Out of Print 5

Out of Print has been around for a full year, which we think is quite phenomenal.

The issue features writing by U R Ananthamurthy (translation by Deepa Ganesh), Chandrahas Choudhury, Firdaus Haider (translation by Out of Print author, Nighat Gandhi), Roshna Kapadia, Sharanya Mannivanan, Murzban Shroff and Annie Zaidi. Artwork is by Jan Banning from his Bureaucratics series.

We thank all our contributors.

Out of Print in Social Mantra

Out of Print editor, Indira Chandrasekhar talks to Biswajit Dey of Social Mantra about the magazine and the underlying drive behind its mandate, and about her transition from scientist to writer, editor, and publisher.   

Out of Print Author Series: Annam Manthiram

In the coming months we will run a series honouring the publication achievements of our Out of Print authors.

Annam Manthiram, whose powerful Reincarnation of Chamunda featured in the mythology issue of Out of Print releases her debut novel, After the Tsunami at the end of September:

After the Tsunami follows Siddhartha, an Indian man who appears to have it all: a successful career as a schoolteacher in the United States, a perceptive wife, and a son and daughter who respect him as much as they adore him.  But inside he struggles to find purpose in the brutality that continues to haunt him - the terror he faced as a child during his time spent in an orphanage in India.  Cutting in its clarity and profoundly insightful,After the Tsunami will haunt and move readers everywhere. 

·    “...a deeply imagined, wholly engrossing world of an Indian orphanage for boys...” -- Mel Freilicher, author of The Unmaking of Americans: 7 Lives

·    “...well within the believable, so it gets to you emotionally like no other work can...” -- Professor Emeritus Hugh Fox, founding member of the Pushcart Prize and one of the most widely published poets in America

·    “...a poignant tale of endurance,” and a “stark and chilling tale of a betrayed childhood...” -- Sita Bhaskar, author of Shielding Her Modesty

·    “...dominated by a brutal and complex interplay of power and corruption..." --Dr. Indira Chandrasekhar, founder and editor of Out of Print

 

Absolution by Sucharita Dutta-Asane

Absolution

Sucharita Dutta-Asane

’Then Gautama cursed his wife. “You shall be invisible to all creatures as you do penance in this hermitage! You shall be purified only when Rama, the invincible son of Dasaratha, comes to this forest. Wicked woman, when you offer hospitality to Rama, you shall be freed of your lust and passion. You shall regain your earlier form in my presence!” Gautama left the hermitage ...’*

The Act

When he had finished with what he came for, I lay back and let him sate himself on my beauty. I heard the milkman ring the bell twice. I let the cats slurp on the milk they had clawed out of the bag. Let them gorge too, I thought.

He sat up in bed scratching his handsome cheek still besmeared with the redness of my lips. He turned away from my limp arms.

‘What about your husband?’

My husband?

What sort of a question was that? Hadn’t he come into the house using my husband’s voice, with his ardour, and with his own unquenchable thirst for what he had lost when my husband whisked me away with his wizardry? Oh come on! Did I know when I opened the door that it was he and not my husband who stood at the threshold? I was in my bathrobe, just out of my bath, expecting my beloved at the door, waiting to ensnare him all over again with my long tresses and fragrant arms. And whom do I find but this man wrapped in charm and long withheld hunger! Did I know then that he would step in through the door as I gaped at him, and take me in his arms? Did he know I was alone? Of course! He had left nothing to chance, but I didn’t know it then.

And yet, having seen through the ploy, I gave in.

Why?

Here are some reasons.

He swept me off my feet.

It was preordained. I had to, perhaps to tell this story.

I was helpless.

But wait! Do you think I am justifying my actions? No. I waited for what was to come, gauged the extent of my involvement. Could I prove how he, the desired of a million hearts, simply picked me up and placed me on the bed? Could I explain how I could not bring myself to say no to this man who ruled over the multitude? I? A mere mortal before him? I could not even open my eyes to look at him, hold his gaze. And I swooned before the ardour he offered at my feet. I couldn’t look at him directly but the mirror showed it all. His famous charm wrapped itself around my senses and I saw him come to me in a manner unimaginable for the countless whose hearts throb only for him.

I saw my beauty blaze in the mirror and burn in his eyes. I was helpless before his impatient, awesome craving.

The Retribution

Aditya returned on Saturday, jubilant with the new project he had wrested for his partners. He always knew how to wrest a win from under the opponent’s nose.

I waited. He would know. He could see through me.

In my mind I was inviolate.

But how could he not see the violation of my body?

