India in the Australian Imagination
The Australia India Council, Australian
High Commission, New Delhi, organised a two-day Writers'
Forum on 3rd and 4th October,
2002. The Australian participants were a varied group
that comprised people from the fields of writing, the
visual arts and journalism who had taken up residence
in India for a few months on grants from different institutions,
to research their current or next work. Some of them
had been to India before; for others it was the first
visit and the `veterans' seemed quite nonchalant about
the mysteries and predicaments and wonders that so wrap
up the perception and reality of India!
The event got underway at the Henry
Lawson Centre at the High Commission after a welcome
and introduction by the First Secretary, Mr. Rory Medcalf.
Ms. Penny Wensley, the Australian High Commissioner
to India, gave the inaugural address after which the
Australian participants, Ms. Meaghan Delahunt, Ms. Robyn
Friend, Ms. Inez Baranay, Ms. Emily Floyd, Ms. Christine
McKenzie, Ms. Amree Hewitt and Ms. Virginia Moncrieff
were introduced to the invitees. There was then a short
lecture by Chris McKenzie (Director, Victorian Writers
Centre, Melbourne) on Contemporary Australian Writing.
After a coffee break during which people
got to catch up with old acquaintances and make new
contacts and friendships, it was time to watch and discuss
cinematic connections with India, a topic which was
introduced by Ms. Amree Hewittt, the Collection Development
Manager at the Australian Centre for Moving Images,
Melbourne. The first was an excerpt from the film Holy
Smoke directed by Jane Campion and set, for a large
part, in Pushkar, Rajasthan. The film explored the `spirituality'
of India, its `godmen' and the irresistible attraction
it holds out to people from capitalist societies. Although
everyone present would have loved to watch the whole
film with its tongue-in-cheek humour and ironic look
at Indian stereotypes, there was another interesting
short film on the agenda. The Trouble With Merle
, directed by Maree
Delofski, is the search for the Hollywood star, Merle Oberon's
roots. After a series of interviews and diligent digging
up of records in Tasmania (which she claimed was her
home), the film moves to India which is finally revealed
as having been her country of origin. The film reminded
me of an English film I'd seen years earlier _ Queenie,
inspired no doubt by the same saga _ the story of a
woman who, hiding her `Anglo-Indian' origin, moves to
England, passes off as white and becomes a film star.
From the world of celluloid, it was
back to reality and dinner, hosted by the High Commissioner,
on the lawn where, at tables that were dotted all around,
guests sat far into the night and engaged in serious
discussion and light-hearted repartee (as the sudden
guffaws that punctuated the air were evidence of).
The next morning, there was a panel
discussion at the India International Centre on the
theme of the Forum _ India in the Australian Imagination.
The panel moderator was Dr. Malati Mathur who introduced
the panellists and briefly outlined the threads that
run through the theme with references to the hold that
India has had on the Australian imagination in writing
and advertisements and the opening up of new vistas
of inter-action. The panellists, Inez Baranay, Robyn
Friend, Meaghan Delahunt, Virginia Moncrieff and Emily
Floyd then presented their views, spoke about the work
they are currently engaged in and what they hoped to
achieve during their stay in India. It was interesting
to see how so many of them had been influenced by the
people they had met and the stories that they had read
and heard about India. There was also a mention made
of their conceptions of this country prior to their
arriving here and then the comparisons and contrasts
and reversal of previously held notions when confronted
with the reality that they experienced after arrival
in India. There was a lively question-answer session
which followed the discussion in which the audience
revealed their keen interest in and awareness of present
issues in Australia vis-à-vis India.
The second session was devoted to book
reviews, beginning with a discussion of Inez Baranay's
The Edge of Bali , presented by Dr. Ameena Ansari
and chaired by Prof. Santosh Sareen. This was followed
by a slide show, The Mouth of the River _ the
Exotic Spaces of Literature, _ the creations of
Emily Floyd, sculpture and installation artist. Her
pieces demonstrated a lively sense of humour with satiric
undertones that commented on society and human nature
while at the same time reflecting certain literary works
and were greatly appreciated. The post-lunch session
began with a review of Robyn Friend's The Butterfly
Stalker by Prof. Sumanyu Satpathy and chaired by
Prof. Anisur Rahman. Meaghan Delahunt's In the Blue
House was reviewed by Dr. GJV Prasad, the session
chaired by Dr. R K Dhawan. The authors answered queries
regarding their books with regard to the interpretations
that the reviewers presented. Inez Baranay paid an indirect
compliment to her reviewer by saying that at least she
could recognise her book _ with many reviewers, it was
sometimes not even possible for the writer herself to
identify her own work! The long day was finally wound
up with a mirror image of the theme by Mr. Ruchir Joshi
speaking on Australia in the Indian Imagination. Unfortunately,
this did not explore any original avenues, stimulate
exciting debate or generate possibilities for research
and study in spite of the rich potential it held out.
