The Lowland

A loved one long gone survives in our memories. Does the loved one ever actually go then? Is the loved one painfully present? Does that mean bygone never actually departs? If yes, the palpable emotion emanating from one would be happiness – happiness of never losing who are thought as lost. Is it always happiness? I had never contemplated on it until I came across The Lowland – the swampy patch between two ponds in old Calcutta that harbors the memories of a loved one whom a family loses in a tragedy. Jhumpa Lahiri, the mind behind The Lowland made me traverse from Calcutta to Rhode Island with two members of this family – Gauri and Subhash between whom Udayan lives forever long after he dies in the lowland. Did Udayan’s unsaid presence make them happy? Lahiri’s family saga doesn’t answer this and perhaps no one can. Why? Because happiness can’t be defined. We all have our own versions of happiness, and so did Gauri and Subhash. Udayan, the seam between Gauri and Subhash when he was alive becomes the breach between them after his death. None can be impugned for none can be ascribed for life’s unpredictable circumstances.

It’s said marriage is an institution in which interpersonal relationships are acknowledged. Are they, always? If yes, then for what? Why does Subhash marry Gauri? To acknowledge his duty towards his brother Udayan’s widowed? To pacify his guilt for being away from his brother when he was tangled in Mao-inspired political upheavals? To protect Gauri from the tentacles of his mother’s disapproval and hatred for her and take her away abroad to lead a life of respect? To let his secret admiration for Gauri get a chance to bloom into love? If I look from Gauri’s point of view, a different set of questions confront me. Why did she marry her dead husband’s brother? To escape from the bondages a single mother-to-be is subjected to? To abandon in-laws who never accepted her as she wasn’t chosen by them for their son? To live a better life in a far-off country rather than her own where she lacked freedom to live her life on her terms? The society that we live in demands a name for a relation between a man and a woman not bonded by blood; and marriage possibly is the most easily affordable name that can be had. Subhash and Gauri sought its resort too; convenient and workable as most would think. So, marriage can be about convenience and work-around as well. Lahiri’s characters seem to be silently mocking at this societal norm.

Marriage is workable perhaps, but what about love? Is it workable too? Surely not. You cannot create love as much as you may try. It’s instinctive and buds on its own. You needn’t work on it. And if you are working your way out then it’s purely an affair of adjustment. Lahiri concedes this through the life that Subhash and Gauri build up in Rhode Island. They are together as husband and wife, as mother and father of Gauri and Udayan’s daughter yet they are far apart as lovers. Are they friends? No. They are two complete strangers after years of living together. There’s a bridge that separates them. Gauri doesn’t want to cross it, and Subhash is both tired and afraid of crossing it. Amidst this turmoil, Gauri finds solace in her own world – her new world free of obligations with which she had to live in her own country. She yearns for a new independence now – independence from her identity as a wife and as a mother. Was Gauri unable to forget Udayan, you may ask. Could she? Was she wrong if she couldn’t? Udayan’s death was pinned to her soul. It’s a love that succeeded to live beyond death.

Have you heard this popular adage?

Tis a lesson you should heed:

Try, try, try again.

If at first you don’t succeed,

Try, try, try again.

Until when should you keep trying? And at the cost of what? The philosophies of sacrifice and standing through thick and thin for family cannot force all to give up desires. The school of thought that preaches living for others cannot buy off idiosyncrasy. Quitting and abandoning don’t always measure courage of an individual to endure. They also mean letting go things that instill pain and bring in suffering. Gauri is looked upon as self-conceited by many. But I would ask for what? She wouldn’t have lived a life had she been the emblematic sacrificing mother and wife. Her choice of solitude may look impulsive. However, had her choice been togetherness, it would have still brought in seclusion for her. You make ask, what did she gain by standing out solo? I would ask what would have she gained by joining the crowd? She took the road not taken. Tradition is so entrenched in us that unconventional and conceited seem synonymous.