At night, with the curtains drawn around us, the sheets crisp over our bodies, the lamplight muted, he quietly turned towards me.

‘I wish you would tell me yourself.’

I had nobody to speak on my behalf, no divine amanuensis to record my words. I told him how I was duped by the voice that pretended to be his; how I did not smell his adversary standing at the door. I did not tell him that I smelt his passion.

‘You welcomed him with open arms.’

‘Oh no! No! My arms were pinned to my side, dangling from where his arms held me in their grip.’

‘Why didn’t you prevent him?’

‘How could I?’

‘You didn’t want to.’

‘I didn’t want to ...’ A world of equivalence crouches in that admission.

‘Was it rape?’

How would I answer this? Does one shut one’s eyes during rape? Does rape make one feel satiated with an unexpected thrill? How could I answer this question?

‘You are better off without me. And he, the son of a bitch! I will see to him.’

He got out of bed and switched on the television. I was discarded.

‘What am I to do?’

‘Whatever.’ He did not turn to look at me.

‘Are you putting me out of your life?’

‘That’s what you have chosen to do.’

‘What choice did I have?’

‘The choice to say no.’ In the flickering light of the television, his grin was sombre, mirthless. ‘Stay if you want to. I cannot take you back. For me, you have ceased to exist.’

I turned to stone with my outraged modesty, with the remnants of my dignity, with the unwillingness to clarify, or to confirm.

I turned to stone, not out of calculated coquetry to win him back. My petrifaction was my protest against my perceived arousal, my husband’s demand for purity at all costs, at his acceptance of possible rape but not my shocked compliance.

‘If he can stand up to say you were unwilling, I could consider taking you back.’

I’d rather be a stone.

The Salvation

Aaliya visited me when I was packing some bags.

‘What’s this? Where are you going?’

‘Cleaning up, not going.’

‘Did you say sorry to Aditya?’

I had to look at her for this. I had to see the question in the depths of her eyes. She had to see the answer in my words.

‘Sorry? For being imposed upon?’

‘How could you give in?’

I pushed the open rucksack with my left foot. ‘You mean I welcomed him with open arms?’

‘N..no, but if it was rape, you could have said no.’

I smiled. I had to. ‘Tell me, Aaliya. How does one demarcate? Where does the line of rape end and consent begin when one has no choice? I took the scars on my mind instead of on my body. Is that what you want to see? The scars of my torment? The proof?’

‘Why didn’t you report it?’

‘And then? Take this private inquisition to the public fora? Who would believe me? Do you believe? Does Aditya believe? Come on, Aali. You know better than that. He is God himself, the invincible, irrepressible heartthrob of this nation and he enters my home and violates me. Is this what I tell the world?’

‘Why he?’

My laughter rings in my ears. ‘I did not advertise the post of rapist, if that’s what you mean.’ Poor girl, I didn’t mean to humiliate her.  After all, we go back a long way, school, college and then theatre. ‘Why he? Ask Adi. He will tell you. That’s what’s gnawing at him.  Adi cocked a snook at him when he won me. I was the prize and the prize has been desecrated.’

Aaliya stood by the window, a picture frozen in time. Like Aditya later that night. He too stood by the window, as if that aperture would give him respite.

‘What do you plan to do now?’

‘Nothing, Adi.’

‘I thought you were leaving.’

‘Where should I go? Will my going away make me unreal, render me null and void? To whom?’

‘At least I won’t have to see you before my eyes every day. Spare me that torment. When I see you I see the other too, the one you brought into my room, my bed, and claim to be innocent about.’

‘Would you have had me violated on the street rather than on your bed? Does the setting determine whether the act is acceptable or despicable?’

‘This is not an intellectual discussion and it does not absolve you of your guilt.’

‘Guilt. Yes, guilt indeed. I gave in knowing I had no way out.’

‘People won’t think so.’

‘The walls around me have pre-existing niches, Adi, and your ‘people’ are waiting to fill them with pre-existing goodies according to each one’s taste. Only I know what fits. I could say he raped me and go on to admire your brawn as you bash up his handsome face. I could, if I wanted to, prove the rape. I choose not to prove anything. It’s my word against your ideas. The choice is yours Adi, not mine.’

‘Leave me alone! I wish you would disappear.’

*

I did not disappear; I stayed in our home, slept in our bedroom. Sometime after this, I do not remember the exact date, he returned from office and took cognizance of my presence.

‘Want to discuss something. Are you free for a minute?’

I wasn’t, but I made myself available.

‘I have to leave for France for six months. Tomorrow.’

