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By Lakshmi Persaud |
Oct 22, 2003: The following is a presentation made by lecturer and author Lakshmi Persaud on Oct 22nd 2003 The Metropolitan University. London.
(Slide 1, Transition. Transition from Youth , from childhood, from Innocence)
I wish to start with our beginnings, for we all began with innocence. I am looking at the varying shades of innocence i.e. innocence as ignorance, --- as opposed to understanding and knowledge; Innocence as naivety --- as opposed to the wisdom that comes with experience. Thirdly, Innocence as complete trust --- as opposed to being guarded and cautious.
The citizens of many newly independent countries were innocent in all its shades. They offered a child like trust to their politicians who ruthlessly abused it, and in their not understanding the nature of power, nor the mechanism of governance, these citizens, willingly handed over their human rights and in many instances, their right to life itself.
The length and entangling complexity of the road, that innocence, naivety, and child-like trust must travel, before maturity and wisdom comes, I now propose to look at How fragile are our beginnings, how ignorant of life we are when we are born.
In this reading from my first novel, Butterfly in the Wind , here is a young girl doing her homework while listening in to a conversation her grandmother is having with two other women in the next room. Here Kamla, the protagonist in the novel Butterfly in the wind speaks:
The Readings
"My own recollection of this tale is as follows. I cannot tell it the way my grandmother did. She spun out its delicate weave with far greater skill. I give you the bare bones: There was a woman whose husband returned home earlier than was expected. Another gentleman, who ought not to have been there, was in the house. ( At the beginning of this tale, I thought the stranger was a thief for we had thieves enter our home. As the tale unfolded, I discarded this possibility.) The woman, hearing her husband coming through the door, coughing and grumbling, hid this stranger beneath her wide billowing skirt and equally wide billowing fresh cotton petticoats, all trimmed with fine lace. It would appear her husband did not approve of this gentleman, but my grandmother gave no reason for so great a displeasure.
I was intrigued by this, in fact excited by such cunning, for I knew I could not have thought of such a hiding place, and this ingenuity, in the face of danger I admired. Yet there remained for me many puzzling things. I wanted to know how this hidden stranger managed, for you see I suffered from claustrophobia, and other problems arose in my mind which I felt needed clarifying. So I jumped off the chair, and with pencil in hand, for I had been doing my sums, approached the three women, curiosity aroused and wishing to be enlightened. When they saw me they became hushed.
How would he breathe? I blurted out?"
(Slide2 The Abuse of Power )
I would have preferred not to choose this theme, but the current state of countries and institutions gives me little choice.
The abuse of power is nothing new. Its wide prevalence has led me to suspect that it came into being when life itself was born.
In the developed world, with its deepening democracy--- vibrant and healthy --- the excesses of the powerful are reigned in, however, at the international level where such national controls, checks and balances are not yet established, one recently saw the contempt of the powerful. The Bush administration can say to the United Nations that it is irrelevant. Yet, not wishing this family of nations to remain out in the cold , the administration kindly offers it a criterion for relevancy. You could either continue to being a debating society, it states or become relevant by endorsing Washington's plans for invading Iraq.
The Abuse of Power I saw as a child, sadly, continues today in our homes, schools, at work, in our prisons; mental hospitals, in the army, the police force and other institutions.
I recall, I was no more than nine, when I experienced for the first time an understanding of an abuse of power so vast that it swallowed the North and South Americas that were once there. I was about to cross the railway line when a gigantic wave of light cleared my thinking of all the clever spinning of conquerors and discoverers.
And it was then that I saw these hunters and gatherers, then referred to as Red Indians, were not savages, as western films were portraying them to be, but men and women with their children, trying to defend their homes, their land, from the plunder and savagery of a war-like people from overseas with weapons of mass destruction of the time.
This decimation of a culture and its people, their slow, sad demise is called, and to our shame we refer to it as, the discovery of America or the opening of the West. In this way we see how the very worth, the value, the meaning of words continue to be reduced, to be undermined by the erudite and powerful.
In this reading , Agricultural labourers on a sugar cane plantation, are on strike, demonstrating peacefully for better wages and better working conditions. Seven women span the bridge, blocking the factory gates. Soldiers and scabs arrive to break the strike. A tractor and its masked driver awaits the order to open the gates.