Probably the prospect of tea-time beckoning was partly
to blame! The event finally drew to a close with a vote
of thanks by Mr. Rory Medcalf.
Malati Mathur
Book Reviews
Bruce Bennett, Australian
Short Fiction: A History, University of Queensland
Press, 2002, pp. 379
The short story is a neglected genre
in academics. It is almost as if literary theory and
criticism cannot be bothered about anything that cannot
take itself seriously enough to go on and on at length.
Thus this most supple of genres that has given and gives
the greatest pleasure to most of the reading public
suffers from lack of criticism and thus shelf space
and visibility in libraries. Say Australian Short Story
and you will remember only Henry Lawson. Say Indian
and that is another story to be told some other time.
Bruce Bennett's book thus is most welcome and approved
of for libraries all over the world even before you
even read the blurb on the back cover!
Bruce Bennett begins by asserting the
universality and the hoary history of storytelling including
its written version (the first recorded prose story
was "The Shipwrecked Sailor" on Egyptian papyri
about 4000 BC). No, he actually begins with a chronology
of important landmarks in the history of the short story
in Australia, from 1825 to 2001. Not surprisingly this
runs into more than eight pages and underscores the
impressive range of the genre in Australia as well as
the enormity of the task that Bennett has set himself
in this path-breaking book. He sets the terms of his
book in his first chapter, `Oceans of Story', where
he makes clear that his preference for the term `short
fiction' is because it includes prose pieces which do
not emphasise or even include the story element preferring
`rhythm, metaphor, image or idea.' The genre is wretchedly
hard to define and Bennett does not attempt to define
the essential features of the short story, not even
in terms of length. Bennett displays this uncommon good
sense throughout the book.
Bennett examines the ways in which
the short story lent itself to various generations of
Australians to express and explore their sense of self
in their environment(s). He begins with the writings
of the early colonial settlers and ends with the state
of the art today. This history is almost the history
of Australia after colonization. Bennett follows the
stories into the various reaches of Australian life
and politics. Literary and political events mark the
topography of this genre. From settling to migrating
away, the Australian short story has come a long way.
Bennett ends on a note of optimism in his `Afterword'
_ Australian fiction is alive and kicking.
This short review can hardly do justice
to the erudition or critical acumen of the author, and
I can only assert the tact and sympathy with which Bennett
approaches his subject. He never tries to impose his
own theoretical design on the field even as he engages
in the difficult task of periodising and grouping writers.
This book is a must not only for those interested in
Australian Studies but also to those interested in short
fiction as a genre, as also to those who appreciate
good (academic) writing.
GJV Prasad
Meaghan Delahunt, In the
Blue House (London: Bloomsbury, 2001, paperback
2002), pp. 308,
Meaghan Delahunt's debut novel is a
breathtaking tour de force. Not surprisingly it has
won a number of awards including the Commonwealth Prize
for Best First Book in the South East Asia and South
Pacific Region and the Saltire First Book Award in Scotland.
The awards themselves should immediately warn you that
this writer defies categorization. She is Australian
born but lives happily in Scotland and is numbered among
the Scottish writers there. The ideology of her youth
was international Troskyist communism (she worked for
the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party until 1986) and
she famously dropped out of university for her cause
which she later grew away from! She has spent large
amounts of time outside Australia since 1991 and epitomizes
the problematics of national identity for a creative
artist.
In the Blue House is a huge
novel in terms of the time span and space that it covers.