I waited. Aditya looked at me in the mirror.

‘What are your plans?’

‘Are you running away, Adi?’ I didn’t await his answer. ‘No, I have no plans. Have a play scheduled for next week and am busy with that.’

‘So when I return, will you still be here?’

I stood before him now, between him and the mirror.

‘I’ll be here. Not waiting, not pining, not penitent, not imperceptible to all creatures, intangible, unseen, veiled; not for me the penance for a sin I am not guilty of. I have absolved myself of all perceived guilt. I will be here as I am.’

*

* Arshia Sattar, The Ramayana by Valmiki, Penguin Books, 2000, p. 74

*

Sucharita Dutta-Asane is a writer based in Pune. Her work has appeared this year in Vanilla Desires, Unisun Publications and Ripples, Short Stories by Indian Women Writers, APK Pulishers. Her retelling of Sita's story has been selected for Zubaan's forthcoming anthology, The Speculative Ramayana. Her collection of short stories titled The Jungle Stories won an award at Oxford Bookstores' e-author contest in 2008. Besides this, she freelances as an editor with a Literary Agency in India.

Launch of Sita's Ramayana by Samhita Arni

After the success of her children's Mahabharatha, written when she was just 12, author Samhita Arni now teams up with Patua scroll artist Moyna Chitrakar, to create Sita's Ramayana, a unique graphic novel of the great epic from a woman's point of view.  Tara launches the second in its series of unique graphic novels featuring art in the Patua style from Bengal. Chief guest will be Leela Samson, director of Kalakshetra, speaking on the many forms of the Ramayana. For more information and to view the e-invitation, follow this link

Moksha: Ravana's Monologue by Joshua Salomon Gannon

Moksha: Ravana’s monologue

Joshua Salomon Gannon

What achievement is this? Moksha? I have been defeated, but I feel no pain. I have been disgraced, overthrown, yet I feel no shame. The arrow in my chest afflicts me not at all. I am like a mountain lake at midnight, utterly becalmed, without the tiniest ripple.

This is not a blessing. You must understand, oh people, that this so-called release from birth, death, and rebirth to me is like being banished forever from my homeland. The highest levels of Indra’s shining city seem dull to me after seeing Lanka in its splendour. This dim, formless place has no suffering, perhaps, but no pleasures either.

The irony is, to most humans, this refuge from the physical world would be a boon. But to a raksasa like myself, it is simply a grander punishment, preventing me from ever tasting the pleasures of life as I once did. It is no sin to refuse the idea of the earth as a vale of tears. I, of course, went far beyond that, but most of my city’s men and women knew how to live and die in all but unbroken streams of pleasure. Our whole civilisation rode on the strengths of my former austerities, and our delights harmed no one until thoughts of Sita drove me to distraction and error. If I had only refused that one act, that one disruption of the flow of young Rama’s life, I could have died in my bed, loved and lamented by my women and ministers, and feared even in death by my enemies. Now I sit here, and I cannot even feel self-pity or

nostalgia for the earth. . .

I am sated, but it brings me no joy, no sadness. I have struck a balance I never wished to strike in life, and if I were yet alive, it would confound me with fear. But here in this place of utter neutrality, I find only the watery twilight between my accustomed extremes, and like an unfamiliar bed, I can find no comfort here.

*

Joshua Salomon Gannon studied theatre at Hampshire College. Ravana’s monologue was written and performed for a class on the Ramayana. He wishes to acknowledge his professors, Talya Kingston, and his wonderful visiting professor Arshia Sattar. His blog, http://transpersonaltheatre.wordpress.com/.

Questioning the Epics

OOPM's fourth issue, on mythology will come out later this month. Here's a piece on mythology by one of our editors.

An ancient story features a boy with a penchant for asking questions. One day, the boy watches his father - a Brahmin teacher - perform a sacrifice, dedicating livestock to the Gods. A question occurs to him, and he asks his father - "to whom do you give me?"

The boy's father, always under a constant barrage of difficult questions, is exasperated and so retorts - "I give you to death!"
The father's reaction isn't hard to understand. He's not too dissimilar from parents and Indian school teachers today, who are confounded and vexed by the questions children ask - why is the sky so high? Why is it blue? How deep is the sea? Like the father in the story, they snap back with a caustic remark. 

But in this old tale words once spoken can’t be taken back, and the boy, obedient to his father's words, makes his way to Death's house. Death is away, so the boy patiently waits. When Death returns he is impressed by this boy, and grants him a boon. But the boy doesn't want toys, gold or riches. He only wants to ask a question: "What is the secret of life and death?" Death, surprised, entreats him to ask for something else - but the boy is stubborn. Death is forced to answer him.

