REVIEW ESSAY
MIRROR
FROM THE INDUS:
Footprints
on the Rocks of Time
Seema
Sinha*
In these dark, disturbing
times when humanity is under attack by an unknown enemy, Nibir K. Ghosh comes
with a breath of fresh air in the form of his recent book titled MIRROR
FROM THE INDUS – ESSAYS, TRIBUTES AND MEMOIRS. The book is a compilation of
his articles that open a window to let in a ray of light in this unsettling gloom.
Whether it is the message of humanity, freedom and universal understanding passed
on by Tagore, or the ideals of truth and non-violence proclaimed by Gandhi, or
the clarion call of Subhas Chandra Bose who asked for blood in return for
freedom, MIRROR FROM THE INDUS has it all. And more, because from
the pages speak all-time greats like the philosopher-saint Sri Aurobindo who
identified the goal of spiritual nationalism, the poet-patriot Subramania Bharati
who sang of the glory of our motherland, and Mother Teresa, who taught us the
value of love. The book is also special because of the illustrious presence of
doyens of art and literature like Rudyard Kipling, Edmund Burke, Lord Byron,
Somerset Maugham, W. H. Auden, Rajinder Singh Bedi, Nissim Ezekiel, Girish
Karnad, Dom Moraes, Namdeo Dhasal and many others. The slim 208 pages volume inspires hope and
gives confidence that there is light at the end of the tunnel.
While discussing
Tagore’s testimony to the monument of love and beauty, the Taj Mahal, Ghosh
points out that Time has no pity for the trials and travails of the human
heart. Yet certain whispers are cast in stone, like the Taj, which says, ‘I
remember’!’ The delirium of hatred that the world suffered from was, according
to Tagore, cruel and unceasing, yet he did not lose hope. The timelessness of
Tagore, or, one can say, the relevance of Tagore in these changed times is
brought out in the words of Ghosh: “For this conflict ridden world that often
seems to be on the precipice of an imminent clash of civilisations, the idea of
multiculturalism that Tagore envisaged ages ago ought to serve as a valuable
road map to the future of mankind. Centuries may be lost in shadows and empires
may crumble to dust, but the richness of his prophetic legacy will continue to
inspire each one of us who believe in moving beyond all man-made frontiers and
boundaries like a true ambassador of human spirit.”
Speaking of Mahatma Gandhi, Ghosh points
out that he was a man who inspired no less than six Nobel prize winners: Dr.
Martin Luther King, Jr., Dalai Lama, Aung San Suu Kyi, Nelson Mandela, Adolfo
Perez Esquivel and Barack Obama. The Mahatma, of course, did not even take
credit for the tools of Satyagraha that he crafted. “Truth and Non-violence are
as old as the hills,” said Gandhi. Ghosh emphasises that the world needs to
emulate “the quintessential ordinariness of Gandhi’s life and mission,” to make
us more accountable to our own selves and to the nation. To those who talk of
Gandhi’s Achilles’s heel in political parlance, Ghosh states, “We must understand that after all, he was not God
incarnate but an exalted mortal with normal human failings and strengths.”
If Gandhi stood
for detachment and the sense of ‘Nishkama Karma’ (selfless duty), Subhas
Chandra Bose gave the call of liberty, loyalty and sacrificing one’s everything
for mother India. Today when all are losing their heads and panicking because
of the uncertainty of the situation, Subhas Chandra Bose, says the author, is
to be remembered for his steadfast belief in ‘his unstinted love of the
motherland blended with the attributes of faithfulness and duty’, which can remedy any situation. Ghosh also introduces
us to the ‘high priest of India’s dynamic nationalism’, the seer and the
leader, the immortal son of mother India - Aurobindo Ghosh, who exhorted his
countrymen to forsake self-interest and cowardly indifference, so that the
mother arises from her ‘slumber of centuries’.
Of the many lamps
that Ghosh has lit in his insightful work, aptly titled MIRROR FROM THE
INDUS, the one that burns brightest is that of Mother Teresa, a beacon of
light in a world plagued with materialism. The author reminisces how he met this
legend who took in her arms the hungry, the naked, the homeless, the crippled,
who wanted us to make ‘mistakes in kindness’, and who believed that ‘the
language of caring is universal’.