The novel begins and ends with the reminiscences of
the Judas Maker Senora Rosita Moreno, the first dated
1954 and the last 1955. It begins with the death of
the famous artist Frida Kahlo and ends with the death
of Moreno's miner-husband Alberto. This is the frame
that contains Trotsky, the conflicts within communism,
the Russian Revolution _ before, during and after, the
huge sweep of history. Moscow, Barcelona, and Mexico
are only the major pit stops in this narrative. This
is a novel about Trotsky and his years in exile in Mexico
(1937-1940), from his arrival to his violent death at
the hands of an assassin. This is a novel about Trotsky's
affair with Frida Kahlo, and his falling out with her
husband, the muralist Diego Rivera, and his subsequent
exile from their blue house. This is a novel about human
beings and their relations to each other, the ways in
which lives impinge on each other. This is a novel about
fated and fatal relationships of blood, love, comradeship,
and employment. This is a novel about history and the
individual, the individual in history, the history of
the individual. This is a novel that takes the grand
narrative of history and reads it as the ordinary story
(sometimes sordid, sometimes heroic, but mostly pathetic)
of ordinary individuals caught up in the sweep of events.
This is a book of deaths. Everybody dies or almost everybody.
That's history for you! This is a book about Communist
Russia, about Stalin and company.
Consummately written, this is a novel
of voices. You hear a wide range of people, and access
a variety of registers of writing including diaries
and journalistic writings. The voices of the proletariat
have as much space as those of the "major"
actors in this historical drama. As you await Trotsky's
death (after all he was assassinated), you read about
other lives and deaths, other families, other affairs,
and other commitments to the cause. A compelling read
and recommended strongly to all.
GJV Prasad
The Butterfly Stalker by Robyn Friend
Set in a nameless city, which nonetheless
shares a close resemblance with Launceston in Tasmania,
The Butterfly Stalker tells the story of Theadora
Dante, its narrator-protagonist. She has been commissioned
by the City Council to write the official history of
the city in which she lives. While researching her subject,
Thea comes across archival material that threatens to
unmask the powers that be, exposing the horrible doings
of their ancestors, the island's first settlers in the
mid-Victorian era. Using these bits of information she
begins to chart another history, the sordid unpublishable
story of the ancestors of the city's present lawmakers.
She lives in a top-floor flat of what was earlier an
Inn, with a history of its own. In the flats below live
a couple ensnared in a marriage of dependency and violence:
Angela and Hadley; and yet another couple: an adulterous
nursing sister, Suza and her clergyman lover Paul. Thea
discovers that the rumor about the house being haunted
may well be true; and further that these characters
may well be living each other's lives, and, maybe, die
other people's deaths. Thea's experiences lead her to
plot the murder of her lover who is a stained-glass
artist, Daniel by name living in a dilapidated, Gothic
church overlooking her window. The suspense of whether
she succeeds in carrying out her plot or not carries
on till the end. The other subplot pertaining to the
historical exposè is also held in suspense till
the very end.
This bare outline of the novel, of
course, fails to do justice to its rich and intricate
symbolism, its highly subversive politics, and what
is more, its technical brilliance. For, beneath its
narrative surface runs a seething undercurrent of anger
and protest directed at power structures in Friend's
city, Launceston ("the brooding pretty prison"
as she calls it in "This Pretty Prison").
After all, because of her political activism, she has
been called names in the recent past: "a communist",
"lesbian feminist', "a ratbag" and so
on. Because of the novel's sharp indictment of the inhuman
implementation of the political agenda of the city's
founding fathers, and of the erasures performed in official
history writing, it may well prove to be as controversial
as her first novel Eva is. I, therefore, shall
proceed to bring in some more details.
First, that the central symbol of the
novel is a triptych by Daniel comprising three images
of feminine sexuality. The artist has used Thea as the
model for the triptych. The second symbol that dominates
the narrative is the glass paperweight gifted by Daniel
to Thea in which a butterfly in flight is cleverly captured.
She plans to smash the first by using the second one
as a weapon. The self-reflexive novel wonders more than
once how the narrative simply cannot do without the
primacy of the number three, already suffused with Christian
symbolism. But, here, the idea of the Trinity is treated
with utmost irreverence.
The multi-layered narrative is the
result of many a crisscrossing of spatiotemporal frames.
That the city is no geographical fiction becomes evident
from the close resemblance it bears with present-day
Launceston. Placed beside the other aspect of the novel,
its tendency to parody stereotypical ideas and icons,
the interweaving of history and fiction in the novel
makes it highly intertextual.
This parallel between the discursive
and the creative alerts us immediately to the falsity
of the binary in the context of postmodernism. In the
novel, the unofficial history, which is destroyed by
Thea at the end, attains a performative status as, by
articulating the so-called suppressed history, it actually
lays bare the ugly past of the city's founding fathers.
