WRITING. JAPAN. A DEEP DARK WORLD

31st December 2015

It is an exceptionally daunting task writing of and about the Japanese skill in writing. It is like commenting on the batting skills of Sir Donald Bradman when you joined the high school cricket team. Clearly you find you know too little about the sport, have played little or almost nothing of it yet and obviously are too small a speck on the field to have the audacity to comprehend a universe that could engulf you with its opening stroke from the middle of his masterfully opened bat. 

So you understand why this piece is all about gut, instinct, heart, emotion, those sorts of things. Things that you perhaps will only be able to qualify if you set about doing what I intend to do here. 

Writing about Japanese literary genius. It is a humbling place.

I have learnt that evil can be beautiful. That hate must be given a long leash. That love can be ugly. This genius of the Japanese mind finds release in its' printed word. You are most welcome to the books I list below...my baby steps, initiation if you wish, to an idea of what makes them who they are.

But then Evil is too strong a word for what the Japanese contemporary authors work with. They don't pen evil, they pen the fallible, the human heart, they write of its' innocent horrors in all its glory, in all its blasphemy and then they make it sublime. Poetic.

No ink tank can create so much splendour out of these unnoticeables, reforge them so carefully that they are forced to take centre stage in the story. There are no heroes. The women are ethereal ofcourse.

In each and every character that both the Murakami's weave for instance, both authors strangely bonded by their name and their ideas of realism, there is a creeping touch of the careless, the silent individual, his unassuming vice, the callous beauty of an uninspiring mind. We see them every day, you and I, in our own subcultures and identities and we fail them. We fail to see the brilliance they exude in their mediocrity, for I find, the Japanese have made the common, the unembellished, startlingly gorgeous, bordering divine. I do not wish to be ridiculed here by commenting on the mad genius of Haruki Murakami. Reading him is a privilege.

Take food for instance, a subject of deep meditative importance for every Japanese writer; You will be convinced that you are watching the shitatake mushrooms boil in the Ramen, you swear you can smell the jasmine tea being soaked onto the page, feel the thin sheen of the finely sliced fish that is being sauced and flipped over by the author, you can hear the gravy pour onto the flattened rice, sense the squid being squeezed on the frying pan, and you can taste the delicate sweetness of the Anpan buns being served by the murderer. 

That's where they take you. Right onto the perfectly crafted wooden foldable table. You sit staring at it, tasting off it. 

And then they get gruesome. Every single element on that plate will remind you somehow of the vast canvas of malice, of discontent that will greet you on every successive page...from the stickiness of the rice, the sour taste of the fish sauce to the red squelching of the tomato into the gravy...every thing will connect the dots of the human heart and its' pitless darkness.

Try Natsuo Kirino in OUT... she is the uncrowned queen of crime being both grisly and preposterous in her storytelling. And yet. Queen she stays.

When you read a Higashino, you start eyeing your neighbour with much more curiosity. That happened to me. He toys with your idea of love, lust, stalking, hate, faith, ability at mathematics, unflinching, giving devotion...he leaves you blinking with sadness and wiping at those tears that form when you fall in love with the wrong side. 

Did I mention, they don't take sides? O, these clever, clever authors. That's the test really. Who's side is the audience on anyway? There is no bad killer, there are no good rapists...who are these people? Why did I ever pick up this book. Why can't I put it down? Don't worry, you haven't been had.

For those who find the profound philosophy and surrealism of Japanese literature a tad bothersome and crave the art that Manga is famous for, I recommend Sanctuary - written by Sho Fumimura, and illustrated by Ryoichi Ikegami. This story takes you to new highs and lows of modern Japan...from the Diet to dangerous mafia to delinquents and depressive childhoods. It brings a wonderfully unsurreal and universally acceptable idea of Masala into Japanese story telling. Unpretentious, Sanctuary is as bollywood as Japan can get without losing its' pristine identity. Its a splendid read on a sunny afternoon to cuddle up to this groovy bit of thrill and coffee.

Coming back to my old romance with the contemporary Jap authors,  I will be painting a very shallow landscpae if I do not mention just how much justice they can do to concepts like Sin. They can make the vatican historians shrivel. It is indeed a good thing no Japanese ever considered rewriting Dante's Inferno. Their ideas of sin and the grieving human soul are so refined, so steeped in honesty that hell may have issues dealing with the complexities unfolding here...Ogawa in Revenge for example weaves a tale of man made horrors and local myths and urban legends with unending simplicity. Her Diving Pool is my next.