Reading from For the Love of my Name
"The Senior officer strides in the free style of an athlete and blows his war cry to the wind: GET THE TRACTOR MOVING.' The masked man hesitates. "COME ON COMRADE, DO WHAT IS NECESSARY TO CLEAR THE GATES ." The tractor moves forward onto the bridge. The heavy lumbering wheels roll-one complete turn, than another. The broad steel blade is lowered waist high. The women are still seated. The blade dazzles in the fierce heat. They sweat. The circumference of the wheel is large. Flickering light bounces off the moving blade which cuts apart the space before it. The chain of human hands jerks intuitively. Then tightens. The chain strains, pulls, jerks. Again it tightens. The blade approaches. Thirty centimetres close. Seven women still span the bridge. They stare. Stunned into a clay mould of terror. Mouths open, lips apart. No sound.
The driver is moving along the track, along the track. The earth rotates; it revolves. Thoughts and realisations are cut off, sealed entombed within vessels from which songs once flowed.
The crowd stands as if of inert clay.
The circling corbeaux are descending. They smell blood spurting. The blade is splashing red. trickles, congeals. Two pieces of a body entangle. The blade takes them. A twisted ankle, on a swollen foot constricts movement forward for it hangs before the closed gates like a cross bar."
(Slide 3 Courage: The Defiance of Fear )
When power is usurped and abused, the only hope lies in the courage and defiance of the common people.
I have opened this theme to find there are two halves to it: The courage of the powerless, their defiance of the powerful, defying fear itself, is one half and the other is the enormous human Cost of that defiance. I shall look more closely at the first half.
Defiance and courage : I have always admired the courage of individuals who defy powerful systems, who defy a whole machinery of thought born from the womb of Empire and Imperialism. Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela and many many ordinary men, women and children who sacrificed their lives to defying fear, that understandable fear of an overwhelming, ruthless power that sought to reduce their worth. India was the first non- European country in the British Empire, to free itself. It provided a beacon light to ships, seeking a passage to betterment.
Here in the Reading taken from Butterfly in the Wind , a father speaks to his daughter on the eve of India's Independence. On the following day, the 15th of August 1947 she joins other school children on a celebratory march.
Readings from Butterfly in the Wind pages
" Look at it this way, what have those ordinary men and women done? They have accomplished the impossible. They have forced a people who colonised them for 300 years to leave. It was the mightiest Empire of recent times; and yet with all its military grandeur, its false arrogance, its machinery of educated men in London, full of their own importance and of the images they had created of themselves and of us all; these men were overthrown, not by Western methods but by an essential Indian method of Satyagraha mass civil disobedience. India's Independence is a great human achievement. It is an achievement of Statesmen over politicians, an achievement of the spirit of the common man over false overlords. Now would you have thought that possible?" ..And there at the gathering of that celebratory march, "I saw a three year old standing to attention, in broken sandals, as thin as a grain of rice, singing with all the energy he could muster :Jana-gana-mana-adhinayaka jaya he
Bharata bhagya vidhata
Thou art the Ruler of the minds of all people,
Dispenser of India's Destiny.
Before me this slender grain of rice with the sun and a wisp of hair in his eyes, sang with such youthful assurance that I wept for the supreme courage of the weak; and I wept too for those daring, dauntless runaway slaves who never made it and for the heroism and valour of the Red Indians of North America who did not have India's good fortune. Not for the first time in my life as this stanza of Tagore's song came to an end. I felt a deep kinship with the courage of the vanquished".
(Slide 4 My next theme is Remembrance of things past, Acknowledging, giving thanks to the beautiful, the magnificent and path breaking contribution of ancient civilisations, from Asia and Africa that gave us the firm fine foundations of our present progress )
The continuity of the development of human knowledge is far too often forgotten and we are made to believe that civilisation itself and all that it entails is Western in origin and in greatness.
We forget that our present understanding and exploration are only possible because of the contribution of the ancient civilisations. And it is here that we find some of the most beautiful and powerful concepts of man's ingenuity
I refer to the ancients' contributions to the fields of mathematics, language medicine and philosophical thought. Let us look at language more closely.
