A Week is a Long Time
It was a week that I believe will have significant ramifications for the future. In two of the biggest events that happened this week, I notice one thing in common: people are documenting our times in the best possible manner, as art is supposed to do, as “Mimesis” is all about.
The Uvalde Leader-News, the newspaper that has served the community in various forms since 1879, was one of the first on the scene at Robb Elementary, to report on the incident that has shook people around the globe. The staff continued reporting even though they had lost acquaintances and a staff member’s daughter. Other print and electronic media who trooped to the spot were seeking their comment, insight, and images. The outlet decided that, except for the date May 24, the front page of Uvalde Leader-News was going to be entirely black. It was subsequently recognized in leading media that Uvalde Leader-News could provide in a way that no other outlet could: “Context. A source of understanding, and hand-holding, and healing.”
In advocating truthfulness and compassion, let me also say, it was horrific, to say the least. One wonders how, if at all, these people will reconcile to the enormous vacuum created.
Personal loss and grieving is as much in arts as blood in veins. How can a Person of the Arts be not moved by loss, grief, injustice, abuse, and not express the world in which they live in, truthfully?
The other big news was the announcement of the 2022 Booker Prize winner, Tomb of Sand, translated by Daisy Rockwell from Geetanjali Shree’s fifth Hindi novel, Ret Samadhi (2018). Now, this work is an account of common people’s lives, documented with sensitivity. It traces the transformative journey of 80-year-old Ma, who becomes depressed after the death of her husband. Ma then decides to travel to neighboring Pakistan to confront the unresolved trauma of (India-Pakistan) partition (1947) which she had experienced as a teenager. Interestingly, one reviewer described it as “a stunningly powerful story about stories that never end.”
A story that never ends! Exciting! Because, I presume, what ends is not a story worthy of telling.
Peruse the following brief excerpt from the work. I have no doubt that the novel will be read far and wide.
“Beti. Daughters are made of wind and air. Invisible even in moments of stillness, when only the very sensitive perceive them. But if not still, then stirring…and oh, how they stir…and the sky bows down so low you could reach out and touch it with your hand. Dry earth cracks, nightingales rise, gurgling springs surface…
Daughter. You love her. You fear her. Now you see her. Now you don’t.
All women, don’t forget, are daughters.”
For the literary world, and Indian writers especially, the Booker win of Tomb of Sand is expected to renew interest in writing originating from South Asia, as well as revive the market for translations. Absent, however, was the applause from within India itself, arguably in the scale and medium one would think should have been spontaneous. The fact that Geetanjali Shree’s work has always re-presented what she saw and encountered (including her second novel Hamara Shahar Us Baras, set loosely after the incidents of Babri Masjid demolition of 1992), and that the writer has not shied away from questioning the powers ruling, it is perhaps not so surprising.
It is wonderful to find that contemporary works are a reflection of the times we live in. On the other hand, I have often wondered how ready are publishers for work that is, for want of a better word, realistic? I can hear emerging writers ruing the lack of avenues for particular styles. And, only a lukewarm interest for themes not really resonant to a greater reading population, to the class that actually pays for books, buys art. All I can say is: You are, by all estimates, NOT very wrong! Sadly.
Conversely, it does make sense to tailor one’s writing to certain subject matters that “sell.” The key seems to be in finding a balance, and more importantly, not be overcome by the train of publications and achievements of successful writers.
How the success of others overwhelm us finds expression in Susan Cain’s book Bittersweet, a review of which I had the opportunity of reading this week. The undercurrent is her constant questioning of the psyche, obeisance in particular, and what she refers to as the “tyranny of positivity.” She references songwriters such as Leonard Cohen and Nick Cave, to explore the reason why we are so drawn to music with melancholy — those rare moments we experience joy and sadness at the same time. Finally, she places these ideas within the grid-points of cultural aspirations where, despite the public display of cheerfulness and the promotion of success, people are becoming more depressed.
That’s the column of haze I’ll leave you with to ponder this week.
