Young Adult Literature To Tell or Not to Tell

                                        Young Adult Literature

                                                To Tell or Not to Tell

Kirsty Murray knows exactly what she is doing and where she is going with children in the age group 11- 14 years. Her writings speak to the section of children who have outgrown candy floss but are yet not clouded by the consciousness of an adolescent. An ebullient set, no longer naïve and who, have a mind of their own. They actively think, and search for answers to questions that tweak their curiosity. She says it is a moment in space between childhood and adolescence. Her readership also includes adventurous adults and grandmothers. The former want to keep tabs on what they missed at that age and the latter are intrigued by the central theme of many of her books i.e. Australian History. 

After a long lacunae in children’s literature in India,  Subhadra Sen Gupta and Ranjit Lal  are to  young Indian adults what Murray is to her young readers in Australia. These writers have made historical fiction-writing their forte and churn out a fine blend of fact and fiction to hook young readers to their historical past. History, instead of a series of dates and dry academic prosaic text, is being rendered in colourful, imaginative stories. No doubt, the young population is booked- hook, line and sinker with graphic detailing of periods of history.

Writing historical fiction is a specialized genre akin to making a film. It involves gargantuan research of a particular period in history; fiction rooted in truth and reality. The writer has to conjure up the whole scene of the era; the political, social and economical undercurrents. The frames or chapters bring alive the fashion of the time, language that people spoke, the belief systems interweaving the societies in question. With great dexterity, the writer then threads together historical personalities with fictional characters in the book which holds the entire fabric of the theme together. The fictional characters are figments of his imagination, intimate and thorough, whereas the real life historical characters are elusive and distant. They have a life of their own, already lived and fleshed out. In the hands of acclaimed authors like Murray and Sen Gupta, the book acquires the quality of a classic, the depth of a Dickensian prose and the pace of a thriller. A humble form of writing, wherein the writer has to metamorphose and tell a true story that already exists. What a colourful and interesting way indeed of reading and understanding history compared to dry historical treatise.  Its subjectivity is another story altogether, a topic for another time.

Generation X young adults like me, who were born between the 60s to the 80s, were treated as children even when they got married, and it was thought unkind, insensitive to discuss matters of love, sex, money or death with them. The culture in India did not encourage literature on any of the taboo topics for young readers, and per force our generation in the absence of internet had to depend on books from abroad mainly UK. Many children stopped reading beyond 10 yrs because they did not find literature that stimulated their minds. They otherwise turned to adult writings and outgrew their age, fast and furious. Today the story is different.  Lal has written about female foeticide and terrorism in his books, Faces in the Water and Battle at No. 19, which are everyday issues that young children deal in their neighbourhood. Mind you, there was a great controversy in India about his books when they were first published and the debate, though mellowed, still continues across the Indian milieu.  Murray’s latest book The Year It All Ended released in September, 2014, deals with female teenagers grappling with post World War I trauma and death.

Amongst earlier Murray writings, which particularly caught my attention, (a thread to this debate),  is The Lilliputians published by Zubaan in 2012. The Australian title of the book is Dark India. We can classify it as historical fiction based on a true story that began in Australia and reached a palpable climax in India. The renowned Pollard Opera Company in Australia at the turn of the 20^th century also included a troupe of young performers in age group 10-17 yrs. In 1909, with twenty nine chil­dren in tow, Arthur/Baby Pol­lard set off on a two-year world tour that ended in dis­as­ter. After hundred shows through various countries on a hot Feb­ru­ary night in Madras, twenty-four of the chil­dren went on strike. They walked out on Arthur, refus­ing to work with him ever again. They charged him with sexual assault, cruelty and sheer negligence. It caused an inter­na­tional scandal.

In conversation with Murray at the Writers Readers Festival, we spoke about this intriguing story. She said that fic­tion is one of the most pow­er­ful ways of telling the truth about real life. To recon­struct the adven­tures, she took the cast list of the orig­i­nal troupe and care­fully rein­vented all the chil­dren as fic­ti­tious char­ac­ters, match­ing their ages and roles in the troupe with their real life coun­ter­parts. As to per­son­al­ity and char­ac­ter traits, she had to imag­ine what they might have been like, draw­ing on only scraps of evi­dence. There were also plenty of news­pa­per reports that covered the court case in which the chil­dren were even­tu­ally embroiled. While she was in South India, she also gained access to court records.  She said, “I’m sure the real life char­ac­ters would tell dif­fer­ent ver­sions of the events but what made the story so inter­est­ing is that every­one in the troupe told their friends, fam­ily and the news­pa­pers a dif­fer­ent ver­sion of what tran­spired. Truth really is stranger than fic­tion – or at least it’s more confusing.”

