Reading the North-East

By Utpal Borpujari

Is there a distinct literary stream that flows from North-East India as compared to literary trends in the rest of India? As literature from North-East India, a region still far removed from the national consciousness unless it has to do with negativities such as insurgencies, corruption and natural calamities, is slowly but surely getting more and more visible, this is the question that is raising its head.

A region with rich literary traditions – whether in written form or in the oral traditions of numerous tribes – the written word from the North-East is suddenly attracting the attention of big publishing houses and even legendary agents like David Godwin like never before. Authors like Mamang Dai from Arunachal Pradesh, who resigned from the Indian Administrative Service to become an author, or Temsula Ao from Nagaland, have been published more than once by publishers like Penguin and Zubaan and got noticed for their strongly rooted writings.

And while writings like them who write in English, a language that traditionally has been a strong point with North-East Indians, are getting their place under the sun, the rich literature in the local languages and dialects, and even those carried from generation to generation as part of the oral storytelling traditions among the numerous tribes, has started attracting the attention of the outside world through increasing translations. While authors like Dai has recreated stories from oral traditions in English, the powerful writings of prominent authors such as Bhabendranath Saikia, a physicist-turned-author-playwright-filmmaker who is considered among the greatest of Assamese creative brains ever, and Jnanpith Awardee Mamoni Raisom (Indira) Goswami are getting appreciated by readers across India in their translated versions.

These and particularly a recent publication by Oxford University Press (OUP), the two-volume “The Oxford Anthology of Writings from North-East India” comprising fiction, essays and poetry by both prominent past and present writers as well as young authors and poets, has been in a way a pointer to a distinct literary strain in the region – distinct from the rest of India. The OUP publication, for the first time, has brought within one single cover writings of some of the most brilliant authors from the region, such as Navakanta Barua, Hiren Bhattacharya, the first Jnanpith Awardee from the region Birendra Kumar Bhattacharyya, Saurabh Kumar Chaliha, Dai, Ao, Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih et al. While much of the content in the publication have been reproduced here from various publications, what this has done is to enable the reader to have a first-hand journey into the literary minds of the North-East in one single place.

While original English writing has come out into the mainstream only recently, literature in Assamese and Manipuri has histories going back to centuries. But thanks to increasing translations, even North-Easterners, leave alone book lovers from rest of India and the world, are discovering literature from within the region. And with that the distinctiveness of the literary trends of the region. As Tilottoma Misra, the editor of the OUP volumes, puts it, “An intense sense of awareness of the cultural loss and recovery that came with the negotiation with ‘other’ cultures is a recurrent feature of the literatures of the seven north-eastern states. Each small community or linguistic group has responded through its oral or written communication to the encounters with the majoritarian cultures from either mainland India or from outside the borders of the country, in its own distinctive manner.” This is exactly what perhaps makes literature from the region different, as the writings not only tell a story but also reflect the unique histories, cultures and heritages of each of the multiple communities there.

Aruni Kashyap, who is the first author from the North-East to be represented by Godwin, and whose debut novel “The House With a Thousand Novels” will soon be published by Penguin, agrees with Misra’s view. “Due to the troubled relationship with the narrative of the Indian state which north-east shares with India, the writers have something very different to say than the other Indian-English authors. Apart from having a different sensibility, it’s the political nature of these writings which make them different. The fraught relationship most of the North-Eastern states have with the Centre often gets reflected in the literature, be it in  English, Assamese or Bodo. The fact that literary circles have been discussing ‘literature from NE’ as a different body of work, attests that it is developing in opposition to Indian-English writing, which probably mirrors the fraught relationship NE has with Delhi,” says Kashyap, two of whose poems feature in the OUP publication.

Indeed, much of the original English or regional language literature, that has emerged from the region at least in the last two decades or so, either have strong political backdrops or recreates stories from the history of the North-East that ‘mainstream’ historians – be it those writing school or college history books or those who have been known as prominent historians – have always bypassed while telling the ancient, Medieval or modern history of India. If Birendra Kumar Bhattacharyya’s 1979 Jnanpith Award winning novel “Mrityunjaya” fictionalised the large-scale participation of North-Easterners in the Freedom Struggle of India, something that has never been given its due space by ‘mainstream’ historians, Easterine Kire’s recent “Mari” (Harper Collins) or Siddhartha Sarma’s award-winning “The Grasshoppers Run” (Scholastic) have brought to the mainstream stories of times when the region had become a major theatre of the Second World War. The OUP publication itself has “Samiran Barua is on his way”, a translation of a story by young author Manoj Goswami that has already achieved a cult status in Assamese literature for its strong political content. But apart from this strong tilt, stories from the region are also getting the attention for being able to reflect the societies of North-East that are unknown to the rest of the world, for example those by Arunachal Pradesh’s Lummer Dai and Yeshe Dorjee Thongchi, Assam’s Rong Bong Terang, Manipur’s Yengkhom Indira or Mizoram’s Margaret Ch Zama.

