Pukur, godhuli bela and remarkable lives
Nazma Yeasmeen Haque breezes through gripping human experience
Nine Lives
William Dalrymple
Bloomsbury, London
WILLIAM Dalrymple, a household name in our part of the world, makes an arduous journey to construct stories taken from life, some of which are bizarre, some heart-rending, some with a blend of political ideology and some others being simple descriptions of occupations handed down from generation to generation where concerns about the changing patterns of life adopted by their offspring threaten the adults' age-old customs and culture. This job of the writer is no less arduous than the treks he makes through the length and breadth of the region. His tenacity in narrating the tales of nine lives has been most rewarding to his readers as it has charted new vistas by unwinding stories hitherto unknown. The protagonists' utterances about their own lives in detail and unreservedly, of course, elicited by the questions of the author, make each story distinctly unique. Here one cannot but appreciate the authenticity inherent in their narratives as they pour their hearts out to the author. And for this, all credit goes to the writer because his total involvement with them not primarily as a writer but as a person with all human qualities helped establish a rapport failing which there would not have been any stories with a human face. In one of the appreciations of this book, Dalrymple has been described as one of the 'greatest storytellers' of 'one of the world's greatest storytelling cultures', that is, India. True, but it would rather have been a more befitting description of him if it had said that he has been a most unusually engaging listener and collector of stories. Storytelling is natural to him because he is a writer who travels a lot and is keen on knowing people in a holistic manner. Rather the people in this book have been marvellous storytellers that in turn made him a seasoned storyteller. In the introduction, the author draws readers' attention to the contrasts in his methodology used in this book with the one that he adopted in both From the Holy Mountain and In Xanadu where the narrator's role was much more pronounced than those of the people. Dalrymple states that he has reversed this method and by doing so, he has brought the subjects from the background to the fore. And it is precisely this quality in Nine Lives that has made every story glimmer in its own style and content.
The first story, The Nun's Tale, presents an account of perhaps the most rigorous and harshest of religions ever practised in the world --- Jainism of Mahavira. Prasannanmati Mataji and others like her renounce the world in which they live. Negation of all things, all needs, is the motto of their lives and such denial ascends to such a height that they tend to deny existence in the physical form and choose to give their bodies to death rather than death taking their bodies. Ironically, although there is the toughest teaching and training on suppressing emotions of all kinds, including that of death, yet when Mataji loses her closest friend, she breaks down in tears despite herself as she is bound by her vow and rigid training. Not only that, she also steps out of the monastery all by herself for the first time in since she became a nun to visit holy places and try getting back her peace of life. This shows a dichotomy of principles existing in an otherwise committed person, thus exposing the frailties of human nature.
The second story, The Dancer of Kannur, reveals the fossilized characteristic of a most repugnant caste system and its duality among the Hindus when, on the one hand, the Dalits are hated like anything, and, on the other, when they play gods during special festivals. Even the Brahmins worship them and touch their feet. The obsession of these people in religious rituals keeps them blinded and somewhat ignorant. Among people where the caste system is so rigid, hatred for some other religion can very much be expected. But then occurs another event that is faith-wise conflicting but convenient otherwise: money earned in Saudi Arabia is spent on holding a thanksgiving festival in distinctly religious fervour. Although Dalrymple refrains from making any value judgments all through these tales, probably for the reason that these are all matters of faith close to the hearts of believers and therefore are too delicate to touch, he nevertheless comments, "There was a nice irony, I thought, in the money of the most puritanical and intolerant of Wahabbis being used to fund such a fabulously and unrepentantly pagan ceremony."
The next story, The Daughters of Yellamma, is certainly the most heart-rending tale as the author brings out not only a dire state of poverty but also how this is associated with an entirely primitive kind of belief, fashioned like a religious rite, when daughters are 'dedicated' to temples but who eventually turn out to be nothing but hapless sex workers. It still remains a dark chapter in Indian society in spite of the government's efforts to stamp it out. Dalrymple goes both extensively and intensively into the origin, development and practices of this tradition of devdasis and concludes that '...... devotional, metaphysical and the sexual are not regarded as being in any way opposed.....'; and, of course, here he is talking about some societies in certain parts of India where this practice still remains malignant in its effect.