Love doesn’t recognize blood and stark realities cannot remain in shadows for long. To build a relationship, you simply need two ingredients – love and truth. Subhash loved his daughter unconditionally, not out of duty or love for his brother but only for the sake of love. He always dreaded truth – the truth behind fatherhood of his daughter. When he confronts his fear one fine day, he realizes that he had lived with an anxiety that he needn’t have to bear after all. We complicate our lives way beyond what they actually are. We keep hiding our faces behind masks, and sooner or later the masks fall off. We give different names to this falling of masks – realization, renunciation, reincarnation, and many others. It is much easier to look at life the way it is. As always Jhumpa Lahiri gives us characters who are real, and who make you feel that their choices could be yours. They dwell questions in your mind, and their beautifully crafted sentences leave a hint or two for you to find answers in the maze of words. I kept unfolding the pages in The Lowland in the wake of knowing what happens. Nothing really happens, just like life where everything happens yet it seems nothing happened.

I don’t count Lahiri as one of my favorites for no reason. Go to The Lowland and make a journey to and fro between Calcutta and Rhode Island, and you will have reason enough to fall in love with Lahiri.

Narcopolis

S had said, ‘In the end you will become an addict.’ Did I? Have I? Can I? Was I already? All questions seem to intersperse into one another and wander into the apartment at S.Terrace road – across seven seas where S holds it, turns its folios and gets soaked into it –this opium called Narcopolis. S sowed the seeds of Narcopolis in me and now it’s a full-fledged tree with its roots protracted deep in my mind. They say you only introduce your worst enemy to opium. Is it? Is S my friend or my enemy? Is he different from me or is he me? Is he the ‘I’ who is writing this or the ‘I’ who accompanies me while I tread on this drug journey? Now and then I turn the pages of the opium den and smell the innocent nostalgia that its author Jeet Thayil has woven within it. As I do this I reminiscence voices that are crushed and forgotten; I reminiscence a city without its veils and in all its squalor that holds these nameless voices and lets them out in the smoke of opium, heroin and weed. S made me live another life at Narcopolis – one that I had never known of, and perhaps not one but many. So, here I am making an effort to relive those lives.

Narcopolis isn’t a plot spilled with a cast that walks and talks to narrate a piece of fiction. It’s a concoction of dreams, reality, prophecy and time – all of which thrive on the drug of opium housed in another drug, the other drug being Bombay. Bombay has been the refuge for many who are homeless and lost, who are looking for themselves, who are waiting to be free, who are longing to live in addiction, who are longing to be free of addiction. What is addiction? Is it freedom or is it exile? Is freedom same as exile? Life in all its glory is an addiction and the greed to live it is a lifelong exile – exile from the emptiness that is the ultimate truth maybe. It’s an oxymoron that we live in every day, and most of us die living this paradox. While I travelled through the lanes of Narcopolis, Dom – the narrator and his opium pipe took turns to describe this enigma. Effortlessly they exchanged turns to tell the experiences of pimps, peddlers and goons, the murky and nimble desires of the lowest of the low and the highest of the high.

It’s difficult to distinguish Dom from his pipe. They seem to be one; just like S and I who seem indistinguishable many times, perhaps they too thrive on each other. Dom weaves the prologue in a single sentence spanning seven pages as if the whole of Narcopolis is a single breath of his pipe. S told me one needs to be literally high to absorb the essence of it.  Aren’t we all high on life – the single drug that captivates us, at times pushes us away from it and at others pulls us into it? Each of our lives is a long sentence that we parse with phrases, clauses and punctuations to suit our needs, to control the flow of it, and to make ourselves believe that we are in control of it. We all are scared to break this illusion of life that we ourselves have created and that we strive so bad to live. Doesn’t everything in the end turn into nihility? Yet we don’t want to believe that it is a fake life that we live. If this isn’t addiction then what is?

The notion is popular that the weakest seek the doors of opium, heroin and their cousins. Also, a theory has been postulated that they descent into a world of numbness while being entranced by them, that they tend to remain incarcerated in order to escape the reality, the mortality and the chronology that define life. If that is so why do people who have tackled and endured the ghosts of life tend to seek the shelter of drugs? Surely they aren’t the weakest if they have fought the horrendous affairs life throws upon at times. If they are strong enough to sustain why do they knock the doors of drugs? What is it that they seek? It’s a matter of choice actually. All that we do is our willing and unwilling choice. As far as the defining elements of life – reality, mortality and chronology go, do they actually delimit life? Aren’t mortality and chronology killers of the self? They are manmade concepts to keep the theories of time and space intact. We know it still we deny it; still we define our own theories of right and wrong, and pretend to live up to these dogmas. We all feed on our own hypocrisy and what a pity that we also take pride in it. S had said that it’s all fake; now it makes more sense to me, to I as well and I get drawn into what goes on within S.