There are some books that bother you long after you have finished reading them...that happened to me in my tenth grade after i finished my first Ayn Rand. Clearly i was transformed and hated the world and i wanted to change everything, right that very instant. Sure.

That's what the Journey under the Midnight Sun does to you. Makes you wish the damn book would not affect you after you put it down and walk away...but it does. It irritates you, it doesn't close those infernal loops, those questions that your mind throws at you in rapid fire succession, but you still want to read it from the authors pen alone...and that satisfaction he won't give! 

Dammit. He just wont tell you what you wish to hear...he leaves you and he doesn't care how badly you need to flatline. He gives you The story of Two Lovers. Deal with it Romeo. And that is what you call reductionist. Truly reductionist. It's so much gentleness and pain and hate and trauma and death and murder and disgust and disappointment and filth and beauty and sex...but it's just a simple raw love story in the end. Like I said, I am dealing with it.

I have never been to Japan. I regret not knowing their language. But I do believe that I have come to know them, slowly, deeply, simply, at a molecular level. Know them in their everydayness, in their subjective boredoms, in their banal and their excesses, their unchecked tenacity to excel, their liberating need to perfect the perfect...I am glimpsing a universe here, a mind boggling realm of stars which delve into the deepest notions of goodness and kindness and evil and hate.

 

And the first page is where it all begins. Every. single. time. Never forget that! 

PURULIA DIARIES 2015 : OF CHHOU MASKS AND MAGIC

Story: Anjita Roychaudhury
Photo Courtesy: Bodhayan Roychaudhury 
19th December 2015, 

Charida village in Bagmundi, Purulia district, is the back of beyond of the back of beyond. The landscape shifts and villages fly past looking clean, and clouds of lotuses bloom in clear ponds as cows graze and chimneys smoke the fresh bricks being toasted in their kilns. The egg devils and aubergine fritters sold by the local kaka babu is unambiguously delicious and ridiculously cheap. The tea sits on stoking hot coals. It's where the vodaphone signal is at its' strongest. It's also where the roads are unendingly smooth...almost eerily pothole-free. Like an autobahn in the middle of a graveyard. 
 

There has been however, for the past 6 decades or so, no known source of employment generated for the men who roam the fields and stare at endless horizons. Surviving on wild roots, leaves and raving antics of the local politicians, their hope for redemption have been these masks. Their loudest claim to avoid ignominy in the face of poverty. It helps keep them and a tribal traditional dance form alive, which very few city dwellers like us will have the time to patronise twice. It is after all, a 7 hour drive on a good day from Calcutta and we are the haloed employed people of this free country. 


The artists, behind their glorious masks and meditative looks, hide thin, ricketty, malnourished frames. They look happy somehow. This evening has been in the making for months. The artisans will be paid, sheltered and fed for a week. They all seem upbeat at the prospect. Food for dancing. Such shortlived exubérance makes the word bourgeoisie hang in mid air, silently floating on top of your head, the moment you take your red plastic seat at the rim of the patchwork amphitheatre, waiting for the show to begin. You feel small, humbled. You want to do something more than just sit there and smile and clap and buy masks for your living room... you feel washed in raw socialist ideals with every passing moment spent on that red plastic chair. Naxalism suddenly makes sense in all its unfairness. 


With worn out socks doubling up as footpads and old Tshirts barely concealing the worn out bodies that bear the heavily adorned and riotously coloured headgear with such pride, you descend into their world with a loud drumbeat from their troupe's Pala. It is a small patch of mud, almost dry enough to start a storm, surrounded by glee infested children of the neighbourhood, who turn more keenly to see what shoes you wear than the Chhou artists on display. You cringe in your jacket and you share your food and your chocolates with them, even as the first artists march onto the enclosure with a confidence that would do Vishnu proud. 


The artist is ofcourse playing the part of Krishna that evening, battling the demons with Balaram, in order to win back Devlok for the sages and the gods above.This battle he will win...he is scripted to win...even as the journalists from calcutta click away at the many possibilities of making this look any more surreal than it already is. But this battle to survive the poverty that laces every single performance...how do you ever win over that? Maybe the photographers can photoshop that part too.


