The Salt of the Earth by Jayanti Naik

http://epaper.navhindtimes.in/mainpage.aspx?pdate=2017-05-07

                                                          The Salt of the Earth

May Day, the day that inspires hope in workers and fear in capitalists, was marked with usual rallies and processions this year. A demand for 8 hours of work, 8 hours of recreation and 8 hours of rest for labourers was the hallmark of labour movements beginning 1866 and became official on 01 May 1890. The flag bearers of the movement - Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Rosa Luxemburg and Liebknecht worked tirelessly to expose the skewed superstructure of capitalist economic models and demanded rights for workers.  Better working and living conditions and the right to leisure and education were the rallying slogans of these revolutionaries.

Against this backdrop, through the month, I kept myself engaged with the book ‘The Salt of the Earth’ by Konkani writer, Jayanti Naik. Rightly given the epithet of  ‘writer who roars (Garjan)’ by Manohararaya Saradesaya,  she takes up cudgels for the ‘Bahujan’ - the majority in Goa that represent Hindu/Christian lower castes such as toddy tappers, weavers, tribals, fishermen, midwives, rustic singers, medicine men and labourers. She found them to be storehouses of ancient tradition and culture. Closely associating with them, she learnt to tap their repositories of knowledge for her writings.

Born in the village of Amona in Quepem,  Jayanti is a Sahitya Akademi awardee  and a doctorate in Konkani language. Besides being a folklore researcher, her active participation in the Konkani language agitation of the 80s makes her a ‘keeper of memories’ - of the language, its people and the traditional/cultural heritage of this land. She has written more than 32 books, building a ‘Smriti Mandir’ - the reservoir of ancient knowledge of Goa.

‘The Salt of the Earth’ has been translated from Konkani into English by Augusto Pinto, whose creative efforts through translation chronicle the attempt to break barriers and build bridges of understanding between alien cultures . The afterword ‘The Bahujan Writes Back’ is a reader’s delight, where Augusto morphs into a literary critic as he unravels the annotated text of the book. The birth of the Bahujan in post-liberation Goa is touched upon, along with other major themes of the author’s works. This context sheds light on the directions the stories take and illustrates the ancient cultural strands of the community. Augusto also familiarizes the reader with the personal and professional life of the author, delineating the influences which shaped her social work and writings. Through his critical appraisal, Augusto identifies himself with another class of artists, one which I have often highlighted through my works, that of the ‘critic as an artist’.

The protagonist of the stories in the book is the eponymous salt of the earth - the worker who tills, sows and harvests the produce of the rivers and the land.  The author celebrates the cultural practices and customs of these people, when urbanization and alternative economic models were shifting the contours of the Goan society. She delineates the upheavals in family and community structures from feudal systems to capitalist bases, not sparing the darker strains of caste, power structure, illiteracy and gender that perpetuated the social milieu at that time.

Jayanti succeeds in her agenda of breaking through the stereotypical image of Goans as westernized Catholic people, living amidst ubiquitous whitewashed churches.  The stories make an incisive cut into the veneer of supremacy of so-called ‘Portuguese Goa’.  Her stories introduce readers to village communities rooted in an Indian ethos of temples, deities, rituals and traditions. The beliefs and customs of her characters can be traced back to age-old Hindu philosophy and cosmology. She retains the vernacular dialect in certain stories (as illustrated in notes by the translator) through works such as ‘Basvo’. She also paints the canvas of ritualistic practices of the ‘Thakar clan’ with an element of inclusiveness and understanding. There is no suggestion of othering or voyeuristic inclination of study of tribals under a lens. A classy act of subversive writing undertaken with keen sensitivity and empathy, Jayanti disrupts many myths about the Goan majority.  In the end, the subaltern comes into his own and stands tall in the mind of the reader - naked, proud and resplendent in his history, heritage, language and culture.

There is no denying that Jayanti is defensive in her stance to uphold the traditional heritage of worker clans (and this is evidenced from Augusto’s remarks too). Nevertheless, she leaves her stories open ended, suggestive of the fact that she is subtly imbuing her story paintings with colours that can bring change for the better. ‘The Fulfilment of a Desire’ and ‘Curse of a Vozhryo’ are psychological recounts of characters whose lives are living hells, holding on to societal beliefs and religious rituals embedded in their psyche. ‘Biyantul’, ‘Ramaa’ and ‘An Account of Her Life’ etch feminine sketches of unfulfilled desire and sexuality. A proclaimed harbinger of women rights in the Konkani belt, Jayanti goes all out to interweave elements of the feminine mystique in her writings to drive home the humanist lacunae in this sphere.

In Jayanti’s stories, folklore impregnates the storyline in a pronounced manner, very much like the writings of Zora Neale Hurston and Toni Morrison that introduced the world to the sights, smells and music of marginalized black communities. Contemporary writings of Anita Heiss do the same for the Australian aboriginals (Tiddas),  as do works by Mamang Dai for tribals in Arunachal Pradesh. Jayanti’s clearly assertive yet empathetic stance also brings to mind Hansada Sowvendra Shekhar’s novels where the Jharkhand tribal strikes back clearly and irrevocably. An explicit indication of this goal could be Jayanti’s story ‘The Victory’ where the protagonist’s ire against caste oppression of tribals lands him defenceless and drives him to irrepressible wrath against God.

Jayanti’s effort to showcase power equations that reduce tribals to penury is never confrontational. At this juncture, Augusto’s writing lifts the veil and exposes the underlying power play. The reader is made privy to layers of casteism that make conditions tragic for these communities. Besides the darkness, however, the richness of myths and customs comes across to be pondered and meditated upon.

Nevertheless, the work of a translator and a literary critic, embroiled in dialectics of ‘loss in translation’, has yet to be acknowledged by the literary world at par with authorship. Although Augusto’s name appears on the cover of the book, there is no piece on him at the end of the book detailing his credibility and resume. The foreword and afterword sections are classic literary devices that can add a world of wealth to a book. The ability of a critic to read between the lines, analyse and synthesize a text is special. In a divided world, translators and literary critics play the important role of bringing forth the other side of the argument. Dialectics between diverse coteries can set up a dialogue for peace and understanding. Ludwig Wittgenstein said it well for all humanity, “The limits of my language means the limits of my world”.

he illuminations in the book leave us with an alternative perspective of the masses of Goa and a consciousness of the misshapen societal norm responsible for its tragic state of affairs. It’s a long road to freedom, but hope lies in the cultural creative such as Jayanti Naik. More power to her and her efforts!