MIRROR FROM THE
INDUS does
not just reflect the glory of the motherland, it also acts as the palimpsest of
human emotions which are so relevant in the Corona Times. The issues of mental
health have been a concern in this mind-bending, Kafkaesque nightmare. The estrangement
and insecurity find a reflection in Ghosh’s ‘Alienation and Identity in Saros Cowasjee’s
Goodbye to Elsa’, where Tristan Elliot, the protagonist, realises that
the big, happy family – The History Department – was a fiction. Tristan moved
from one relationship to another looking for that elusive peace which was not
to be his for love or money. Ghosh recalls yet another famous madman of History
– Tughlaq, who ‘found both freedom and safety in his madness’. The same sense
of isolation and distancing is experienced by the heroine/ vamp in ‘Exploring
stereotypes: A study of Rajinder Singh Bedi’s “Lajwanti.”’ Women, observes Ghosh, are in need of
self-trust, self-reliance and self-respect in order to assert their individual identity
and existence, something that was denied to Lajwanti, who kept looking at her
husband for validation, and found none. She could either be a Madonna or a
whore – nothing in between, which was extremely unfortunate.
Talking of human
emotions, ‘Dom Moraes: The Disenchanted Voyager’ cam be whole-heartedly
recommended to the discerning reader. While speaking of Dom Moraes, an intrepid
voyager, Ghosh quotes Tennyson who says that he cannot rest from travel,
because it allows him to drink life to the lees and be a part of all that he
has met. Dom Moraes is in an act of
running away from himself, which makes him an identifiable character, lost in
the search of the ‘promised land’. One
finds oneself agreeing with the author who says that only in self-surrender
lies the enchanted voyager’s salvation.
Ghosh beautifully
describes the fortuitous meeting with the great poet Nissim Ezekiel in the All
India English Teachers’ Conference. The article titled ‘The Matrix of
Indianness’ poignantly compares Naipaul’s India and Ezekiel’s India,
questioning the myopic vision of the former. The breadth, originality and the
Indianness in Ezekiel’s description of the common man on the street is exceptional.
The way the poet brings out the ‘ordinariness of events’ is extra-ordinary.
One cannot forget
the master of all prose writers, the author who paints with words – Somerset
Maugham. In ‘Biography as Fiction: Paul
Gauguin and Somerset Maugham,’ Ghosh takes us from London to Paris to Tahiti
with Maugham’s protagonist Strickland, who is modelled closely after the great
painter Paul Gauguin. The author rightly avers that “masterpieces are eternal
contemporaries of mankind and have value and significance beyond the immediate
confines of a particular moment in history.”
My takeaway from
this book is ‘Humanistic Concerns in Indian English Fiction’ closely followed
by ‘Women in Literature.’ We are in illustrious company with Albert Camus and
John Milton – two of the all-time greats in world literature. Ghosh rightly reminds
us of Milton's view that “The mind is its own place and in itself can make a Hell of Heaven, a
Heaven of Hell.” We need it now than ever, with Corona Devi bringing back the
perspective about material loss and gain. In today’s fragile world, who is to be considered
successful?: a hoarder with millions in the bank, or one who is sharing
whatever little he has with others? In a world that may have no tomorrow,
however bleak it may sound, there is little incentive for greed and lust. But
some do not learn from the past, so History has to repeat itself. MIRROR
FROM THE INDUS is a collection of such lessons that, hopefully, would make
us better human beings. And each one brings us closer to the thrust area: Do
grit, determination, courage, loyalty and integrity have a shelf-life? Or are
they timeless? Read the book to find the answer.
The Foreword by poet activist Ethelbert Miller and powerful endorsements by Dr. Tijan M. Sallah and Jonah Raskin bring into bold relief the international outreach of the author. The book is an aesthete’s
delight. The sunset hues on the cover-page soothe one’s nerves, and the
mirror-image of the title is aesthetically pleasing. I would wholeheartedly
recommend the book to anyone who has the taste for good literature and timeless
values. A must read.
