state’s job description apparently includes touring the world seeking more aid from “the donor community.” The donors make demands on economic policies, and surely they have their political and strategic motives behind their beneficence. A few years ago, I heard a news report that at an international conference, the Tanzanian president had told the audience that his country was so poor it could not afford mosquito nets for its people. Immediately a benefactor came forward, a Hollywood actor, with an offer to donate the nets. For those of my generation who have not forgotten the calls for self-reliance and dignity, who volunteered to build houses during our vacations, and recall the pride we felt at Nyerere’s rebuff of a pushy foreign power, this is humiliating. Surely there are enough wealthy people in the country, those who own office towers and insurance companies, who own mines and export fish, who could make the donation? According to a news report in the Citizen, wealthy Tanzanians own a few billions stashed away in offshore accounts. How can a government that purchases costly military equipment, and pays its members lavish travel allowances, say it cannot afford mosquito nets? One wonders, how does the leader of a nation feel, making that statement at an international conference? Have we lost all dignity?

Here I must answer a rejoinder. I left the country after high school, therefore I missed the hardships that others endured in the years that followed. What right do I have to show this outrage? It is easy for me, the comfort of my situation in North America, to condemn the nation’s reliance on foreign aid. To which I answer that leaving a place does not sever one’s ties to it, one’s feeling of concern and belonging. We are tied to our schools, our universities, our families, even when we’ve left them – then why not to the place of our childhood, of our memories? Surely a returnee has some claim to the land which formed him – which is not in some godforsaken corner of the globe but in the centre of one’s imagination. And surely distance lends objectivity, allows one to see a place as the world see it.

I often find myself protesting that media images to the contrary, Africa is not simply wars, HIV, and hunger; people don’t simply drop dead on the streets out of sickness and hunger. (Just as I had to explain to my host family in New Jersey, way back when I was a student, that lions didn’t come roaming into our sitting rooms.) I speak of East Africa, of course. Despite hardships there is life there; people sing and laugh and play music; they go to school, they get married. In many towns, the markets are abundantly full; life is teeming, so much so that Toronto, upon my return, often feels rather moribund. Sitting on my coach at home I sometime find myself, a modern-day Don Quixote, sparring with the television, railing against reporters who fly from one starving place to another, presumably in helicopters – with all good intentions, how can one even question that? – and, with the brand-name pained expressions and sober voices that we know so well, point at the distended belly of a toddler, the fly-covered nose of a child, the shrivelled buttock of an old man. Why don’t you go somewhere happy, just for a change, I protest; report a wedding, a taarb concert, a school games day; show a well-endowed man or woman (but not a fat politician). People do celebrate, not only in Texas, but also in Temeke.

'It’s only oneself one ever discovers'

I’ve just finished reading MG Vassanji’s memoir And home was Kariakoo. It’s a book that one can’t read quickly; every ten pages or so, one is forced to pause, and reflect. It’s a book that’s disturbing and makes you uncomfortable. Later, I’ll reproduce some select passages from the book.

I want to end the year with a few passages from Vassanji's A Place Within Rediscovering India – a book that the Mint newspaper recommended to Narendra Modi when he became India’s Prime Minister.

Part memoir, part travelogue, part ruminations on identity, religion and culture, A Place Within is about India that we know and yet don’t know.

Here are some passages from the book:

•••••

W

hy this obsession with the past? I can only conclude that it reflects the deep dissatisfaction of unfinished, incomplete migrations, a perpetual homelessness in my life. My colonial existence – in which memory and the past were trampled upon in a rush to better our lot – and the insecurities of an unorthodox communal culture, in the process of extinction and reinvention by the exigencies of globalized living and modern politics have both created an uncontrollable and perhaps vain desire to know and record who I am. There are the ways of the mystic and the scientist to answer this question; and there is the way of history and fiction, which I find more compelling. In how I connect to the history, I learn about myself.

•••••

I

 always cringe at the terms ‘Hindu’ and ‘Muslim’; they are so final, so unequivocal. So exclusive. For ‘Hindu’ – itself derived not from the name of a founder as ‘Christian’ is or a philosophy or attitude (of submission) as ‘Muslim’ is, but from a geographical marker, the river Indus – I often substitute ‘Indian’ for India’s primary identity is rooted in its ancient history and culture, which preceded those religious divisions. I imagined India as my ancestral homeland; to witness upon, upon my arrival, its divisions running so deep was profoundly unsettling. It was to be asked to carry an open wound where perhaps only an itch had existed; to accept difference at the profoundest level.

