Book Review: Imaginary Maps.

Literature has long been used as a tool for resistance and the correct representation of people and societies that do not generally find themselves includedwithin the mainstream society. Such writings aim towards the upliftment of the said minority societies. It is what critics have often referred to as “writing one’s way to power”. Imaginary Maps by Mahashweta Devi is one such work that brings out the oppression of the colonizers and the inherent prejudice and cultural bias of people belonging to the upper class; people much like you and me; who have never really struggled for anything.

For people who don’t know who Mahashweta Devi is, she is considered to beone of the prominent faces of India’s Adivasi movement. She was a Bengali activist and writer who devoted her whole life to the empowerment of the tribal people of West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh, and Chattisgarh regions. Her works are primarily in Bengali but they have been widely translated into other Indian languages as well as in English.

Imaginary Maps is a collection of three short stories although the second and third are often considered novelettes. They were translated from individual works written in Bengali by renowned literary critic and translator Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak.

The book opens with an interview of the author that was conducted by the translator herself. The interview creates a premise for the readers as to what they should be expecting in her works. Mahashweta Devi talks about her journey as an activist and how her travels in the obscure forest and hilly regions of Bengal, MP, and Chattisgarh led her to create characters in her stories. She emphasizes that these characters are not mere fictional descriptions but such characters can actually be found in the tribal villages that she has spent her life in, interacting and working with them. The translator’s note by Spivak helps the reader in situating the stories into a historical context since most Indian and Western readers are expected to be unfamiliar with the tribal experiences. Both the author’s interview and the translator’s note were very insightful for me.

 

Coming to the three stories, the first one is titled ‘The Hunt’. The original Bengali title of the story is ‘Shikar’. The story is about tribal women’s struggle for survival but the story of Mary Oraon could also easily be the story of every woman in our country where her privileges - economic, political, and sexual - are determined by and judged by the dominant cultural perspectives. It discusses in detail the issue of sexual violence and power that upper caste men tend to exert on tribal women. Mary Oraon has been portrayed as a powerful character, hardened by her circumstances as she takes matters of her sexual freedom into her own hands.

‘Douloti, the bountiful’ is probably one of the most heartbreaking stories I have ever read about the subjection of women who are forced into sexual labor as a way of paying back monetary loans given to them and their families by men in power. The second story gives more insight into the bonded labor system that is still prevalent in the tribal villages. The character of Douloti acts as a sharp contrast to Mary Oraon and her story marks the real position of a helpless tribal woman in Indian society.

‘Pterodactyl, Puran Sahay, and Pirtha’ is the third story and is a more factual account of the workings of a fictional tribal village. It was surely a compelling narrative but with each page, I started feeling more and more disconnected from the characters because frankly, there are too many of them to keep a track of. Nevertheless, the story presents an appropriate account of the culture and ways of the indegenious people, their beliefs and the realities in which they continue to exist even when their identity is often almost negated by the rest of our country.

You can read the shorter version of this review on my Instagram page. The link is given down below:

Book Review: The Handmaid's Tale.

“A rat in a maze is free to go anywhere, as long as it stays in the maze.”

I am not going to introduce the author or the book in this review. I think everyone has heard of this book because of the Hulu Series that it was adapted into around four years ago. And Margaret Atwood is a household name when it comes to Proto feminist and feminist fiction. I also do not wish to give the plot of the book to people who are looking forward to reading this.

The Handmaid’s Tale, although, is a Dystopian fiction, or rather a Speculative Fiction as the author prefers to call it. For people who don’t know what speculative fiction is, it is a genre that explores elements that do not exist in reality, recorded history, nature, or the present universe.

I have been moved by a number of books in this lifetime but very few books have ended up scaring me. The Handmaid’s Tale is one such book that has kept me up at night thinking about it. If I could describe the book using one word, it would be ‘gripping’. From the very first page, you will get sucked into the world of Ofred and the other handmaids like her.