When she first started work­ing on the book, she knew she wanted a thirteen-year-old girl to be the prin­ci­pal nar­ra­tor. “Poesy’s naivety was impor­tant because as the adven­ture unfolded, she was going to have to become much worldlier”. But as she researched the story, she began to real­ize that there were so many ways that you could inter­pret the truth of what hap­pened, that she needed to con­sider other per­spec­tives. “When you read the news­pa­per reports, there are so many angry and dif­fer­ing ver­sions of the truth that I knew I needed to present at least more than one. Once I started writ­ing from Tilly’s per­spec­tive as well as Poesy, the story became much more vivid and intrigu­ing. Tilly, cynical and older, allowed me to explore a slightly darker and more pow­er­ful ver­sion of the events.”

A true story of sexual assault, jealousy, competition and secrecy which became a reality amongst the troupe of children guided or misguided by one adult. The latter was made out to be a monster by compounded lies, sleaze and differing truths than he actually was. When young adults read this book, they realise the dark human elements that come into play in a story of sleaze in real life.

“Those who don't know their history are doomed to repeat it. You have to expose who you are so that you can determine what you need to become.” Cynthia A Patterson

Indeed a great genre of writing taken up by writers like Kirsty Murray, Subhadra Sen Gupta and Ranjit Lal for young adults! 

Readers Writers Festival 2014

                                        Readers Writers Festival 2014

In the ‘World of Books’, the writers play a very important role, for the very act of writing stems from them. On the other hand, the readers play an equally important role; because if we were not passionate about books, took delight in varied writings or critically analysed the nuances and syntax of sentences in books, the very act of writing would go in vain. We, as readers, literary critics and book lovers, are here to play that important role in the ‘World of Books’.  The French literary critic and theorist Roland Bathes, in his essay ‘The Death of the Author’, said, “Each piece of writing contains multiple layers and meanings. The essential meaning of a work depends on the impressions of the reader, rather than the passions or tastes of the writer. A text's unity lies not in its origins or its creator, but in its destination or its audience. The author is merely a scriptor (a word Barthes uses expressly to disrupt the traditional continuity of power between the terms "author" and "authority"). The scriptor exists to produce, but not to explain the work and is not the subject with the book as predicate. Every work is eternally written here and now, with each re-reading, because the origin of meaning lies exclusively in language itself and its impressions on the reader.”

The appropriately named, The Writers Readers Festival 2014(4th-7^th Oct) at Kala Academy, to the contrary constituted a pantheon of writers and only a handful of ardent readers. The organizers had left no stone unturned with their worthy contingent of writers from home and abroad, reading workshops, interesting panel discussions and a book shop. Readers have a promise to keep in the thriving industry of books, and complacency might just be our loss and only ours to lament. Our allegiance is to the word, its celebration and glorification and none else. If books and eminent writers are being presented to us on a platter, a committed reader would rejoice and devour the word, in abeyance of everything else.

Thomas Keneally, the star author of the festival, took centre stage in many a discussion. In his early eighties, with a writing career of fifty years and still writing, he impressed the audience with experiences and anecdotes of his writing sojourn interspersed with a ringing tone of hearty, belly-rumbling laughter. Shortlisted for the Booker prize four times, he finally won the award with Schindler’s Ark in 1982. A piece of narrative journalism morphed into a book, made famous by the film Schindler’s List directed by Steven Spielberg. Rooted in an ethos when word was sacred, a grandfather come to town, he regaled the audiences with his raspy voice and old world charm peppered with a humorous recount of the writings, then and now and his crusade for the republic of Australia. He rightly endeared himself to all listeners when he humbly apologized for the brutal killings of Indian students by Australians in Melbourne, in the last couple of years. His moments of delight and satisfaction were mirrored in his memories of a meeting with a woman reader on the skiing slopes of USA, who couldn’t but stop herself from conveying to him the delight she had experienced in reading his books.

Romesh Gunesekara, aptly given the epithet guruji by Sudeep Chakravarti, during a master’s class on narrative voices, too echoed the feeling of pure joy and contentment that certain writings bring to us. Literary festivals, writings, publishing, marketing are but endeavours towards that ephemeral bliss of the word that writers and readers aim for. His book Reef shortlisted for the Booker in 1994, and recent writing Noon Tide Toll was enumerated at discourses through the festival. His fine diction riding on a wave of lilting verbal pronouncements was delightful to the ears in the Black Box ambience.