REFERENCE
MIRROR FROM THE
INDUS – ESSAYS, TRIBUTES AND MEMOIRS by Nibir K. Ghosh. With a Foreword
by E. Ethelbert Miller. New Delhi: Authorspress, 2020. ISBN: 978-93-90155-24-8.
pp. 208. Rs. 800.
*Dr. Seema Sinha, BITS, Pilani
Copyright Dr.
Seema Sinha
2020.
Mirror from the Indus: Views from California
Jonah Raskin
Dear Nibir,
I have read your essays and
appreciate their range and depth. I like your ability to be balanced.
About half way through your book
I made a note to myself to ask you why you didn't write in the first person
using the word "I" and then there you were writing
about Gandhi and later on Mother Teresa and using the "I"
pronoun. I still wonder why you largely refrain from using the word
"I"? Is this something unconscious or is it deliberate?
A reader can infer how you feel and
think about materialism, freedom, tyranny and other big topics from
reading your essays about the French Revolution and Gandhi for example. But
then there is this sentence -- "If one happens to visit the
office of any one in power and authority, one can see that Gandhi’s portrait is
placed at the back of the official chair so that he/she may remain totally
unmindful of what is expected of true servants of society" - which
prompted me to wonder if you personally had seen Gandhi's portrait at the back
of an official chair. I am not doubting the remark, but wondered if
"one" is you?'
My favorite essays are probably
those on Ezekiel and Karnad, in part because in reading them I learned new
things. That is not the case, for example with your essays on Kipling and Byron
and Auden, because I have read so much about them. Leaving myself out for
a moment I can see that they would serve (the essays on Auden, Kipling and
Byron) as useful introductions to their lives and works especially to young
students.
Then I was thinking, I have known Nibir
for quite a while and don't know if he is a Hindu, or Moslem or Buddhist, an
agnostic, or a Brahaman. I believe you're not a Dalit.
Dalits rarely if ever occupy the
position you occupy in society. I don't think that you intentionally mean to be
mysterious and it occurs to me that it may be wise in a country
that is so deeply divided by caste and religion to avoid labeling yourself
Hindu or Moslem or Jain or Jewish or Christian. If you were to say, "I'm
Christian," for example some people would probably close the book and
not read any further. I try to avoid labels but as a working journalist I
have to use them and do use them and so I describe people as
"environmentalists," "humanists," "socialists,"
and such. These are some of my thoughts. Carry on, sir. -- Jonah Raskin
Dear Jonah,
Great to receive your elaborate
comments. Thanks dear Jonah. Wherever the narrative gets personal, I usually
use the first person pronoun. In India every government office meant for some
administrative boss, Gandhi appears in a framed photograph on a wall located at
the back of the official. So, one is me and could be anyone for that matter.
Again, in India, from one's surname a person can easily make out the
religion, caste and region that you belong to. I am an upper caste Hindu and a
Bengali (because Bangla is my mother tongue). However, since my father was in
the Indian Air Force and we moved around the country quite a bit my outlook is
very cosmopolitan as regards language, region, religion, caste are concerned
and I have close association with all across these barriers. Of course I admit
I have spiritual as well as revolutionary leanings though I don't believe much
in empty rituals of any kind. One reason why you could see essays on diverse
personalities like Subhas Chandra Bose, Tughlaq, Kipling, Bedi, Ezekiel
and others who all come from different religious backgrounds.
Loved your queries. Nibir
Dear
Nibir,
Thanks for sharing some of
your personal history. Maybe I know you a bit more now than I did a short
while ago, though I also think that you reveal a lot
about yourself in your essays. This revealing "business" is
tricky. The poet Allen Ginsberg claimed that he revealed all, but after
studying his work and digging into his life I realized/ discovered that
whenever he thought he was revealing himself he was simultaneously concealing
a part of himself, probably unconsciously. I am probably concealing
things about myself from myself that I am not aware of.
It's mid-summer here and Covid-19 is
still around and I feel like we in the USA are headed for a big clash/
confrontation, especially with the Dems and Republicans holding their virtual
conventions. Maybe we will have a virtual armageddon. Love you, Jonah
Raskin, Santa Rosa, California
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