I refer to their gathering of thousands of different human sounds, and with acute discernment, capturing 27 distinct sounds of the human voice on paper by attaching a symbol to each , so creating that wonder --- the written sound, the alphabet, the written word., written language. And with a mastery of inventiveness , made it so simple that all homo sapiens could henceforth compose, could become as literate as only the ancient Mandarins were, in times past.. With the written word men were able to capture their present, and prevent what had been learnt and discovered, from being lost to generations to come. These were far seeing men and women.
That was the beginning of democracy, of individualism, of challenging established thinking, for it enabled us all, including priests and observers of societies to send their innermost thoughts, their misgivings, far and wide without having to be there.
Let us not forget that other giant invention of the ancients: Numbers, as we use them today. The simplicity and power of that invention -- Zero, the decimal system, and there is also algebra , the very basis of calculus, opening venues to complex formulations, to space explorations And equally important the fields of questioning our very being; of life itself-i.e. the realm of philosophy and what is referred to as the great religions of the World came from their meditation, their experiences and observation of life.
I cannot leave this theme of far seeing, of another way of perceiving, without also referring to the magnificent path of thinking, that comes from a civilisation, that has produced fine men and women, amongst them a Mandela, wrongly imprisoned for most of his life by a demeaning regime, not to seek revenge , not to speak of hunting down the evil, that took away the prime of his life, but instead, to return, a Statesman, forgiving, to lead a warm, generous and affectionate people.
The Readings are taken from the Novel Sastra pages 24, 25, 26. Here we see a father Gajraj teaching his three year old son to write the letters of the alphabet. Let us see how he goes about it. The Reading:
" And Gajraj gathered the straight lines from the alphabet and his son Surinder copied them Capital L's and T'S and I's and A's X's and V's and Z's . All straight lines, consistently moving with only one inclination, in one direction; two such straight lines brought to touch, to meet, to cross over.
The next day Gajrarj drew curves, circles and crescents; the young Surinder drew the same S's O's and C's and Q's and the common a. On the third day he became so excited , Gajraj could not contain himself, he rose very early, prayed to the creator of all things and rejoiced: Dear God, give my mind and my fingers strength and charm; enhance them both so that working together they will unite two forms that are so different, two forms that are saying such different things. One is straight and linear, unswerving; constant in direction, strong in its upright stance and regular. And the other is soft and silent, swerving, so fluid; will yield, will move this way and that with the wind; will dance, rise and fall; leap and curl and twirl as waves do. Dear God enable my son and I to bring these two magnificent forms together, so that we may create still more forms that are beautiful and varied, oh so varied, that there is no limit to man's endeavour."
(Slide5 The Mysteries of Writers and Writing)
It is time to look into the vase holding these flowering themes.
Mysteries of writers and writing
The central mystery of writing, is that writers do not understand the life beat of their work and so, are not in control of the process. There are many aspects of their art they cannot explain. Listen to this. Haruki Murakami in 1997 speaking about himself:
"When I write I write weird . . I write weird stories. I don't know why I like weirdness so much. I'm a very realistic person. I don't trust anything New Age or reincarnation, dreams, tarot, horoscopes. I don't trust anything like that at all. I wake up at six in the morning and go to bed at ten, jogging every day and swimming, eating, healthy foods,. I'm very realistic. But when I write, I write weird."
In an attempt to explain the mystery of writing, why we all look but see differently Marcel Proust says, 'The truth of art lies not in the object but in the mind.'
(Slide 6: Loyalty)
The next theme is loyalty, the nature of loyalty.. Loyalty has two faces. A simple face and a fractured, Picasso-like one. The simple face of loyalty is shown when it adheres to the decent thing, i.e. what is morally correct.
The fractured face of loyalty. is skewed. Its visage, a grimace. This is a loyalty based on colour, class, caste, culture, nationality; race, religion. community/tribe.
A strong unswerving loyalty to these, when practised either in the developed or developing countries leads to the destruction of what is worthy in life. This skewed loyalty perpetuates some of the great human tragedies of mankind. I think of the Church's silence for generations on its paedophile priests, the enormity of the human tragedy in Rwanda; Uganda, The Congo, Sierra Leone, Guyana, the life taking gun culture allowed to grow in Jamaica and the harrowing kidnapping that is presently taking place, largely with impunity in Trinidad and Guyana, destroying their citizens, the engineers of growth, of progress and if allowed to continue would pull apart the very fabric of these societies.