Chinaman, authored by Shehan Karunatilaka, is a beguiling book, like the chinaman art of  a bowler in cricket. Great stylistic writing by Karunalatika, the book appears gullible to the reader, painting an evocative picture of cricket and an alcoholic journalist’s search for a lost cricketer. It kicks in the chinaman when the narrative unravels its intricately woven theme of strife-torn socio-political milieu of Sri Lanka in the late 20th century: of boy gangs and merciless ripping open of flesh in a bus of daily commuters. The writer came across as a person of gravity, a deep thinker and interrogator, questioning and then exposing the grinding truth in harsh black and white colours.

Miguel Syjico, the Filipino writer from Manila, left a significant mark at the festival. Born into a dynastic political family of the Philippines, he opted to be a writer. His debut novel, Illustrado won many awards. He proclaimed that he would continue to be a thorn in the flesh for politicians through his writing. Through parody, he imbues his characters with conflicting ideas, to expose the phony through exploration of human psyche. He said he is continuously debunking his own prejudices, inclinations and limitations through his writing journeys.

Kirsty Murray, the children’s writer from Australia, delighted readers with her strong views on themes of books for teenagers. She expressed a vital need for writers to write about subjects that children experience in their adolescence. She hailed writers like Ranjit Lal and Manjula Padmanabhan from India who have written about sensitive issues like female foeticide and terrorism and other everyday realities in Indian neighbourhoods. Her book The Year It All Ended about lives of teenage girls deals with the repercussions of World War I and death.

Stephen Mccarty endeared himself by his very affable disposition and interesting set of steering questions as a moderator for panel discussions. Prajwal Parajuly’s candid responses aimed at a plain, authentic author at work.

Home-grown contingent included poetry readings from Tishani Doshi, Meena Kandasamy, Mamta Sagar, Revathi Kutti.......Sudeep Chakravarti, the journalist-turned-author, masterfully anchored discussions and expounded on his writings through troubled lands. He also stressed on the use of social networks by writers and smart methodologies to handle trolls on twitter and facebook. Manu Joseph recounted his interview with the Hindu ideologue Parveen Togadia and extreme positions taken by politicians in our so-called secular country.    

 Goan writers were represented by Savia Viegas and  Frederick Noronha, who moderated panel discussion on writings in Konkani, Portuguese, Marathi, and English in Goa, and the prevailing connection between Portugal and Goa. Resourceful as ever Divya Kapur served an unending delicious soufflé of books over the counter, of every author in the fest. Kudos!

Anil Alaham Kumar, CP Surendran and Sheweta Bajaj, the main organizers and anchors of the mega event have added an interesting event to the calendar of events in Goa, for which the book reading public of Goa is greatly indebted. The Readers Writers Festival 2014 first belonged to the readers and then to the writers. To many a successful recurrence through the years to come!

The Ramayana Manuscript Trails

           The Ramayana Manuscript Trails

Today I shall expound on texts old and colossal, which have prevailed through the upheavals of the human civilization and come to us profound and pure. In their inception, hands and souls worked tirelessly to give them their monumental status, imbuing them with metaphysical powers. Texts and illustrations created out of a labour of love and ingenuity, not of an age but for all times.  Along the way, they suffered and were maligned by ignorant fools, but the saving grace of the continuous tribe of cultural creatives, washed stains of negligence and tedium incessantly, breathing fresh vigour and strength into them intermittently. Such unfailing energy and ceaseless rallying against all odds have finally morphed the ageless texts to suit the climes of the present age.

Our greatest and longest love story with the epic Ramayana saw another triumph this year. The Mewar Ramayana, the most beautifully illustrated manuscript of the Valmiki Ramayan, is available today at the click of a mouse at www.bl.uk/ramayana. Sources say that it was a mega project costing Rs 27 lakhs sponsored by Jamsetji Tata Trust, and was unveiled at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya (CSMVS) Museum in March, 2014. Readers can view 377 rare paintings out of the 450, and listen to an audio, turning digitized pages like leaves of the original text.

