MANORAMA HORTUS

Two travellers, an old man's and Babri Masjid's disappearance and Dylan's rebuke

Both these men like to travel, but in completely different ways. One is a mind traveller, and the other a physical voyager.
But both - short story writer Unni R and non-fiction writer and cinematographer Venu - usually end up in places that throw up surprises, for both them and also their readers. Both were part of a discussion on the topic 'Images and Words: Two Worlds of Creative Experiences' moderated by Pooja Priyadarshini at Manorama Hortus on Friday, November 1.

Venu travelled to Bastar in Chattisgarh, "not to write but just to take pictures", and discovered that perceptions were nothing but petty hearsay. So the image-maker who was interested in only in taking pictures and understanding the culture of what is widely known as Naxal country finally decided to put down in words the truths that struck him in Bastar. Thus came into being his hugely popular non-fiction work 'Nagnarum Narabhojikalum'.

"A widely held notion was turned upside down. I was told that it was a scary place, and that Maoists are scary people. But I never faced any threat by Maoists nor were any impediments placed before me by Maoists. It is the police and military that one has to fear in Bastar. They are the ones who place hindrances on our way. It is the symbols of power and not the people of Bastar that one has to fear," he said. "I did not meet any Maoists there. I might have seen them, but I didn't recognise them," Venu added, suggesting how non-intrusive these demonised people were.

As for Unni, it was a mind expedition he embarked upon long ago that transported him and his readers to the stirrings of a future horror scenario. Now, the short story Badusha Enna Kaalnadakkaran (Badusha the Walker) that Unni wrote nearly two decades ago, is proof that Unni was shockingly prescient.

The story is about an old Muslim who loved to walk like Forrest Gump loved to run. Long before Khan-named men were blocked by security men at airports, Unni wrote about a 70-year-old perennial walker named Badusha who was picked up by the police from a moon-lit beach just because he had a 'suspicious' name. He's branded a terrorist and tortured but all they could seize from this old 'traitor' was just a key, a sea shell and a leaf.
"It was a story I wrote 18 years ago. Badusha was just a simple man who loved to walk. It is unfortunate that his plight has now become India's reality," Unni said.

It is through a person's walk through streets, the kind of flaneur literary trope that French writers like Baudelaire had used, that Unni explores such "disappearances and absences", a recent example of which was his story 'Swayam Bhagam' (My Corner). "It is important to have memories. People and places are disappearing," Unni said.

He gave an example of a building in Thiruvananthapuram's Sasthamangalam that was once the place where the police committed atrocities during the Emergency. "It was a place where Rajan (the engineering student) was killed. It is now the office of a an entertainment channel," Unni said. "It is easy for the state to make a place disappear," he said. He cited Babri Masjid as an example.

His mind travel, therefore, becomes an attempt at recollection, at mapping the monuments and persons lost to history.
It is the indifference to this "disappearance" that Venu is rebelling against. It is for that he translated Bob Dylan's iconic 'Blowin' in the Wind'.

"It's is a political song. Today, people do not protest against the troubles of others, they don't even feel sad about them or understand them. Be it Gaza or Ukraine, we forget the trauma of others in just about four or five days," Venu said.

He said people now take a fatalistic stand. "We say we can't do anything about it or that it's their fate. It is in protest against this that Dylan wrote this song," Venu said. He said that we are trying to delude ourselves by thinking that we are not seeing the trauma of others.

Dylan's words (How many roads must a man walk down/
Before you call him a man?/
How many seas must a white dove sail/
Before she sleeps in the sand?/
Yes, and how many times must the cannonballs fly/Before they're forever banned?/The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind/
The answer is blowin' in the wind) Venu said was the antidote.