You begin to understand why their art must remain shrouded in darkness. These masks which are impossibly beautiful to the naked eye, need the night to hide the tatters that shroud the man who wears it with such aplomb. Daylight would ruin this magic... flesh and bones would kill this fever pitch cry to glory. 


We stop taking pictures. We soak it in. We are spellbound. Every move, every lustfully devotional chant, every gymnastic twirl and sommersault, every brandishing of sword and bow makes for rousing rounds of applause and we too join in, in shameless abandon. This is better than childhood. These people, my people, our people...our poorest of the poor people, are simply incomparable. Their art, their soul, their kindness, their craft, their wide childlike grins, their deft fingers that create these gods and godesses that sell for a few bucks, their rich heritage and poor realities, their brilliant painted faces on stage and their curiously invisible lives...are all so rich. So powerful in its will to live beyond its obvious means.

 
Live they do, in no small measure. They live in every single purulia song, sung with so much passion and attention. They live in the Chhou masks that mask their ragged walls, their dimly lit porches and their cracked ceilings and lives...they live in every little jerk of that enormous mask on that tired, summersaulting body. The body that shrugs and then quivers to life every time the haunting tunes of the hyms, rooted in the mythologies that this place belongs to, matches the rolling drums and rises to a warlike crescendo.   

They dance because that’s all they know, They fly because they dream, they sing because they need to be heard, they smile because they hope; and once the audience leaves, they get ready again for their next performance. They paint their faces, wear their wigs, limber their joints and laugh over a few cups of tea and cigarettes. They will always keep performing. For life itself is just a rehearsal.

BORN AGAIN, PAKISTAN

Story: Anjita Roychaudhury
23rd March 2015

It's no big secret, I have always had a deep fascination for Pakistan, its beautiful people, their fabled mehman nawazi, their adab, lihaaz, their elegance, their silken dialect, their poetry, their incredibly melancholic voices that lingered in this part of the subcontinent longer, their TV serials which I got an ample dose of, growing up with some very happy aunts who loved Pak serials...


So, yes I was in love with Dr. Irfan at 16 (not Dr. Ahmer mind you) ...Yes, I am in love with Fawad Khan and yes, I never got over Bilal Maqsood (we are talking post 16 me here). But it's not just these examples of good looks, talent, excellence in their culture & music that I have sought out or loved from the other side. There is so much to learn, so much to see, so much to share...and more's the pity, that it gets tougher every passing year to dream of that collective time spent together.

 

I honestly think, we are both a deeply misunderstood and madly in love people. For there can't be so much hate if there isn't an abyss full of love deep down there. It couldn't have hurt them any less to be slit down the middle and handed out a raw deal in the name of a nation or Qaum.


They must have stories to tell, of good times and good people, hyms and tales, songs and lore... just like the ones I heard during my university thesis. So much pain, so many smiles doused in happy tears and such goodwill, all buried under one godforsaken line. A line which we haven't stopped fighting over since. We must be crazy to want the same things and not want to share it.


Not that that's going to happen anytime soon. We are such a learned democratic lot. We redistribute and redivide hatred. Every single 5 year term.


Nothing I write here or say ever, on or off line will change any hardline or hard heart into believing that the whole point, the whole axiom of a two nation theory stood exhausted the moment the British left. This was a pie that didnt need cutting. If only the heads who baked it hadn't swollen up like pumpkins. It was not a partition of a country, it was punishment for two states, Punjab and Bengal that had dared the Raj and the two lay now like severed arms and bleeding arteries, as the nations formed with its new nationalities stared horrified.


Funny isn't it...the Gora left, we followed them in our white loyalty and once we reached the shores of England we the browns managed to live mostly in peace together, like newfound brothers in British arms. Oxford degrees et al.

Now back home, our ministers ensured that we forgot the Brits had left, and we forgot all about the good times and the brotherhood. I supposed we had little choice. The collective pain was too great. All that remained and was reminded hereof, by each state player and its loud orators constantly, through tales and trauma, were the brutal scars of one of the worst managed human movements in history. And today in hindsight, like every other armchair socialist, I can chose to blame every single person who permitted it to happen.

As if we could have changed anything about it. As if we can change anything about it today, with our new fangled technology and media and social network. Such catalysts we turned out to be! Pah. Fact is...we were simply not ready to be independent, even lesser to be two nations. But we are now, we are ready to behave like two mature nation states. But we won't. It defies all logic, but we simply won't. And there will be wars, there will be new lines to argue about, new glaciers to defend and new walls to build. So much work to do...so little time.