As strong and resilient that we may be or pretend to be when our masks are shed and when the self is divulged – a soul that pines love is all that we have. We all are lonely in our own ways and we all are scared of it. We all want to elude from its crutches. We all want to overcome this loneliness and want a friend who can accompany us in the ubiquitous ordeals of life. We come alone into this world and while we leave we are alone again. However while we are here we don’t want to be alone. We all tend to feel feeble when we face life alone. Is it a delusion of the mind that alone is weak? Or is it a conjecture that we grow up with or develop as we grow up? Sometimes we are too padlocked to ask these questions. Sometimes we ask but we don’t get the answers. Sometimes we are tired of not being answered. Sometimes the answer is a simple no but we aren’t brave to take no for an answer. Sometimes the answer is yes but we are too blinded to see it. At all times in these ‘sometimes’ we look for support and some souls find this support provisioned in the puffs and whiffs of what are called drugs. Am I questioning the good or bad of it? I am not. Neither does Narcopolis. It’s a code switching ouroboric ear candy that S introduced me to and made me an addict in turn, as he had said in the beginning.

Iridescent, gritty, grubby, contemplative and hard-core is this opium den. When the smoke comes out, there are thoughts left on the margins of it. I take deep breaths to fathom these thoughts, and sometimes to fathom S as well. Narco – the drugs, polis – its city, S – its dweller, I –its visitor – all seem synonymous to me, all intertwined by the episodes of life’s parody. All of us are addicts engulfed in the vicious circle of living and dying and seeking in between; seeking a loving heart, seeking a listening ear and a comforting hand; and S and I are no different from us.

Palace of Illusions

“And so was born out of fire, Draupadi, daughter of King Drupad, and the princess of Paanchal”, said my mother placing the last morsel of dal soaked roti in my mouth. This signified the conclusion of the Chaitraratha Adi Parva in the epic of Mahabharata. The dinner-time story telling ritual continued throughout my childhood, and I heard the vivid tales of the epic from my mother. During one of these story sessions, my mother also narrated the Vana Parva from the epic, and said, “Then was born Lopamudra from the loss of the beautiful eyes of a deer; the wife of Agastya, and the princess of Vidarbha.”

I grew up listening to intertwined tales of both the ladies from the Mahabharata. One day I told my mother, “Draupadi is so charismatic! Her enigmatic birth from the fire is so mystifying! Why didn’t you and Daddy name me Draupadi instead of Lopamudra?” My mother replied, “Lopamudra is equally mystifying! And haven’t I told you that she was the knowledgeable wife of the great Agastya?” To this I replied, “Lopamudra is known because of Agastya! Look at Paanchali (Draupadi is also known as Paanchali), married to all the five Pandavas, and yet she had her own allure, not shadowed by the eminence of her husbands.” When I read the epic by my own, I concluded why my parents didn’t name me Draupadi. Draupadi was hailed as kritya – one who is jinxed, and brings doom to the family. I wondered if Draupadi is a kritya, why is her name chanted in the Panchakanya stuti – a hymn of five auspicious virgins who signify the five elements of nature.

Many times I read the Mahabharata, and many times I analyzed Draupadi’s character, and every time I failed to agree that she was a kritya. Recently I read ‘Palace of Illusions’ by Chitra Bannerjee Diwakaruni, and my opinion of Paanchali not being a kritya was reinforced. Unlike the original Mahabharata written by sage Vyasa, Palace of Illusions is Draupadi’s first person narrative of the great saga. Draupadi has always been considered as the impetus and the reason for the holocaust in the Mahabharata that massacred mankind, and hence she is called a kritya. With Palace of Illusions, Chitra Bannerjee breaks this notion.

The author presents Draupadi not as the Princess of Paanchal or the Queen of the Pandavas, but as a woman – a mere woman who is born to live a destiny she didn’t design. She was called a kritya for what? For being accepted falteringly by her father after birth? For always being hushed because she was a girl? For being married to five men whom she didn’t choose? For being gifted to be a virgin every year so as to be the lawful wife to each of her husbands equally? (In the book, Draupadi laments if it was a boon or a curse? And perhaps the boon was crafted to suit the needs of her husbands.) For being used as an item at stake in gambling by her husbands? For being lost in the gamble, and humiliated and manhandled amongst and by her own family? For being vengeful for the misery she suffered? I think it’s the other way round. Instead of her being the harbinger of misfortune, I believe misfortune chose her time and again, and struck her hard.