My trail of research inspired by the lecture series VISUAL NARRATIVES OF INDIA: TEXT AND IMAGE by Professor Vidya Dehejia at the Goa University last month turned out to be an interesting tale of treasure lost and found. The seven Kandas of the Mewar Ramayana created in the 17^th century, got segregated and handed down to different people and countries through the continuing centuries, with trails gone cold.  It was commissioned by Maharana Jagat Singh of the Rajput kingdom in the early half of the 1650s. The Mewari Ranas extolled the service of scribes and artists to build great manuscript libraries, a mark of great prestige and honour of the times. The project was carried out by many painters, the Sahibdin workshop being the most noteworthy. A single scribe undertook the text. The entire manuscript took five years for completion and was revered by the dynasty as an extremely valuable treasure. (Sisodiya Rajputs are thought to be the direct descendants of Rama in the Suryavanshi clan).

 JP Losty, the curator of visual arts at the British library, recounts an interesting story of how the Mewar Ramayana comprising of seven volumes got segregated and transported to different lands from Rajasthan. In 1820, Maharana Bhim Singh, great friends with James Tod the then British agent of Rajput states, presented him four volumes of the mega literature who in turn gifted them to the Duke of Sussex, a man of letters with a magnificent library. Thereafter, they were bought by the British museum and pristinely bound into two volumes at the British library. Losty came upon them in the 1970s and, highly mesmerized by the magnitude of his find, relentlessly pursued all clues leading him finally to the volumes at Jodhpur and Mumbai in museums and private collections of royal families. After 200 years, the Mewar Ramayana, a colossal monument of our rich heritage, exists in a modern technological avatar within everyone’s reach, to savour and delight to our heart’s content.

The folios are horizontal, like leaves, with paintings on one side and the text on the other side. It is intriguing to note that the illustrations illuminate three forms of Mewar paintings– the Sahibdin and Manohar workshop studios and an unknown artist working in Mewar- Deccani style. Use of reds and browns, pointed nose, large eyes and angular features mark a Mewari figurative painting. The skyline is shown in waves and water in semicircular markings of inky blue. Trees are elaborate with the ubiquitous mango tree with fresh-washed green interspersed with dark green and red leaves.

Equally intriguing is the story of the first Persian manuscript of the Ramayana during king Akbar’s reign. The great patron of arts and culture commissioned the imperial Ramayana in the 16^th century to dispel the fanatical hatred between Hindus and Muslims, an offspring of ignorance of each other’s scriptures. He called upon his senior scholar Abdul Qadir Badayuni to render the Ramayana in Persian. The latter, a staunch Muslim, took up the project reluctantly, but meticulously worked on it for four years, to excellent results. The 176 illustrations are replicated in imperial Mughal art. The manuscript was greatly revered by his mother and line of Mughal rulers later, who perused it at different times through the next two centuries. It is interesting to note that about the same time, Tulsidas  too worked on the Ram Charita Manas, Rama’s story in Awadhi.

Greatly enamored by the  imperial Ramayana, Abdur-Rahim Khan-i-Khanan   commissioned the Khan Khanan Ramayana that was accessible to general public and scholars who came to see him in his library, workshop and at other forums. He was the mightiest general of Akbar’s army, son of Bairam Khan who had served as regent to young Akbar. Sources indicate that in 1886, Colonel Henry Bathhurst Hanna, a Britisher stationed in India for about thirty years, purchased the Khan Khanan Ramayana thinking it to be the Imperial Ramayana. Later research on the Persian scripts of the Ramayana itself proved that it was not the Imperial Ramayana. In 1907, Charles Lang Freer purchased the Khan Khanan Ramayana and since then it is in the collections of the Smithsonianâ Freer Gallery of Art in Washington D.C.  Written in lucid Persian in the Manaswi fashion rather than the cantos of Valmiki Ramayana, it is calligraphed by the experts of Akbar’s court. The paintings show apparent influences of Indian, Iranian and Mongolian styles of art. The text at times disrupts the paintings and appears on the same side of the folio as the painting. 

Another notable work is that of Masih, a Sanskrit scholar in Benaras for 12 years who reworked the  Ramayan into  5407 couplets. Sham Lal Angara in Jammu is in possession of a rare Ramayana in Persian which begins with Bismillah-i-rahman ar-rahim, which is also how the Quran begins: clearly indicative of the secular outlook of Shah Jahan’s son who was the translator of this beautiful treasure.

These old texts exist in a class of their own.  Custodians of our tradition and history, they are a living presence and bind centuries of human souls, who speak to us of our rich heritage. Mortals engaged in their creation and preservation acquire an immortality carried through   whispering echoes within the confines of these monumental volumes!