Language as Syncopated Music

http://epaper.navhindtimes.in/mainpage.aspx?pdate=2016-12-18

              Language as Syncopated Music

A writer for whom cadences of the Hindi language and its silences are paramount to a story, not as a vehicle for recounting the tale but the story itself. “For me, language is not just the craft; language is itself the story, the statement, the action.”  This is Geetanjali Shree, whose second name is her mother’s first name, substituting ‘Pandey’, her family name.

Geetanjali is a writer and an equally proficient playwright.  A Ph.D. in history, she has written four novels – ‘Mai’, ‘Hamara Shahar Us Baras’, ‘Tirohit’ and ‘Khali Jagah’.  She has penned several short stories and a non- fiction book, ‘Between Two Worlds’ - an Intellectual biography of Premchand.  Her plays have been performed to wide acclaim at NSD and other theatre groups in India and abroad. Her books have been translated into many languages.

Geetanjali has adapted Tagore’s ‘Ghare Bhaire’ and ‘Gora’ for the stage. One of her most successful scripts is an adaptation of Hadi Ruswa’s 19^th century Urdu classic, ‘Umrao Jan Ada’, to which she gave a radical feminist reading. She has also written the script for ‘Sundari’ and adapted Lao Jiu: The Ninth Born, a Chinese play by Kao Pao Kun, into Hindi, titled ‘Navlakha.’

Her first novel ‘Mai’ depicts a mother who is bent double performing the ceaseless chores of a teeming household. A woman who is a mere shadow, gliding noiselessly around rooms, meeting the vociferous demands of her family. Her bent spine and fragile countenance hides a rock-like core, which endures and holds her up inside. The secrets that she harbours in her psychological mindscape intrigue her children, who want to dismantle the enigma of their mother and know her better. The second novel ‘Hamara Shahar Us Baras’ is set loosely after the incidents of Babri Masjid demolition.  

‘Tirohit’ her second novel translated in English as “The Roof Beneath their Feet’ means hidden. The subtle, hidden secretive lives of women repressed, controlled and monitored in Indian societies. Geetanjali says, “Also, so much is lost to the procrustean ‘male gaze’ (if I may flog the much flogged horse!) which without realizing what it is doing , keeps fitting into its habitual cognitive modes even things that are completely at variance.”  She enumerates instances in the book where two women are together, but the conditioned gaze of the viewer (even children) only synthesizes the male and the female sexual connotations between them. The calamitous confrontation with death and thereafter forms the core of her fourth book ‘Khali Jagah’.

The past is a great presence in her work. It weaves in and out of the present trajectories of her characters. She says, “If ‘Hamara Shahar Us Baras’ has a historical past, the past in ‘Mai’ is a personal memory. The past in ‘Khali Jagah’ is wild, imagined, mad past and in ‘Tirohit’, it is doing other things.”

Geetanjali is much occupied with the interior monologues of her characters, that subtle exchange of meanings and dialogue between two characters. Stream of consciousness is a pervasive element of her writing. The staccato eruptions, dissect the narrative into fragmentary prose. Linearity is not her style. On the contrary, disjointedness and going back and forth become her hallmark technique. The craft depicts life in flux, tangled in episodes, thoughts and actions. Reading between the lines through the non-linear text, the reader is engaged in an adventure of piecing together the lives of the characters.

The metaphor is central to her stories. The subtlety with which she frames and embeds the metaphor in her story, is indeed admirable. Behind each metaphor a set of stories, behind each a parable. The bent-over back of the mother in ‘Mai’ itself throws up a collage of images and texts, hitting home, cutting through our defenses as a society. The bent back says it all – subservience, stamina, low self-esteem, inconsequential and yet enduring. The round shape offers no resistance and therefore, perseverance becomes its core, which lends its strength and spirit. The extended roof in ‘Tirohit’ becomes a playfield where hidden desires acquire a life of their own. With the roof beneath their feet and the open sky above them, the women across neighboring households meet and breathe free air and sunshine dabbling in that which is taboo within the confines of their homes below.

Geetanjali is bilingual. Her eloquent Hindi and English idiom reflects a comfort zone in both languages which then becomes her strength. Her first story ‘Bel Patra’ appeared in ‘Hans’ a literary magazine (started by Premchand and later revived by Rajendra Yadav). ‘Anugoonj’ an anthology of short stories brought her recognition and the English translation of ‘Mai’ catapulted her into fame. However, her connect with Hindi language is binding, “English has given me some new access but so far it is Hindi which has got me fame. A notable contrast was the interest other languages across the world, such as German, French, Russian, Korean, Italian, Polish have shown in my work. And mind you – again I wish to underscore this – they have reached me through Hindi, not English! I have been taught in some of these languages and translated too, from Hindi, not English. My writing continues to be routed through Hindi.” She adds, “Besides I want to write a great novel measuring up as great literature. That’s success, more than being propagated geographically. I want my work to be translated into different languages and reach more and more people, but my supreme judge is literature and that is where I must measure well.”

No doubt Geetanjali’s pervasive preoccupation with human nature and feminine spaces is laudatory, but it’s her stylistic literary technique which makes her literature sui generis. Her prose is sing – song, has a rhythm and a beat to it. It adapts very well to audio readings, mesmerizing the listener with its tonality and a magnetic quality. Invariably the syncopated musical quality of her language breaks the structure, sounding trills and quadrilles, in every other line. And that’s the mark of artistic craft! Kudos!

It was a pleasure talking to Geetanjali Shree over lunch on the last day of the Goa Art Lit festival.