I don't even know why a Pakistan day should prompt me to pen something which won't change anything. But writing helps. It masks the futility, which is not lost on me, never was...we will swear by their singers, they will swear by our films, we will haggle over the umpire's call in an ODI and support them when they beat australia, then we go right back to our militant ways. Such evolution...mind numbing!


 

So cheers to you Pakistan, on a day when you shall hopefully rise from your tragedies and hurrahs and go back in time and find in your hearts the kindness that our relationship needs. Today more than ever. Peace be upon you. Celebrate. It is your day after all.

SHAME ON YOU WOMAN.

Story: Anjita Roychaudhury

15th March 2015

How do you plan to save a child from her father, how to save a woman from a passerby, how to save a female passenger from a bus conductor, how to save a single woman from her own date, how do you caution the little girl on the evils of talking to the veggie vendor, how to tell a child that the school cleaner could be her rapist? when does she feel happy smiling at a boy and not squirming after? how does one end sickness of this magnitude? what sexual imagery of the woman do we snuff out? In her stereotype TV commercial underwear? in her 13 month old infant diapers? or in her silk sari? most likely the one in her shorts!

So which one does the man spare, when he isn't hunting? what image is he looking to molest? Maybe we ought to start by teaching these tiny unaware unsuspecting babies to stop breathing? Because we are a hunted lot now. We are hunted for being.

We are a sick people and the sooner we stood up and did what Suzette was able to, to take pride in being the victim of a sexual horror, and not just be a statistic, then maybe, just maybe we have the one chance of killing this mindless beast, once & for all. Because perversion has no end, it mutates to a deeper darker version of its own self. And our system breeds it. endlessly. with or without the BBC word of caution.

We need to monitor our children, very closely, our boys even closer still, because the massive percentage of this rotten Indian males (i will not be apologising to any of my many men friends, because like us, its your gender, you end up taking a collective fall for it, like we do for ours, we get raped for being women, so you get to share the blame with the wondermen on unending sexprowls) is not going to have a change of heart and he wont understand this trauma or pain or death. He simply won't. But he can be taught. trained to feel pain and trauma & fear death.

This wont happen without a massive surge, an precedented cleansing, a violent pent up rage from nearly 50% of this country's population that just doesn't react much to brutality of this order. It is our fault...let's face it. We let this happen to us. We are weak enough to let this pass, year on year, election after election, we are not even on any serious manifesto, we exist without becoming relevant to state machinery and political haggling and also to our male counterparts. We like to blame it on the Indian DNA (which is just such a ridiculous idea) and every morning's paper is making me realise that we are all just scared little escapists. We will write and comment and chat while endless little children and women will bear this brunt of male angst and power tripping somewhere. Or perhaps we will lynch them.

The system won't do it, and we are too disunited to bother as a collective unit of victims. And yes, we all are victims, because I dare ask here how many of us who have ever boarded a bus, plane, auto, train, rickshaw have not been physically, mentally, verbally spared the abuse, in small significant doses, as we grew up? It didnt just happen to someone I know, it happened to everyone i know. So lets keep pretending it never happened. That's what's sick about us, not the men, us. We have never fought back! Ever. Because we chose to forget the disgust, the sheer vomit inducing sensation that gripped us when we felt the look, touch, words, a song, a pinch, the squeeze of hands. We deserve this image. And sadly some of our guiltless men will pay the price, even if they are harmless gentle souls. Too bad.

But I think it's time this need for change gained a critical mass and we stopped voyeuring out on some outraged news anchors verbal diarrhéa every night and tuck ourselves into this *never never land* again. We need to teach our girls to fight, physically, morally, verbally, and loudly. Take pride that you survived and you fought. Take pride that some man had the courage to help you fight, or some woman maybe gathered her stregth to fight with you, but fight you must. You could get hurt but learn to fight back. I intend to, with or without any support. Because there must be a day when it all stops. And if you want to be a part of this fight, do it. Dont depend on any wall, or call or bandh or march to get the courage. You have to find it in you to fight this alone. Suzette did. Nirbhaya did. This child probably is still fighting to live in this god forsaken hospital.

Let's stop being hunted for being who we are.