What is noteworthy, however, is how
Friend is able to interweave the two histories, and
the stories of the lives of the fictional characters.
Whatever happens to the fictional characters seems to
have been predetermined by the history of the place
or the people they are connected with. There is a trace
of the naturalist tradition here. The main plot around
the life of Thea and Daniel (and her husband), however,
is used for raising aesthetic questions, about the power
and purpose of art. But, like the other man-woman relationships
in the novel, this relationship is also used to explore
problems of female subjectivity, and sexuality. The
novelist interrogates the use of the female body by
male artists to serve patriarchy, and the eagerness
of the women as willing victims. At one level the triptych
is quite obviously a representation of the stereotype
of woman as the lover, mother and witch-temptress. But
Thea deconstructs it for herself. The same can be said
about the paperweight. The butterfly stalker is undoubtedly
Daniel. But both, the image of the butterfly and Daniel
transcend their particularity to the universal image
of the sexually exploited and exploiter. Thea, Angela
and Suza, for all their differences replicate and relive
each other's lives even while reliving the lives of
the mother who was killed by George Ratford. Eventually
Angela is murdered by her husband, Hadley because she
refused to abort; Daniel does not want Thea to become
the mother of his child, and there is a hint that he
used his psychic powers to destroy the foetus. Thea
nearly dies of a miscarriage and is saved a second time
from a suicide attempt. In her fight against the perpetrators
of crimes in the past and present, she decides to first
expose the generational history of crimes and their
present-day descendents, and then take her little personal
revenge. Intriguingly, after delaying the revenge Hamlet
like, she does not kill Daniel, and destroys the typescript
of the second history. Shrouding herself by a haze of
metaphysics and aesthetic theory she persuades herself
into believing that Daniel, though living, is yet dead.
And she preserves the history of the gory past in her
mind. It is this ending which is the most dissatisfying
for me because it sounds so defeatist. Or, is it left
deliberately disturbing? This is debatable.
Friend's ideological moorings may well
have been shaped by intellectual and political developments
within Australia. After all, (Germaine Greer) The
Female Eunuch and The Empire Writes Back (Bill
Ashcroft et al) were influential works by Australian
academics. But, in spite of what she calls the `islandness'
of the fictionalized Launceston (or Tasmania or for
that matter Australia) the effect of globalization,
of political activism among writers cannot be ruled
out. Yet, the blurb of the novel makes the innocuous
claim that the yet-to-be-published book is a psychological
thriller. I do not know whether such a description enjoys
the approval of the author. But, having read the novel
(novella) many times over, and carefully, I feel that
the description is misleading.
As I said the novel is self-reflexive
at many points. What it does not reflect on, however,
is the novel's preoccupation with three kinds of hegemonies:
patriarchic, territorial, and racial. One wouldn't like
to schematize the novel so neatly, one might still say
that the twin political concerns of the novelist, feminism
and post-colonialism are enmeshed in the multi-layered
story, presented in the formless form of postmodernism.
In the process, Friend redefines the parameters of both
feminism and post-colonialism. If post-colonialism generally
concerns itself with the colonizer- colonized binary
in a seamless and undifferentiated pattern, where the
voices of the aboriginal people are systematically muted,
homogenizing categories such as Africa and Australia,
Friend goes to the heart of the problem, by trying to
reconstruct the history of the aboriginal people. In
her attempt to fictionalize history, offering a new
historiography altogether, layering history and fiction,
and avoiding realistic linearity, and using self-reflexivity
and irreverent parody as a fictional strategy, Friend
firmly places herself in the post-Patrick White generation
of writers.
We are told Friend has lived and worked
in Launceston (Tasmania) and Africa. She has worked
at old-age homes, and with the aboriginal people of
the Huan and Channel communities. In her forewords and
writings such as We Who are Not Here—Aboriginal
People of the Huan and Channel Today, dealing with
these subjects she has given evidence of her concern
and sympathy for these marginalized people, helping
them to articulate their problems. She figures in A
Writer's Tasmania edited by established feminist
writers and poets such as Carol Patterson and Edith
Speers, and has herself written on "Sex and the
Australian Writer". These preoccupations and interests
of hers colour the novel. In this she is a part of the
process which overtook intellectual life of Australia
in the 1980's. As Bruce Bennett has pointed out, in
the decades following the `80s "Australia…became
a testing ground for intellectual movements, including
feminism, post-colonialism and postmodernism".
