Tryst with South East Asian stories

As I grow older, I venture deeper into my roots. I have lived away from my hometown and family for more than 15 years now. My fleeting connection to the family stories has come back to bother me in recent times. My maternal grandmother passed away when I was 10 and grandfather when I was 15. Hence, knowing them as an adult was never an option. Whatever I know of them is through stories that my mother has passed on which were as scattered as one can imagine. I realised it is probably a very cultural problem in Asian families where parents shoulder the responsibility of children until they are adults and protect them from the difficulties they have dealt with as parents or adults. In most cases, like mine, we as children of our parents don’t even know what makes our parents the individuals they are. What was their childhood like, or their fears and worries as parents, or if they ever wonder what their lives would have been had they taken the road less travelled? We will never know it because Asian parents think it is either not worth sharing their stories or they wouldn’t want to burden their children with the tough pasts they had. Such was the story in a book that I read recently.

It is ‘The Bonesetter’s Daughter’ by Amy Tan. I had never heard of this author but I was willing to give it a shot. On a rainy afternoon, I started reading this book and couldn’t put it down. It felt too close to home. An Asian mother working hard to bring up the perfect child without the taboos that she left behind in China yet making sure that she passes on the cultural values from the homeland. Battling her own traumatic past and searching for her identity as her memory fails, and simultaneously trying to protect her daughter from any of the past influences.  She tries to make sure her daughter doesn’t grow so deeply into the American life that she forgets her roots in China. It sounds like a typical immigrant family with their share of problems but the endearing way of storytelling was what drives home the emotional intensity. I can’t say I feel differently about my mother and grandmother but our family stories are being lost in the modern day races to make ends meet. I am glad Amy Tan decided to finish the book on a high note. Else I would have been plunging deep into the troubled waters of our westernised society and the lost traditional values. 

I read ‘Norwegian Woods’ almost a decade ago. Followed by ‘Kafka on the shore’ and ‘The Windup Bird Chronicle’. All the three held my attention through every page. Haruki Murakami is an excellent narrator and being a South East Asian, one relates to the stories very well. But at the same time, I stopped reading Murakami because it drained me out emotionally. I love reading fiction but the price I was paying for Murakami’s books was a lot to handle. It was as if the moment the book begins, the narrator has plunged his hand into your rib cage and grabbed hold of your heart tight enough for it to crush into pieces. And that stopped me from venturing into Murakami and other SE Asian authored books.

A decade later a visit to a friend’s place led me to borrow two books by Ishiguro and ‘The Bonesetter’s Daughter’. A week later I went to the same friend’s house to return the book and she gave me another Japanese author’s book ‘Asleep’ by Banana Yoshimoto. The emotional aspect deeply intertwined with the superstitions and typical Asian values was more like hearing one of your aunts tell you this story on a fine evening over a glass of wine. My re-introduction to Asian writers almost a decade later felt like coming home. I hope I see Ishiguro through to the end along with many more that are waiting to be discovered. 

Ocean will never be the same

It has been a while since I devoured a book at a stretch without thinking about a break. In fact, the thought of taking a break for lunch was an unpleasant one. As I began the book, “The ocean at the end of the lane”, I was expecting a version of fictional autobiography. I am not sure what that means but that is what I have understood from the innumerable interviews and conversations I have heard of Neil Gaiman in regard to this book. This was supposed to be an accidental novel that came into being while tugging at the strings of nostalgia.

I tried hard but by the end of a marathon reading, I cried. It was deep melancholy intertwined with a strange sense of peace but that feeling was so far off it seemed like I floated in a void without a sense of reality. The book wasn’t only tugging but yanking emotions in directions that I didn’t know existed or felt. The roller coaster of emotions ran through fear and peace, joy and sadness, guilt and worry but through every bit ran an underlying sense of belonging.

I will probably go back to the book again if I ever think I have lost my empathetic being. But right now I cannot thank Gaiman enough for such a heart wrenchingly beautiful narrative.

Adios ‘2018

Few more days to go before 2019 walks in and it’s goodbye 2018. It has become customary to think of what has gone by and what better way to live the new year. The past year has been an absolute roller coaster. As far as memory goes, no other year has shaken me up with joys as well as absolute disasters like 2018. Peaks and valleys in both personal and professional fronts rocked our daily lives—sometimes the same day. I can go on and on and on…..

Despite all the drama, I managed to reach my reading challenge of a meagre 25 books through the whole year. And it so happens that one of the last books I read was “Sikkim: requiem for a Himalayan kingdom”. This was triggered by a recent trip to Sikkim and surprising revelations about the state.

On our first day in Sikkim, as we drove through the mountain roads, our driver guide casually said, “Please ask me whatever you want about Sikkim, including its history.” I thought for a while and wondered every Indian state has a similar history for the last two centuries since the British took over every nook and corner of the country. So what’s so different about Sikkim. May be he sensed my ignorance and summarised the history in one line. “We became the 22nd state of India in 1975. Until then we were a separate Buddhist kingdom.” My jaws dropped. How did I not know such an important part of our country’s history.

This is why the book by Andrew Duff ended up in my reading list. It took me a whole month to read through the book but at the end, I realised the Chogyal of Sikkim went through highs and lows throughout his life for his dream of an independent Sikkim which in any case came crashing down before he died. People came and went in his life—some in support and some against. Yet all along he stood to defend his unwavering love for his kingdom and to safeguard their interests. He might have been stubborn to an irrational degree but lived his life for his passion, dreams and belief. And taught an extremely important lesson to everybody—no amount of time spent chasing your dreams is enough and there is no guarantee of dreams coming true. But that’s the only way I would like to live my life.