Pricey Reader,
The e-book I’m studying now’s so fascinating that I dream about it after I put it down. And desires determine prominently within the narrative—a poet desires of a demigod ordering him to jot down a narrative singing his reward; a lady desires of the moon descending from the sky and getting into her womb; a service provider possibilities upon a wondrous dream-like metropolis in the midst of the ocean. The e-book is Needle on the Backside of the Sea: Traditional Bengali Tales from the Sunderbans, translated and launched by Tony Okay. Stewart.
It takes us to the tide nation made acquainted by Amitav Ghosh’s TheHungry Tide—the Sundarbans delta unfold throughout West Bengal and Bangladesh, the place nature nonetheless reigns throughout infinite stretches of ebbing and flowing muddy waters, mangrove forests that emerge like spirits from the waters at low tide, stealthy tigers that stalk their prey within the chiaroscuro of the forests, and large storms that alter the panorama in minutes. The tales that spring from the swamps of the Atharobhati (actually, 18 tides) are as phantasmagoric because the land itself, consisting of gods, heroes, and their tiger armies.
But, as Stewart factors put, they’re additionally very actual, rooted to the actualities of human and non-human lives, presenting a worldview that’s contingent and sensible. Composed by Muslim and Hindu poets, these tales from the early trendy interval have eclectic casts of Hindu deities, miracle-working Sufi saints, and heroes of each spiritual affiliations. “Whereas the protagonists, each female and male, are nominally spiritual, Sufi saints, the texts are under no circumstances sectarian statements or theology. They’re literature, journey tales of survival that underscore the necessity for folks of all social and non secular ranks to work collectively in hostile environments,” says Stewart within the introduction.
Stewart is a specialist within the early trendy literature of the Bengali-speaking world. His 2019 e-book, Witness to Marvels: Sufism and Literary Creativeness, received the 2021 Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy Ebook Prize from the Affiliation of Asian Research. Within the introduction to Witness to Marvels, he factors at an anomaly that struck me too in studying these tales about Islamic figures like Satya Pir or Bada Khan Gaji—they’re not often mentioned in scholarly circles and only a few lay readers have heard of them. “[W]e have ignored them though they’ve been pervasive for hundreds of years. It’s our loss if we don’t hear to those voices—and from them we are able to be taught issues not attainable by way of the dominant discourses of historical past, theology, and legislation that drive a lot of our understanding of Islam immediately,” writes Stewart.
Certainly, I used to be jolted by the very first textual content that Stewart interprets in the e-book—”Ray Mangal Kavya”, composed by Krishnaram Das in 1686. It’s a report of the exploits of the Hindu demigod Dakshin Ray, the legendary lord of the Sundarbans areas, who rides a tiger with the very Islamic-sounding identify of Hir. Within the story, his adversary initially is Bada Khan Gaji, a revered Sufi warrior, with whom he fights for territorial allegiances. Ultimately, they turn into quick pals after their dispute is settled by the supreme god of the universe, Lord Isvar, who, astonishingly, holds “the Koran in a single hand and the Puran within the different.” Lord Isvar is described as a composite determine, half dark-skinned Narayana and half light-skinned mendicant Prophet or paygambar. In his peace-making speech, he tells Bada Khan Gaji that “You and [Dakshin] Ray are one and the identical.” Lord Isvar’s speech left me speechless, questioning the place such syncretism had gone within the intervening centuries.
“Ray Mangal” is spellbinding for different causes too. A outstanding part provides names and voices to the tigers as they collect for battle, trying like a “raging forest hearth”. Their tales are humorous, however in expressing the hazards the tigers face whereas looking people—Bhutaliya’s testicles are crushed by feisty girls, Durbar’s whiskers are singed in a single encounter, and he’s trapped in a cowshed in one other—they converse of the human-animal battle that has been occurring within the delta from occasions immemorial.
When Lord Isvar seems to make peace between Dakshin Ray and Bada Khan Gaji, he additionally addresses the highest tiger, Khan Dauda, warning him of the hazards that come from people: “The vile savages of those wilds are unpredictable animals. Do you have to encounter them, they’ll break your necks, and for that reason it’s best to keep away from them.” One may assume the “wild savages” referred to listed here are tigers, when it’s truly people that Lord Isvar is describing in such unflattering phrases. In a feat of zoomorphic creativeness, Krishnaram Das upends the human view of the world to talk for tigers.
The poet additionally shows a profound environmental consciousness, differentiating the bushes and birds of the delta and predicting a future the place the ceaseless exploitation of forest sources for timber, salt, and honey will spell doom for its human and non-human inhabitants. What he advocates as answer is steadiness—an empathetic understanding of each viewpoint to the benefit of all—that applies as a lot to inter-human relationship as to that between people and animals and forests.
Eco-fiction is perhaps a recent development in world literature, however texts like “Ray Mangal” show that Indian authors have been partaking with the fallouts of environmental exploitation for a very long time. In Talking with Nature: The Origins of Indian Environmentalism, historian Ramachandra Guha presents portraits of 10 founding figures of environmentalism in India. A e-book of immense scholarship, it’s thoughtfully reviewed by Yuvan Aves within the newest situation of Frontline. Do learn it to know the way poets like Rabindranath Tagore spoke of truths just like the centrality of nature in human life that the remainder of the world is arriving at solely now.
The current Frontline situation boasts a number of the finest e-book opinions in current months. There may be the well-argued and incisive evaluate by Harish Trivedi of G.N. Devy’s India: A Linguistic Civilization, the deeply felt evaluate by Varsha Tiwary of Zara Chowdhary’s memoir, The Fortunate Ones. Chowdhary, who survived the 2002 Gujarat riots, refuses to let trauma restrict her identification. In her evaluate, Tiwary factors out how a memoir centring on a tragedy should transcend the straightforward choice of begging for affordable pity whether it is to be counted as a sound work of literature.
Apparently, trauma and its tendency to overshadow all different issues is the topic of Hanif Kureishi’s memoir, Shattered, too. Kureishi suffered a fall in 2022 that left him paralysed. Tabish Khair says in his evaluate that Shattered “stays a testomony to his [Kureishi’s] courageous wrestle to not simply maintain writing but in addition to stay human and alive.”
Whereas these opinions maintain your weekend busy, I’ll return to studying concerning the exploits of the feminine Sufi saint, Bonbibi, the matron goddess of the Sunderbans, honored to today by Hindus and Muslims alike.
See you subsequent in February, when the Tabebuia rosea begins flowering furiously in my metropolis, Bangalore, to show it powder-puff pink, like a Barbie dream. Goodbye until then,
Anusua Mukherjee
Deputy Editor, Frontline