Chitra Bannerjee has lent Draupadi a powerful voice. The book expounds Draupadi’s emotions in several ways – through her tales, her dreams, her fantacies, her desires, and her retrospections. The author has the prowess to construct beautiful sentences, which bring forth Draupadi’s character splendidly. The book is not an ode to Draupadi as many think. It is the story of a woman, of what hardships she faced, how she handled the tough situations she encountered, what glory she enjoyed, how she lost it, and how she regained it at the cost of uncountable deaths. Even though the tale of Mahabharata is narrated via Draupadi, the book is not written chronologically as per the events. And that is what makes the book even more interesting. Chitra Bannerjee transforms the reader from Draupadi’s present to past, and past to present. The flashbacks are narrated beautifully in the form of dreams and illusions, and I truly commend the author for this wonderful knitting of thoughts.

Another aspect that is highlighted in the book is the deep yearning of Draupadi – her yearning for a stunning and lavish palace full of grandeur, (The book is named Palace of Illusions after the numinous palace that Paanchali lived in after her marriage to the Pandavas.) her yearning for fatherly affection, her yearning to be treated equal as her brother, her yearning for true love that she seeks in her husbands throughout her life, her yearning to be loved back by the man she fell in love at the first sight, her yearning to be a gush of motherly love to her children, her yearning to be craved by her children, her yearning for a companion with whom she can be Paanchali – the woman, and not Paanchali – the queen. My heart completely resonated with the ups and downs of Draupadi’s tone, and for the first time I realized that a man can never understand what goes on in a woman’s heart. Perhaps he can read her mind, but there is only one in a million who will be able to read her heart. The book elucidates this man in Draupadi’s life – the eternal Krishna. I am mesmerized by the beauty of their relationship that is not bound by any name, and undeniably is an epitome of unconditional love.

Chitra Bannerjee’s Palace of Illusions is a magnet that held me, and instilled deep thoughts in my mind. Not only does the book narrate the Mahabharata, but it also silently narrates the struggle of a woman with her own self. I could not stop from asking myself, “Who is Draupadi?” Is she a fighter who never said die? Is she a warrior who faced challenges with all her might? Well, she is all this, and much more. She is the spirit that resides in every woman. I am not here to blow the trumpet of feminism. I am just thoroughly impressed by the book’s power to nurture deeper thoughts in me, and make me feel proud to be a woman! I also asked myself, “Who is that one person who loves me truly and never asks anything in return?” Well, there cannot be an ambiguous answer to this. It is none other than Krishna, who stands by me through thick and thin.

I have finished reading Palace of Illusions but it seems I have come out of a dream or perhaps I am still in trance. I yearn to read some more. Let Paanchali not stop narrating for I never want to come out of the web that she has woven with her spellbinding tale. It’s more than a tale actually. It’s a journey rather, which we all make, and in its wake forget the one who stands by us all along, and yet again when we reach the destination we think where it all began!

My favorite quote from Palace of Illusions –

“Time is like a flower, Krishna said once. I didn’t understand. But later I visualized a lotus opening, the way the outer petals fall away to reveal the inner ones. An inner petal would never know the older one, even though it was shaped by them, and only the viewer who plucked the flower would see how each petal was connected to the others.” ~ Draupadi

The Last Mughal

The conflict between imperialism and religious fundamentalism that has jeopardized the world, is deep-rooted in blood, and has a history that is more than 150 years old. William Dalrymple brings forth stories from the past, and elucidates this strife in ‘The Last Mughal’, in an insightful manner. The book is not an assembly of historical archives, rather the archives woven into a tale that repaints the anachronistic India of 1857, and the series of events that spawned the Revolt of 1857 – the battle between the British Imperial Rule, and the en mass Indians.