 •••••

P

artition had sharpened the separation and Muslims, it seemed to me, instead of asserting their essential and primary Indian-ness, shouting it from the rooftops and from their guts, had fallen into the trap of allowing themselves to be seen as a minority and as outsiders, accepting a primary identity defined by faith in a unity, in a unity (called the “umma”) that crosses political, cultural, and ethnic boundaries. But such an identity is often abstract and culturally rootless. How dangerous such a self-affirmation can become for young people who have witnessed in our own times – for example in the July 7, 2005, bombings in London – when in their frustrations about the plight of their “brothers” across the world, they run amok attempting to destroy the very societies that have nurtured them.

•••••

O

n the other hand, I come across Muslim sympathizers – in India as well as Toronto – who need their Muslims as the distinct Other, the antagonist to pit against the “majority” society they consider unjust, to which of course they implicitly and comfortably belong. To tell people that politically and culturally you don’t subscribe to this gulf among the same people, and that in matters of faith you were brought up in a very local Indian tradition that was a blend of the two faiths, is to appear naïve or quixotic. It is to meet a blank stare, it is to end a conversation.

•••••

O

ne of the ironies of the upsurge of middle-class Hindu nationalism is that this same class of privileged Indians is instrumental in shaping the new concepts of citizenship in Canada, Britain, and the United States, by their immigration to these countries and their largely successful struggles for equal rights even as small cultural, racial, and religious minorities. Their Western host countries, of course, no longer see themselves in racial or nationalist terms – which is not to say that such consciousness, especially in discussions of culture, do not exist. But it is always contested, and not the least by people of Indian origin. Affirmative action continues to be used successfully to redress a racist past, and systemic non-representation. In a reverse irony, many of the Indian middle classes, assured of their rights in their new, multicultural homes, turn around to support financially and promote militant nationalism in the native country. Many of them would wish for a Hindu India but not a Christian or Euro America or Canada.

•••••

A

fter my first Indian visit, I would be asked, back in Toronto, why I let the violence bother me. I did not live there after all, had never lived there, and I was safely here, anyway. I could have said that surely all violence anywhere should affect us; what came to mind instead was that I could not accept India’s embrace and turn away from the violence. It must in some way be a part of me.

Two necessary disclaimers.

I have already said that I find the labels ‘Hindu’ and ‘Muslim’ discomforting because they are so exclusive. They have not defined people for me in Africa (where we were simply called ‘Wahindi’ Indians), in the United States (where I lived for some years), or in Canada. I refuse to use them this way, perhaps naively and definitely against a tide; but I am not alone. I use the distinction ‘Hindu’ and ‘Muslim’ only in the context, and especially when it has been used by people for themselves or others, as in the Gujarat violence.

So deep is the suspicion when one talks of conflicts, that one has to state over and over that to describe the murder of a Muslim here is not to deny, let alone justify, the murder of a Hindu elsewhere, that a fanatic group does not represent an entire people, and there is no entire people, Hindu or Muslim, anyway. Attempts to create them, of course, have always been there.

•••••

W

hen I was a boy in colonial Africa, history began and ended with the arrival in Zanzibar and Mombasa of my grandparents or great grandparents from Gujarat. Beyond that, nothing else mattered, all was myth, and there was only the present. After a few years in North America, I came upon the realization that that ever-present, which had been mine, my story, had itself begun to drift away towards the neglected and spurned stories of my forebears, and I stood at the threshold of becoming a man without history, rootless. And so origins and history became an obsession, both a curse and a thrilling call.

•••••

T

his 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.

MG Vassanji's Assassin's Song in Hindi

Harish Narang and Charu Sharma’s Hindi translation of MG Vassanji’s Assassin’s Song was launched at the Brampton library Sunday afternoon by the Hindi Writers Guild.

Vassanji read three passages from the novel in English, Meena Chopra, poet and painter, read from the Hindi translation of the passages, and Dr. Shailaja Saxena and Suman K. Ghai critiqued the novel.

The book was formally launched in India in July 2012.

It was a rare public reading by the two-time Giller winner Vassanji. He read three passages from the novel – Sufi Nur Fazal’s first encounter with the princess, young Karsan’s meeting with his father who is the head of the Pirbaag shrine, and the letter Karsan writes to his father informing him that he rejects his spiritual inheritance.

Meena Chopra read the Hindi passages and included some parts that Vassanji hadn’t read, thus giving a better perspective and a fuller portrait of the novel.

The tour de force of the afternoon was Dr. Saxena’s commentary of the novel. In an erudite and studied presentation on the novel, Dr. Saxena delineated the strengths of the novel – especially the seamless weaving of the three eras – the 13th century, the 1960s and 1970s and the 2002-03 period – that form the part of the novel.