The next story, The Singer of Epics, brings to light a rare observation on the near extinction of oral traditions in the form of a recital of epics. The author refers to researcher Milman Parry, also known as 'the Darwin of oral literature', and his findings in Yugoslavia that oral epic lost its ground as people became literate! On the basis of this, Dalrymple draws an analogy so poignant that when he says that just as a blind person compensates for his loss of vision in 'a heightened sense of hearing, smell and touch,' it seems that an illiterate person likewise develops a special ability to store things in his memory in a massive way which a literate person does not. This is a beautiful story that takes the readers through a fascinating tour of the landscapes of Asia, the Middle East and Europe tracing the growth, flourishing and gradual waning of oral literature that is a priceless wealth of human culture.
The Red Fairy is an enigmatic story that tells us about the plight of the female protagonist, the Red Fairy herself, a Muslim who suffers at the hands of Hindus in Bihar, then as a Bihari at the hands of Bengalis at the creation of Bangladesh in 1971 and ending up in Sindh in a Sufi shrine. She narrates every episode of her life, her family in graphic details that bares a traumatized soul searching for an abode that is peaceful within her chosen form of spiritual realm. And in her case, it turned out to be the shrine of Lal Shahbaz Qalander. Her comments on the genocide in Bangladesh deserve serous consideration when she utters, "We could just about understand why Hindus might want to kill Muslims, but why would Muslims want to kill Muslims? It seemed as if the whole world was soaked in blood." In this story, Dalrymple has deliberated at length on the clash between the followers of Sufism and the Wahabbis - mullahs that tend to be confounding and disquieting to believers.
The Monk's Tale encapsulates a string of events beginning with Tashi Passang's becoming a monk, forsaking his vow and becoming a regular solder in the Indian army for killing Chinese, his transportation to Bangladesh in 1971 to fight the Pakistanis and in the process killing men other than the Pakistanis caused a profound sense of guilt in him and shook his vow of ahimsa, fuelling his yearning to return to Tibet when it is free from occupation. That, of course, has been a distant dream for too many decades. In expiation, Tashi Passang confesses, as an adherent of Buddhist teachings, that because the Tibetans way back in the seventh century invaded China and oppressed the Chinese, maybe that is the cause for their sufferings at present. Thus he enunciates his philosophy of karma.
Of all these nine lives, The Lady Twilight can be singled out as the most bizarre, most primitive, animalistic and most sickening to any sensitive mind. Fearsome descriptions of goddesses and repulsive procedures like using skulls for drinking blood from, invoking mercy and help of imaginary protectors, abound in this long tale. Strange as it is, Manisha, having left her husband and infant children at the call of Ma Tara, ends up living together with Tapan Sadhu, a Brahmin who has also left his family behind. Together they pursue their faith in a ghoulish place, that is, the cremation grounds for the dead.
Had it not been for the last tale, The Song of the Blind Minstrel, a story of the Bauls with many similarities to Sufi life that brings a fresh breath of air, depicts a quiet life ennobled by praise of the wonders of God's creations, it would not be a read giving blissful joy and contentment to one as one finishes reading a book dwelling on a search for the sacred. Very justifiably, Dalrymple places this story right at the end. The rest of the stories convey a feeling of eeriness that is hard to resist. One cannot but be overwhelmed by the meticulousness of the author's observations of very simple things, such as his description of a 'pukur' in Bengal where he draws an analogy thus, "In Bengal, the pukur is to village life what the green was to medieval England ..." His mention of 'godhuli bela' --- cow dust time --- touches the heart of a Bengali reader. The author possesses an exceptional quality of turning things commonplace into rare gems and all the nine lives bear witness to this. However, against the backdrop of India's giant leap forward, such devotional pursuits probably seemed incongruous to the writer --- just the way he felt coming across a completely naked young holy man, a 'sanyasi' holding an MBA degree!
Nazma Yeasmeen Haque, music and history buff, is Principal, Radiant International School, Dhaka .
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