When I first heard that the publication
of the novel, has been delayed due to certain `unforeseen
circumstances', I attributed the delay simply to the
inscrutable ways of the publishing world. After reading
the novel, however, I feel that there is cause for worry.
I shall be happy to be told that my fears were unfounded,
and the novel has seen the light of day.
Sumanyu Satpathy
The Edge of Bali by Inez Baranay;
Angus & Robertson, Australia; 1992; pp. 287.
Set in Bali, Inez Baranay's novel,
The Edge of Bali, engages with the exoticism
of the Far East. It is a fictional trilogy focusing
on the metaphorical journeys of self-discovery, identity
and existence made by its three protagonists.
The first part revolves around Nelson,
a young Australian girl, who returns to Bali to permanently
renew her association with Miki, her Balinese beau.
Her world is shattered on seeing him with another girl
and his vague recognition of her. In her endeavour to
secure new moorings in an unfamiliar locale, Nelson
is brutalized by Australian tourists and drawn to the
cult of Herman Hesse, who never materializes before
his devotees and is kicked out of the warung on suspicions
of being a drug peddler. Marla's story comprises the
second part of the novel. She is in Bali to document
its history and becomes fascinated by the cult of Walter
Spies, a German and purveyor of Balinese culture to
the world. Her real quest is to witness the trance dance
and she runs into Ratu Biang and Alit whose relationship
makes her reconsider her sexual attitudes. In part three
of the novel, the focus shifts to Tyler, a black American,
trying to locate his missing buddy, Neil, in remote
Balinese locales. Tyler's overwhelming aura makes him
a cult figure, illness preys on him, and Neil remains
elusive. Desperate to return, Tyler is restrained by
the spirit of the place as he continues his quest.
An irresistible pull of the Balinese
tourist paradise draws these three figures to it. The
leitmotif of the novel is a journey, both physical and
internal, that each of them undertakes. From the interaction
of this tourist/other with the native/indigenous, wafts
the aroma of an insidious clash of civilizations. Baranay
subtly conveys the intersecting peripheries of Australian/American
with Balinese through carefully nurtured images like
"sun, surf, and sex" representing the former,
and "the filth, the dogs, and the natives"
standing for the latter. Her familiarity with Bali is
reflected in her deft handling of the tourist/native
encounter which is grounded in the strong undercurrents
of tension that characterize it. The Edge of Bali
testifies to its author's sensitivity to a larger world
that is marked by conflict and intolerance.
In a fictional mode, Baranay
is able to provide realistic insights into Bali's way
of life, its history, and the fact that it traces its
religious roots to Hinduism. Undercurrents of racial
tension, the West's desperate attempt to seek oriental
spiritualism and the subsequent proliferation of cults,
imperialism and colonization, and the clash of Eastern/Western
cultural and sexual mores, form the backdrop to the
exploits of Nelson, Marla and Tyler. They underline
the author's assertion that "mystery is a normal
part of life" though, for the West, it is "possible
only to believe in the physical world."
The novel contains a cinematic technique
that juxtaposes images of Bali and the West, the visible
and the invisible world, underlining all along the colonialism
of the camera in trying to commercially capture a moment
outside the realm of the photographer's life/experience.
In a biting comment on the entire fraternity of invading
tourists anywhere in the world, a minor character has
this to say, "Why do we take photographs? To keep
people as objects, as other, so they're not people,
only camera fodder. It's only appropriation, not appreciation."
The central trope that embodies the narrowness and lack
of assimilation marking the East/West encounter is the
image of the frog under the coconut shell. The Orient
and the Occident, Baranay seems to suggest, are like
two parallel lines , destined never to meet: at best,
they will agree to keep running side by side.
Written in a stream-of-consciousness
mode, the novel foregrounds perceptions in an elliptical,
yet eloquent, style. It portrays the complex experience
of tourism in which travelers are people who "miss
there being here." In doing so, it creates a new
postcolonial register in which readers have to acclimatize
themselves to the finer connotations of words like warungs,
bemos, dutuns, and candi. Through the tourist/native
interaction, the novel portrays a cultural cauldron
on the boil. It coins two new buzzwords—Baliworld
and McParadise—that Baranay, in satirical vein,
suggests will capture the unimaginative tourist of the
future generations. Prophetic words indeed, seeing how
the world today is swamped by a particular brand of
culture.
Ameena Ansari
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