Dalrymple presents an unbiased perspective on the Uprising of 1857, telling the story of the revolt from both sides. Very impressively, he explains that it was not one, but many a reasons, stacked over years that instigated the uprising. On one hand he describes the Indian perspective of the revolt, narrating the stories of rampant Christian proselytism, unjustified British policies of land and property, and the linchpin of the revolt – forcing Indian soldiers (sepoys as called by the British) to bite off pig and cow fat greased cartridges, hurting the sentiments of Hindus and Muslims alike. The latter reason also led the revolt to be called as the Sepoy Mutiny. On the other hand, he also presents an intense picture of the atrocities suffered by the British officials, and their families at the hands of the rebels, during the initial period of the revolt. Indians suffered two ways; first at the hands of their own countrymen, the mutineers who massacred Christian proselytes, and second at the hands of the British who unleashed vengeance for their beloveds. The book purely describes the story of the common man, caught up tragically in a bloody upheaval.

The backdrop of the tale is the alluring old Delhi, upholding the grandeur of the Mughal dynasty, and presenting the prodigal lifestyle of the city.There is a dedicated chapter in the book that emphasizes the stark difference in the strict military life of the British in Delhi, and the rather laid-out lives of the Delhiwallahs. In the quaint Mughal capital, lived the last of the Mughal emperors, Bahadur Shah Zafar II. A frail old man aged 82 at the time of the revolt; Zafar has always been looked upon as a pliant puppet in history. Dalrymple gives a vivid account of the Zafar that the world has been little aware of. He beautifully describes Zafar as a gifted poet and calligrapher who created, and nourished a court of artisans, musicians, orators, writers, and poets like Zauq, Ghalib and Azurda. Zafar, having a Hindu mother, was also the upholder of religious harmony. He is also accountable for some of the finest monuments of the Mughal era, and for hailing yet another cultural renaissance of India. Zafar was a king with simplistic ideas on life, rather than a tyrant who wished to annex and vanquish. Dalrymple beautifully describes the Mughal court, the key members associated with it, and how they influenced the emperor. He also presents an account of the royal family, and how the emperor’s favorite queen, Zeenat Mahal played a paramount role in his life.

While the book narrates the artistic splendor of the Mughal dynasty in its old age, it also holds at its heart, the story of the demeaning political arena of this period. Zafar had forfeited real political power to the East India Company. Strewn with a bunch of heirs, conspiring and belligerent for fading power, the royal family was amidst a crisis. Zafar was at the throne of this poorly controlled kingdom. Despite this, the collaborated Hindu-Muslim rebels chose him to lead them in the war against the British. More than a leader, Zafar was to be a consenting tool for the rebels to wage terror against the British army. Dalrymple quotes Zafar’s qualms at this proposition of the rebels, ranging from fear to pain to agony. He also quotes excerpts that prove Zafar’s failure to lead the rebels, the lack of food for the mutineers, and the gradual tiff between the mutiny leaders. Not only was it Zafar’s incapability, for what could an octogenarian do, but also the mismanagement and spinelessness on the part of the rebel leaders, added with the infidelity on the part of Zeenat Mahal and other members of the emperor’s household, that led to the final siege of Delhi, the imprisonment of Zafar, and his ultimate exile to Myanmar.

The book also describes the fall and destruction of Delhi, post its capture. The city was badly leveled of its forts and buildings, leaving behind bare and disserted lanes, markets and streets. Dalrymple further ventures the reader into the trial of Zafar by the East India Company. This is one of the most interesting points in the book, wherein he puts forward numerous facts that point a finger at British craftsmanship of fallacy. It was never proved if the Company was legally entitled to try the Mughal emperor, forget about charging him of deceit and mutiny, and master minding the revolt, which was claimed to be aimed at placing Muslim rule at the prime in the world! Not only was Zafar unjustly tried, the Hindu-Muslim unity that had been the cynosure of the Mughal era was brutally crushed now. The British proclaimed that the revolt was an unscrupulous Islamic fundamentalist plan; the truth however was that the revolt was of upper-caste Hindu origin that bloomed in Meerut, and was later joined by diffused groups of people across the country that included the Muslims as well. This lead to Hindu-Muslim polarization that conflagrated the country during independence, and continues to do so, time and again.

The Last Mughal is more than just a book on history. No construal of the uprising is as gallant as this one. William Dalrymple time travels the past, and helps you see the glory and the misery of that time. It helps to understand some of the most powerful lessons of history, and clarifies a lot of speculations about the Indo-British relations during the revolt. The book is full of footnotes, excerpts, and notes that speak of the commendable research involved, right from Delhi to Myanmar. It is fascinating that such an intense read can be so amusing at the same time; this is the skill of Dalrymple. He does not weave a story, he weaves magic.