This story of the conversation between the boy, Nachiketa, and Death serves as the frame for the Katha Upanishad and is also featured in the Mahabharatha. The boy in this story, Nachiketa, possesses the same remarkable, delightful curiosity that many children share. In my new introduction to the latest edition of The Mahabharatha - A Child's View I've written about the questions that the children I've met over the years - in readings, on book tours and in family gatherings - have asked me. Those questions, in many cases, are deeply inspiring and the source of new insights. I'm not going to write about those particular questions here (if you would like to know more, check out my new introduction).

Instead I'd like to write about the need to encourage questions and curiosity, especially in India, where we are sadly saddled with an education system that discourages curiosity and rewards rote learning and memorization. It's a system that positions the teacher as a figure of authority not to be questioned or challenged. As a result, obedience is one of the most important and powerful values in our society. We are encouraged to respect (unquestioningly!) our teachers and parents, to abide by their choices and to sacrifice our wants to fulfill theirs. We are told that, "children must be seen and not heard". In classrooms all over the country children like Nachiketa are punished and scolded for asking questions that fall outside the purview of a syllabus. 

This is a position that is also advocated with respect to our epics and myths. We no longer engage with them: we are told what to think, and what the moral of the story is - without being allowed to discover it for ourselves. When such stories are told, the teller often has a moral or pedagogical motive in mind. The epics are always about "the victory of good over evil," and we're not encouraged to think beyond that analysis. This story, of Nachiketa, has been used to advocate obedience of the "unquestioning" variety to one's parents (I liked the use of the word 'unquestioning' - it made me think that the teller had completely missed the point!)

There's another story, at the beginning of the Mahabharatha, which is equally anti-authoritarian in its stance. King Yayati is cursed to turn old by his Brahmin guru father-in-law (a teacher) when he angers his wife (Devyani) by falling in love with her maid. Yayati is distressed, and his father-in-law relents - Yayati can become young again if he can find someone willing to take up the burden of his old age. The King approaches his sons, but his eldest two sons are unwilling to give up their youth. His third son, Puru, the ancestor of the Pandavas and Kauravas, is willing to take on his father's curse - and so his father rewards him by disinheriting his elder sons. It's a pattern that repeats itself later - Shantanu, like his forefather, is driven by desire, and his desire leads him to disinherit his eldest son. 

In these tales, children turn out to be wiser than their parents and teachers. Authority - in the figure of kings like Yayati and Shantanu who pursue their own personal pleasures at the cost of others and their kingdom - is questioned.
For these reasons, I take issue with those who argue that our epics are about the victory of good over evil, and that obedience is a value of Indian culture.  I was recently in a seminar for graduate level students (in an Indian Institute) on the Mahabharatha - and such statements were tossed back and forth across the classroom. The Pandavas were "good"; the Kauravas were "evil." I was soon bored. I've heard - as has everyone else - these remarks over and over again. The Mahabharatha is a layered, complex epic - on one level it is certainly about good and evil; but on another level it questions our notions of what constitutes right and wrong in the first place.

As I've grown older, I am filled with more and more respect and admiration for the Mahabharatha and for our myths. The Mahabharatha is full of situations and characters that raise questions in the minds of its audience and readers – questions that provoke us to think. How could Drona ask Ekalavya for such a terrible sacrifice? How can Drona, a Brahmin who must traditionally abhor and avoid violence, be a teacher of war and an unsurpassed warrior? Isn't it odd that Bhishma, born to rule, must forego his birthright and live a life better suited to a brahmachari than to a Kshatriya prince? Isn't it peculiar that Arjuna, the greatest warrior and lover, is emasculated and turns into a eunuch? Is it fair that Bhima, the strongest man and brother of the righteous Yudhisthira, must break the rules of combat and strike his enemy on the thigh, in order to win?

These questions have many, many answers. But we aren't encouraged to ask these questions. Curiosity is thought of as subversive - it challenges the knowledge and the authority of teachers, as the story of Nachiketa illustrates. Consequently the graduates of our school system can parrot information and memorize page-long essays, but they are unable to adapt to new situations or think independently. 

And so I'd like to end with a question - how can you truly learn without asking questions?

Samhita Arni is the author of "The Mahabharata - A Child's View" (1996, Tara Books). This piece was written to commemorate the publication of the fifth edition of the Mahabharata, earlier this year, and was originally posted on the Tara Books Blog.