The language is terse and compact and employs brief sentences. There are a lot of full stops which many might find annoying but I didn’t. I think it added that extra element of suspense and fear. The narration is fragmented too. Ms. Atwood’s narrator is what we literature students call ‘an unreliable narrator’. Ofred often skips from one train of thought to another. She gives half descriptions of incidents and although that is a brilliant technique to write a Dystopian novel, it also makes the narrative very hard to follow. I had the most trouble with such a narration because it broke my flow a bit. Nonetheless, the storyline is pretty fast-paced.

A Goodreads review of this book bashes it on the basis of logical realities that it fails to gratify. It said, and I quote, “Societies don’t change overnight.” But I think they do. With the Talibani invasion, we have been proved that things can and do change for the worse and such things do happen quickly. Although the likelihood of such premises to occur in powerful nations like America is pretty low, I must agree. But who knows? The way we have been witnessing drastic changes in the world order over the past few years, one can only wonder. We may not have written rules on the subjugation of women, but every day women of the world (even first world countries) are made to feel the difference of their gender in various sectors of life. We may not have an autocratic government yet that makes women property of the men and the state, only to be used for reproduction purposes, but women all over the world are still denied abortion rights and god knows whatnot. Hence, this book didn’t quite feel like dystopia to me. It just felt like a prophecy of sorts; a dark future that awaits us. 

You can read this review and many other such reviews on my Instagram page. Here's the link:

https://www.instagram.com/the.boi.poka/

Books that shaped me: 04

"That time when I was five or six and, playing a prank, leapt out at you from behind the hallway door, shouting, “Boom!”

You screamed, face raked and twisted, then burst into sobs, clutched your chest as you leaned against the door, gasping. I stood bewildered, my toy army helmet tilted on my head.I was an American boy parroting what I saw on TV.

I didn’t know that the war was still inside you, that there was a war to begin with, that once it enters you it never leaves—but merely echoes, a sound forming the face of your own son. Boom."

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I owe this to one of my friends Shweta.

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To be honest, when she first mentioned this book, my immediate reaction was "Such a beautiful title; I bet the book must be great too."

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I just couldn't help myself from reading a book with such a beautiful title and I'm so glad that I did.

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Ocean Vuong broke my heart into a thousand pieces but it didn't really hurt because it was such a beautiful experience reading this book. .

The book is written in the form of a letter written to the narrator's illiterate mother. In the letter he mentions the little incidents and shared memories of his childhood and refers to many people who shaped up his life. The incidents have been mentioned very casually but while you read it, you will feel the great impact it had on the narrator (Vuong himself) as a child, an adolescent and as an adult. .

This book is about war and the impact it left on people who witnessed it; the narrator's family being one of those who escaped the war but couldn't escape the haunting memories. The narrator's family (especially his mother) suffers from PTSD as a result of the war and the effect it has on her life and relationships is what the book is all about.

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The book is so quotable because each line feels like loose poetry sewn together into something more big; more beautiful.

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This book reminded me of all the heartbreaking yet beautiful war poetries that I have read. .

Ending with a very beautiful sentence that I found in the book:

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"When does a war end? When can I say your name and have it mean only your name and not what you left behind?"

Books that shaped me: 03

The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint Exupéry is a novella with illustrations meant for kids. But, why is it so famous among the adults? I'd like to answer this question in Exupéry's own words “All grown-ups were once children - although few of them remember it.” The Little Prince is a magical book and is highly symbolic. The narration is so beautifully carried out that it doesn't even occur to our minds that this has been written by an adult, sitting far away from the country that he loved, in a world stricken with war. Maybe, it is for this reason that the book provides an escape for people who are tired of living a life of disillusionment.

We're all children in our adult bodies that provide us with the most rational explanations for things around us. This book reconnects us with that child inside. For a moment we can just let go of the real world and it's rationality and dive into the world where planes crash into the desserts and we meet a little boy who teaches us something that we had known all along but were afraid to confront.