Urvashi Butalia of publishing house Zubaan, which has published several women authors from the region, explains the scenario thus: “When publishing writers from the North-East it is difficult not to look at the political nature of that writing – virtually everyone writing from there is somehow or the other rooted and involved in the politics of the region. It is difficult to find writers from the North-East who, importantly, are not scared – as often writers of fiction are – of saying they are political. I’d say that is a key difference, and personally I find that much writing from the region has a strong sense of place. I expect that over the years, North-Eastern writers will begin to transcend borders and write about things that may not necessarily be rooted in the North-East, but for the time being it is this that makes the writing so distinct and unique.”

Siddhartha Sarma, whose travelogue on the region, “East of the Sun” (Tranquebar Press) has just hit the stands, believes that while every part of the world has a fascinating collection of story mines – and so does North-East India – but says there are some distinct markers about literature from the region. “The ethnic/tribal/linguistic interplays, tensions and interactions are possibly a little more pronounced, even edgy, in the region, than elsewhere. The more complicated the scene on the ground, the more fertile the ground is for harvesting stories. Viewed in that light, the North-East contains within it the kernels of some of the richest stories that can be told. I also like to believe that in many ways, the region contains some distinct attitudes to life and living. There is a degree of innocence and simplicity which runs through our lives. Part of it has to do with the fact that the region has stayed away from the mercantile approach to living that appears to have permeated the rest of the country so definitively. One still meets artists and craftsmen in far greater number from the region who practise their craft out of love for it, not so much for profit or publicity.”

Norway-based Kire, who taught at Nagaland University for some 18 years and did her PhD in English literature from Pune University, has an interesting viewpoint to offer. “The North-East has always been under-represented because all literary output from it has been hitherto overshadowed by the political conflicts that plague the region. We have had to make our own mark in the Indian literary world by forming The North East Writers Forum and showing the rest of India that there was much more to the North-East than political literature.” She also strongly believes that literature from the region has its own uniqueness, “The entire cultural base of the North-East is different from the rest of India. We may have some shared folk stories with some of the other states of India but otherwise, what the region has to offer is a wholly new literary experience. Its myths and legends are tied to the land, the hills and the rivers. Both the natural world as well as the spiritual world are always alive and real to the North-Easterner. What the North-East has to offer is this spiritual apprehension which is unlike anything that the other states have in their cultures.”

But Atreyee Gohain, who is currently pursuing her PhD in English literature at the Ohio University in the US, and whose translations of various authors have been published in the OUP anthology as well as by Penguin and Sahitya Akademi, has a slightly different viewpoint to offer. “I am not sure. I don’t know if there is a NE literature, same as I am not sure if all the diversity of literature in India can be categorized under Indian literature,” she says. But like all others, she too is happy that literature from the region is starting to get its due at last. “The ignorance of the rest of the country regarding writers and writing in North-East is not just limited to literature. It is heartening now to see our writers getting their dues.We have good translators, and publishers are just about beginning to explore the richness of writing in the North-East,” she says. The rays of the North-Eastern literary sun is for sure lighting up new horizons.

(An edited version of this article was published in The Times of India Crest Edition, 05-02-2011, http://www.timescrest.com, 05-02-2011)

http://www.timescrest.com/culture/recognition-for-north-east-writers-4689

Ludwig Pesch: For the love of Carnatic music

By Utpal Borpujari

 

Ludwig Pesch is a man possessed by South Indian classical music. A lifelong and passionate devotee of Carnatic music, Pesch learnt flute from the late Ramachandra Shastry at Kalakshetra in Chennai and co-founded Sampradaya, a major music documentation centre and archive in the Tamil Nadu capital. A scholar under the Indo-German Cultural Exchange Programme and the German Academic Exchange Service, Pesch has performed all over Southern India, with his guru as well as solo. Pesch’s passion has also resulted in two online courses – “The Music of South India” and “Musik und Künste im südlichen Indien” – that have been acclaimed by performers, teachers, students and lovers of Indian music.

 

But Pesch’s most significant contribution to his beloved field perhaps has been “The Oxford Illustrated Companion to South Indian Classical Music”, which he co-authored with percussion virtuoso T R Sundaresan. The Netherlands-based author has also authored “Ragadhana: An Alpha-Numerical Directory of Ragas” (1992) and “Eloquent Percussion: A Guide to South Indian Rhythm” (1996, co-authored with Sundaresan), but quite surely Oxford University Press publication is his most precious piece of work. The book, which has recently been republished in a completely revised and updated format, brings in a single volume the various forms of South Indian Classical music, instruments used in it, biographical entries on all prominent composers, theorists and musicians, and staff notation for all the 72 scales and hundreds of ragas. All this is embellished with more than 100 line drawings, photographs, colour plates and staves by well-known artists.