Nevertheless you and I are aware that the loyalty that demeans humanity, vibrates in every continent with a primeval energy Why?
Readings are taken from For the Love of my Name. Here a dictator explains the nature of loyalty . He holds his position because of this type of loyalty
"I appealed to that primordial attachment that comes to a clan, a tribe; a
people with a common experience of birth, of life, growth and death. Let that experience be humiliation and the adhesive that comes from their anguish will withstand death and not fall apart. The strength of this attachment comes from antiquity, handed down in poetry, in songs, tears, and whispers in the night. It is not surprising to learn that it secretes a sticky substance called loyalty, which adheres to its own and individuals quickly become a group, a clan, a tribe, a nation, which if made to feel threatened can bring hell on earth. This may one day change. A higher perception, a larger behaviour across cultures and tribes may be in the making, but its time has not yet come and may be long in coming"
(Slide 7 Maturity versus Youth)
My next theme is : The Attainment of Maturity. What is the fabric of Maturity? How is it attained?
Maturity is a beautiful thing. Let me be candid. It is not synonymous with age and so does not come automatically with time. Maturity has to be earned. It is the wisdom that accrues from having lived a thoughtful life through the many seasons of the human condition ---its birth and growth, its hopes, sorrows and joys.
Yet strangely in cruel times, in times when survival is threatened, you can find maturity in a child and, it is a wonderful thing. Maturity has insight, acts speedily if it must, and courageously in the face of danger. I lived in Jamaica for four years and often think of the beauty of its varied landscape, but what has stayed with me is a strong and vigorous clump of bamboo, that was before my window, bending low, its branches dragged in the mud by cutting wind and pelting rain and destructive hurricanes, then, later, slowly, quietly when the storm is over, lifting itself with its inherent buoyancy, standing tall, waving to passers by, welcoming butterflies. It has not been uprooted. This is the very essence of endurance with wisdom, of maturity
-In this reading taken from the Novel Sastra you hear the innermost thoughts of a young woman, having had to cope with the death of her husband, and struggled with the up bringing of two young children, you hear her gently lifting her affectionate attachment, closing her period of mourning and allowing herself a new resolve, to re-enter life again, to build anew the joys of living. It is the weave of maturity.
The reading begins as she enters an empty house believing her husband's spirit to be there. It is the house in which he died.
The reading is taken from the novel Sastra :
"She heard sounds, footsteps approaching, coming nearer, and saw the shadow rising along the wall. She inquired softly. 'Rabind is that you?' She could feel a strange silence. A voice held back, suspended by her question. A replied studied. It was as if the substance of the shadow, high on the ceiling was caught off-guard, the question never envisaged.
And then from within her and without her, she heard voices and felt his presence.
Dearest Sastra, I am bound to you, am here because you willed it so, our spirits inseparable. I come here, where our past dwells, where solemnly with tears we parted. Here too, dearest, our past must rest and not be stirred to resurrect our spring."
And she hears her own thoughts
"O Joy of my Youth, O wandering spirit, may a sweet sleep a child's contentment be yours. I will it so. Release me too from solemn silent vows, from nectar-dripping thoughts which cloyed my wings and left me stilled, dying. Bring me strong winds, a rush of rains to beat upon my wings to cleanse, that I may enter new gates. O kindred spirit, enable me to breathe again, to taste afresh the joys , the miracle of life..
And the voices subsided and she stood dazed, suspended from time and space and form."
(Slide 8 Untying an ancient conundrum)
Now for adding cool water into the vase that holds the stems of these themes
I have written, and years later looking at the work, I am not only detached from it, but happy that the book has left me, and has a life of its own. There is another inexplicable thing. From time to time to my consternation, I find that I have written something I had no intention of writing when I sat down to write. And yet, there it is on the page.
So what is writing? Marcel Proust explains: 'A very slight degree of self acquaintance teaches us that a book is the product of a different self from the self we manifest in our habits, in our social life, in our vices.'
If that is so, why is it so? What then of the mystery of writing,? Will it remain? I think for the time being it will, for Art springs from the human mind, which remains a great unknown. Our understanding of it, is yet too undeveloped, the subject of the mind too vast
Finally to the last theme of the evening.
(Slide 9 Change: Travelling or standing still)
The theme of Change, the need for change, for re-thinking, re-evaluating re-assessing ; this theme is strongly represented in all my novels.