The book questions reality, the myth of adulthood and rationality. It is so correctly phrased that you'd shed tears at every page. But that is not the best thing about the book. The best thing is the fact that a child and an adult will enjoy reading it in the same. While a child will get lost in the fantasy world of the little prince, an adult will take some of the best life lessons from the Little Prince and the narrator.

Sometimes language fails. That's where a picture starts to speak. The illustrations are so beautiful and full of imagination. They also show that the adult mind isn't much different from a child's mind.

There are certain books that'll make you feel sad at the end and there are some books that you'll never want to end and that is a devastating feeling. The Little Prince is one such book for me. To be honest, I'll always revisit the book in hope that one day The Little Prince will return and tell us about his new experiences. 

If I had to make a horcrux, I'd surely keep a part of my soul in this book!

Breathing Memories.

A lot about me

Is about death.

My love

In flesh and blood

Died while I watched

And a part of me

Died with it

On some days 

I smell like

Those white flowers

That are placed

Right beside

A dead body

Some days I smell

Like the dying fragnance

Of incense 

I look like sunsets

And a lone tear

Right before 

It exits the corner

Of the eye

I'm all about endings

Unexplained 

And sometimes 

Unfinished, even.

But what is it like 

To live with

A thousand dead bodies

Inside you?

I say,

I've never felt this alive

I challenge death

And its sidekick: oblivion

I breathe

I live with memories

And I ponder often

How strong our memories make us

Remembering is a painful joy

One feeling that I'm quite inept

Of explaining

Probably an abrupt ending will do

Just like everything else

That once was.

Why I write on Love.

I write on love

Because I know

All about it.

But then,

I don't.

I spill my heart on paper,

Expecting it to understand

The feeling of love

Because I'm pretty sure

What love looks like.

But I am still

Hung up on the fact

That I haven't really

Known how it feels.

Maybe it's like

Seeing someone

Who loves you

With all they have.

But then,

You can't comprehend

Why it takes so long

For you to commit

To that person.

Maybe it tastes

Bittersweet;

Almost like

The taste

In the back of your throat,

When you realize

That you've fallen

For the wrong one

Who'd eventually

Break your heart

Or worse,

Leave

Without doing it;

So that you're the one

Who drops on the floor

And shatter into pieces.

Maybe it's like

Making the same mistakes,

Over and over again,

Knowing that

It's still a mistake

Even if

You make it with a

Different person this time.

Maybe it's like

Writing letters

And never giving them

Because you thought

It'd be silly.

Maybe it's like giving

Those letters anyway;

To the person,

Who you know

In your heart

Is the one.

But you're too scared

To put a foot forward.

I write about love

Because I know 

That this world needs it,

Even if it is not really 

A good place for

Love to exist.

I write about love

Because without love

Things would fall apart,

Never to be joined back again.

On grief.

When my tongue gives up

I pick up a pen

To write poems

And letters

That I'll never send

You always marvelled

At my intense expression 

While penning down a thought

You once clicked a picture

Of me writing

That was not a pretty picture

Because that day

I went back home

And cried myself to sleep

Because our love was falling apart

And I didn't know what to do

So I felt grief

In the most vulnerable way

It can be felt in

I felt it

And wrote verses

That never made it

On my Instagram feed.

Do you remember

How I used to read

Poems to you?

And how I used

To talk about dead poets

As if I've lived their life

Before they ended it

As if my soul died with them

As if their grief was mine to keep

Forever, inside the pages

Of my worn out diary

People say poets are sad

And they know nothing else

I tell them

That grief is a poem

Written for a beloved

And recited

Over and over

By an ignorant world

Not realizing

It was written

On her death

Grief is difficult

Like Nietzsche

Grief is a series of suicide notes

Known to the world 

As art

Grief is like Plath

Wanting to be loved

And yet dying alone

Grief looks like 

Dried flowers

That once lived

And yet were plucked

To be put on graves

Grief is me trying

To understand my own sorrow 

Through a list of words

Grief is a countless number

Of things that might not

Be related to death

Grief is very much alive

It lives and breathes

In all of us

Hence, grief is a poem 

Because poems live forever.