Another telling comment, which revealed the depth of her understanding of the techniques of storytelling, was her description of the characters in the book – the Saheb, the mother, Karsan, Karsan’s younger brother Mansoor who becomes a militant Muslim in post-2002 Gujarat, and Pirbaag – the Sufi shrine. 

Only a truly discerning reader would describe a location as a character. And Pirbaag is, indeed, no less than a character in the novel.

Suman K. Ghai’s commentary highlighted Vassanji’s effortless characterisation, and the dexterous translation; he also emphasized that Vassanji has been able to capture some of the comedic aspects of an immigrant’s life in the 1970s.

The event had become possible thanks to Meena Chopra’s continuous efforts. 

Cook / Book

Sang Kim

I envy those who cook, and I envy those who write fiction. 

I can’t cook, and I struggle every morning with my fiction writing.

I compensate for my deficiencies in the culinary arts by loving my food, and constantly experimenting.

My love for food is in inverse proportion to my ability to cook. I love food, I don’t cook.  

Over the last three years and some months in Toronto, I've have developed a palate for cuisines I couldn't possibly have imagined I’d ever eat when I was in India.

Primarily, this is because I didn’t even know they existed, or had read about them only in Vir Sanghvi’s food columns when I was in India.

I had Moroccan Tajine at a restaurant in downtown Toronto not too long ago. My friend told me that the meat was optional, but I did the right thing having it with meat. It added substantially to the taste and the aroma.

Tajine is a North African delicacy that gets its name from the earthen vessel in which it is made – not unlike the traditional method of cooking the masterpiece of Gujarati delicacy – the Undhiyu.

A few days ago, I had the Iranian Shole Zard – a delicacy that I’m convinced is a divine concoction that humans only accidentally discovered.

Some time ago, a group of friends had warm Japanese sake in small clay cups and we sat on wooden benches enjoying deep fried oysters with three kinds of sauce.

I compensate for my deficiencies in creative writing (and every day I discover new ones) by enjoying good writing, especially good literature.

Whenever I meet someone who is a natural at both cooking and writing, all I really want to do is just go back to bed, and never get up. 

And I make it a point to acknowledge their talents.

I recently discovered that MG Vassanji, the two times Giller winner, is also an accomplished chef – his Hyderabadi-style eggplant recipe is as magnificent as his prose.

Jasmine D'Costa makes exquisite chicken biryani.

That brings me to my friend Sang Kim.


Every time I meet Sang, I feel completely inferior.

He’s everything that I want to be and will probably never be.

This is how he describes himself on his Facebook page:  “Author, Playwright, Social Entrepreneur, Restaurateur, Accidental Chef.”

He is also the Co-Director of the Small Press of Toronto (SPoT), a bi-annual book fair at various venues throughout Toronto. 

Last month, I visited the fall edition of the SPoT fair to meet Sheniz Janmohamed, Doyali Farah Islam and Ava Homa.

I met Sang. too.

And he gave me yet another reason to crawl back to bed and hide.

He stood in the middle of the book fair, completely oblivious of his surroundings, and recited first of Rilke’s Duino Elegies.

In case you don’t know, that’s one long poem!

I was stunned; as, I’m sure, were Sheniz and Ava.

He later wrote to me, “One of my life's goals is to memorize all 10 Elegies - they say EVERYTHING.”

Sang also told me that he was working on a book and a television project called Cook / Book where he'll be interviewing Toronto writers in their kitchens and cook together.

Acclaimed novelists Katherine Govier, Austin Clarke and Joy Kogawa, have confirmed their participation in the project.

I believe Sang has also convinced Ava Homa to be a part of the project. 

It’s a book worth waiting for.

Image: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10150730419885534&set=a.10150354283735534.594165.718330533&type=3&theater

South Asian-Canadian sensibility

A few days ago, I saw an exquisite documentary Carmel Ashram – A brief glimpse my friend Gavin Barrett posted on Facebook.

In his trademark self-deprecating manner Gavin describes what is a remarkably lyrical and poetic memoir as a “poorly produced account” of a journey he took in January to Jalpaiguri (on the foothills of Darjeeling) to meet his Aunt June, a poet and an advertising professional-turned cloistered nun at the Carmel ashram. (See the video here: Carmel Ashram – A Brief glimpse).

Eschewing hyperbole – which wouldn’t have been out-of-place and perhaps more natural, given that the narrator was meeting his aunt after decades – Gavin’s austere and simple narrative captures the austerity of the ashram, the simple and industrious life that the nuns lead.

The film’s appeal lies in its depiction of India that is rarely seen or acknowledged – an India that has been shining even when its GDP wasn’t galloping.