My fourth novel Raise the Lanterns High will be published in the Spring of next year by the publishers, Black Amber. The novel tells the tale of a young woman who on the very eve of her wedding, discovers quite by chance, that her arranged marriage is to the rapist, whose face she could not see at the time. She was but a school girl then, a form two pupil cycling home, but on hearing the pleads, the stuttering anguish of a young girl, approaches, sees through the curtain of sugar cane leaves. What she saw, remained with her. How does she now tell anyone what she knows? They may doubt her, because of his status, the lapse of time and her not wishing to marry. In the novel, Raise the Lanterns High we hear her internal struggles and follows her into time past, where she meets two widows who are prepared to be burnt alive with their husband's body. Why should this be ? The novel unravels the fabric of several traditions, and feels their very weave.
Change, but more particular, Social Change is painful and difficult to embrace. Many feel threatened by it. They fear their very identity would be negated were they to let go any aspect of their custom. And yet, in order to grow, we must become our own architect of change. From time to time we will need to make intimate adjustments to our thinking; living propels us in that direction.
We may have to put aside part of what we identify with, if, it is an impediment to a more fulfilling life, but it should be done within a cultural evolutionary context; certainly not rapid root and branch change that negates our identity, ourselves.
The Readings are taken from the novel Sastra
Here is a character who manages this, though he lives in a racist society. Listen to his thinking. Readings
'There are differences between us here in this room,' Rabindranath said, 'and there will be between people from different cultures, but when you get to know people, all kinds of people, really know them well, you find you are looking at yourself, with only a change of style. What is the shape of the human spirit? What is the colour of human courage? ' No one answered
'Yes, but physical differences, ' said Sastra 'in shape and colour, the differences in language and religion, often lead us to a belief that there are inherent , distinctive difference between us.'
'The problem is,' Rabindranath, said, 'when these differences are exploited in times of hardship, then mistrust and suspicion creep in. We are inseparably bound together' , he said, 'like Siamese twins and neither of us has the good sense to know it. If either tries to destroy the other, his days are numbered too. Even things far apart as the clouds above and the oceans beneath are connected. They hang together bathing the land."
We have all grasped at changes that have enriched our lives. Men first travelled on foot, then by horse and carriage; today we fly through the air.
Are aeroplanes simply the extension of the capabilities of the horse and carriage? Of Course not! Consider then the radical leap in thought, in understanding, that was necessary so that we may enjoy flight.. Yet, when it comes to social flight, we are still at the horse and carriage stage which shows how difficult it is to make changes in our intimate thinking.
As we celebrate Black history month let us be thoughtful that in spite of the persistence of racism and extreme cultural nationalism in some quarters, in this, our new home there is a strong underlying basic, liberal outlook --- checks and balances and the rule of law, which challenge present laxities and unspoken prejudices, enabling progress forward, towards a fairer, culturally enriched society.
Let this be an example of how much more productive and beneficial our countries of origin can become were we to embrace the wisdom of the larger world.
As children of the Caribbean, we have come from small islands. Our Nobel laureates Arthur Lewis, Derek Walcott Vidya Naipaul and many others holding high positions of State, and in universities and other fine establishments in the first World, have all shown us, that we need not allow our small island origins, with all their inherent limitations and petty nationalism to prevent us from developing ourselves further, to playing a fine part on a testing world stage.
This evening I have attempted to bring a few of the dancing flickering lights of human endeavour, its courage and innocence, our challenges and affection, one for another, as well as life's shadows, our grieves and traumas, our harrowing sufferings brought by the abuses of power, by men's loyalty to ugly, hateful, limiting ideas.
In these novels there are other themes like the joys of food and of family life and gender issues and more. You will find, and see what I could not have brought to you this evening, time being our censor. But your own inclination and interest will assist you. in discovering them.
I write in order that I may understand a little better this whirl of time and space, in which I have my being. I write to better understand what it is to be human.. Writing forces me to focus, to think It just may be that by writing I shall be brought closer to that wisdom gleaned by philosophers and writers throughout time, from their own observation of men, so that in the darkest of nights, when alone, I shall be, at ease with myself.
'To thine own self, be true, and it will follow as night the day, thou canst not then, be false, to any man."