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Quite naturally, Pesch is excited about the compendium. “The second edition is in response to many inquiries after three reprints when the book, originally brought out in 1999, went out of print. My focus was, therefore, to update the available contents before making it available again. In the process it also became more comprehensive, up-to-date with many more images. This edition has a much more differentiated bibliography that will be of interest to students, performers and scholars alike,” he says.

Pesch, who was decorated with the Cross of the Order of Merit on the Ribbon of the Federal Republic of Germany in 2000 and the 6th Rabindra Nath Tagore Cultural Award of the Indo-German Society in 2003, is quite eloquent about his passion. “Carnatic music does not constitute a static art tradition from a remote past; nor does it thrive in isolation. Instead, it relates to a wide range of cultural expressions and associations today as in the remote past. Like a colourful fabric, it is strengthened by the many strands and knots to which many hands and minds have contributed. The way in which this happened is probably unique in the world of music. Thankfully, there is no dearth of interesting publications shedding new light on the history of South India’s arts and the way it is being experienced in and outside the regions where it originated,” he says.

The book has already travelled far and wide. “This has to do with several developments, each increasing the demand for accurate and up-to-date information: increased mobility among artists from India as well as visiting non-Indians interested in first-hand experience of Carnatic music; globalisation of the mass media including the internet in which migrants from India became a force to reckon with; and not to forget, the enormous interest in Carnatic music generated by educational and cultural institutions all over the world. Short-lived exotism is giving way to long-term commitment,” he explains.

The book is the result of some 25 years of collecting information in person as well as a number of published and unpublished documents, which kicked off with the collective effort to gather and disseminate background information under the “Sampradaya” archival project. What has encouraged him is the interest the book has been able to generate among lay readers. “After all, I had tried to share my own delight by way of making Carnatic music accessible when others felt that this could simply not be achieved as this music was too ‘cerebral’,” he says.

Pesch, in his effort to promote South Indian classical music, has also launched more than one online project, including www.carnaticstudent.org, AIUME and Sampurna. “There are so many different facets to the theme of Carnatic music. Each institution or group of visitors is more interested in some particular aspect. As a result, these pages stand side by side while their common denominator remains in the background,” he explains about his multiple online projects in the field. Of course, he points out that it is important to distinguish between those aspects of any art that needs to be absorbed under the personal guidance of a teacher and others that can be imbibed and refined by any other means, such as through the Internet, that suits the purpose. “In this sense, the virtual classroom is merely an extension, not a substitute for anything else,” he says.

Pesch’s journey into the world of Carnatic music itself has been quite interesting. In his own words, “Some things are essential as part of civilised life, and music is one of these ‘things’. Music is the art that, more than any other, touches people irrespective of our cultural background but requires congenial circumstances and attention. This brought me into Carnatic music when I was a student of music and musicology in Freiburg and heard Carnatic music for the first time. I was fortunate to have open-minded teachers there and later in Kalakshetra and elsewhere in India when I was offered scholarships to pursue my interest in non-European music; some in a formal teacher-student relationship and others by way of inspiration, guidance and lasting friendship.” It was in 1977 that Pesch became interested in Carnatic music while studying to become a high school music teacher, when he heard a French radio discussion about the music of the late Ramnad Krishnan, whose reputation as an outstanding Carnatic vocalist grew after his demise. That accidental listening to a great Carnatic singer, following a daily midnight poetry reading that he was fond of, was a turning point for him.

“I knew nothing about this music. Yet I instantly sensed that it had to do with my own musical quest and therefore was worth finding out more about,” he says. The result was that he searched the university library for more information about Carnatic music and a few months later took leave from his regular course of study to visit South India, where he met his guru, H Ramachandra Shastry at Kalakshetra. The love affair with Carnatic music that began then, still continues. And why not? As he says, “This year, when Charles Darwin’s 200th birth anniversary is being celebrated all over the world, the role of music in human existence, even the question whether man could exist without it, is being debated in scientific circles. The interesting point here is that in many countries, even scientists who are either non-believers or non-practicioners of any organised religion, appreciate music for shaping the more agreeable facets of civilised life since time immemorial just as for the joy music gives us today, every day.”

 

(published in Deccan Herald, www.deccanherald.com, www.deccanheraldepaper.com, 29-03-2009)

 

http://www.deccanherald.com/Content/Mar292009/sundayherald20090328126744.asp