The subdued and sublime sensibility of a poet surfaces effortlessly and consistently throughout the short film, both in the images and the words that he chooses to tell his story; a sensibility that is clearly a confluence of the filmmaker’s Indian past and Canadian present.

Although, I’m not sure that is his identity.

I was reminded of MG Vassanji’s essay The Postcolonial Writer: Myth Maker and Folk Historian in A Meeting of Streams: South Asian Canadian Literature (Edited by MG Vassanji and published by TSAR Publications 1985).

Vassanji explains, “...He (the writer) gives himself a history; he recreates the past, which exists only in memory and is otherwise obliterated, so fast has his world transformed... To borrow an image from physics, he creates a field space – of words, images, and landscapes – in which to work with, and install the present.”

South Asian and Indian sensibilities were among the many aspects of a discussion in which I participated a couple of weeks ago.

Travel writer and India tourism expert Mariellen Ward moderated an informal chat in which Jasmine D’Costa, Farzana Doctor, Niranjana Iyer and I shared our views with Mariellen on the rise of Indian writing in English in Canada.

The discussion was in the wake of the launch of Indian Voices 1 – an anthology of prose and poetry by Indians residing in 16 countries across the globe. The second largest number of writers in the volume – that will be released in Toronto next month – is from Canada.

Is there a South Asian or an Indian sensibility that is inherent and perceptible to writers who may be from different parts of the world but are of a South Asian or Indian descent?

In his Introduction to A Meeting of Streams: South Asian Canadian Literature, Vassanji says, “The term South Asian is a self-definition of the kind just introduced. It implies much. It refers to people who trace their ancestry to the Indian subcontinent. It includes, besides those who come to North America immediately from the countries of South Asia, the “East Indians” of the Caribbean and the “Asians” of East and South Africa.

“Obviously, then, it does not represent a single stand, a single outlook or concern in political, cultural, or literary matters. Each of the several South Asian groups comes with greatly differing immediate experience. South Asian is then perhaps a term used as one of contrast...South Asian Canadian Literature, similarly, is not intended to convey a single outlook in literary matters."

Writing is not easy...

I used to think that writing was, well, if not easy, not difficult either.

That was a long time ago. Then, a couple of years ago, I embarked upon a foolhardy mission to write a novel.

Euripides was right. Those whom Gods wish to destroy, they make them mad first.

I shall skip a reiteration of how my short story turned into a novel, and all the momentous events that sort of gave a new direction to life, and a fresh impetus to my enthusiasm.

They seem important only to me.

After two years of writing, I am about to complete the first draft of a novel – a modest 60,000 words or so.

I should be happy, if not overjoyed. I am not.

I’m unsure and wary, and realise that I need to do a million things more with the draft, before I can say that the novel is worthy of being read by others who are not my friends and well-wishers.  

During these two years, I have had tremendous support from published writers, both established ones and the about-to-be established ones.

They empathise with me – a newbie on the block. They cheer me on as I struggle, much as a newcomer to Canada from the tropics does, learning to walk on the snow, wearing nine layers of warm clothes and heavy snow boots.

It is the 'been there, done it' syndrome, I guess. 

They tell me that my modest achievement, which seems so great to me, is in reality the easy part. From next month, I embark upon the harder task of re-writing. And I have no idea when that process will end, if ever.

In the past, I have enjoyed reading good writing, especially good prose writing both fiction and non-fiction, in a general sort of a way.

Over the last two years, writing has helped me evolve as a reader. I pay attention to what I read, to the way in which a writer captures an emotion, a feeling, and the felicitous use of an expression, a turn of phrase, to convey precisely a mere nuance.

Let me illustrate this by an example from MG Vassanji’s The In-Between World of Vikram Lall

The train from Kisumu had come in late, and so we left at a little before dawn from Nakuru, which was as well because we could see more, though the Kisumu passengers were irate for having to wake up from their rocking slumbers. We reached Naivasha as dawn was breaking beyond the mountains.

How can I describe that feeling of looking out the sliding window above the little washbasin, as the small second-class cabin jostled and bumped along the rails, and taking in deep breaths of that cool, clean air and, simply, with wide hungry eyes absorbing my world. It was to become aware of one’s world, physically, for the first time, in a manner I had never done before, whose universe had encompassed our housing estate and my school, the shop and my friends, the tree-lined street outside that brought people in and out of our neighbourhood.

That scene outside the train window I can conjure up at any time of the day or night; I would see, feel, and experience it in similar ways so frequently in my life; in some essential way it defines me. This was my country – how could it not be?

I keep the book down and sigh. Will I achieve such depth, ever?  

Writing is not easy. In fact, it is a struggle.