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Thursday, November 14, 2024

Books, Identity and the Reader’s Take

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Aditiya Thapa

I like books, and although I have lost my prodigious abilities (read a 900-page novel in a day), they make up a significant portion of my life, perhaps because I am majoring in literature and minoring in creative writing. Perhaps. I can read anything. I have picked up random books from the dumping ground back home and devoured them. In all of the four flights I have ever taken, I have been upset by the lack of more than two AirAsia magazines onboard. 

When I first encountered a library at 18, I didn’t skip the mandatory phase that a literature student goes through at 10. I read Goosebumps and thought of how many scenarios I could have devised, flinched at the sight of rebellious kids in Mr. Dahl and Mr. Bond, and cried over Harry’s treatment by the Dudleys. My reading career peaked at 18 and died at 20, still at its peak. It died when I secured a scholarship and came to college; ironically, after I had spent half my waiting days googling the library at Ashoka University. 

This is where I met the other half of writing I had not encountered before: the author. College is where I understood implications of a work. The politics that goes behind where it is placed and how it is constructed, what it entails other than what is visible on the surface and who it belongs to. This is where I was told stories about the writer; not in a fun “Ruskin Bond lives in Mussoorie (literally 5 hours away)” but in a “Virginia Woolf ridiculed Edwardian era obsessed with fireworks and changed the way we look at the banal”. This is also where I heard sighs from friends about having to read another “Dead white man” for class. I couldn’t not care about J.K. Rowling’s opinions on trans-women anymore, and every bit of reading the work with the author and every possible context weighed down on me. The satisfaction I had at having accomplished any bookworm’s childhood in just two years right before college rather backfired on me. I did not have enough years to think of both the work and its creator, which compelled me to abandon the years reserved for the latter. Every month I was fed details about people I admired. Joyce’s autobiographical adventures in a book I could never understand, Shakespeare’s jibes at the queen, and Woolf’s sass at the Edwardians. Gulp. Gulp. Gulp. 

Then I read Barthes sometime later and was told I should care nothing about the author and that their work is my property. Great solution! Except, everybody still talked about dead white men. And I did too. I preposterously put myself in legendary shoes and thought what would happen if tomorrow people were to read my work without me. Well, it would first hurt my ego, but more than that, it would perhaps be unfair to me in another way- that it would tell readers that what I wrote and I are separable. But how could I be so sure that every bit of my work and I are inseparable?

First I didn’t have any choice, and the fact that I realised this only after three years of writing did not help at all. I did not even know when my choice was being taken away, because I did not have it in the first place. That doesn’t make any sense but let me try. Yesterday, somebody who had asked me to send them my work came up to me and said, “I was amazed by how your story was normal. I have three years of training in this; I know what look to give.” 

“No no, not like that, I was just expecting other things, you know.”

Other things. I know what those other things are, but of course, I will not ask the person in question to tell me, that would be too embarrassing for somebody who means me well. Very well. 

Is it the fact that they expected mention of poverty since people know I am not the best endowed with resources such as money? Or is it the fact that where I come from is full of violence? Like brutality and militancy. Maybe they wanted a glimpse of my experiences with racism and being called a momo-seller all the time. Whatever it is, reflection on three years (forgive me, I am slow) have brought me to a conclusion: I am expected to write on a fixed set of things. No, not in a bad way. My experiences are important and will be acknowledged, but I must write about a few things first. Upon the completion of that task, maybe I will find my name on the spine of a self-help book. 

I am generally the only person in class from the Northeast, quite literally. This would perhaps mean nothing if I was in a government engineering college, but not here. Here, it means something. People will listen to me when I tell them about army brutality, even rape. Some of them will engage with empathy and show solidarity. Professors will ask me to give insights on “the region since many people don’t know much about it”. And by much, please don’t think I am exaggerating. Literally, everybody in one class confidently stated that North-East India has seven states when asked by the professor. The awkward silence post, always followed by something like “I am sorry, I learnt about The Seven Sisters and that’s why said it on instinct”. I am the guardian of the Northeast, which I often find ironic because being Nepali speaking in Manipur can sometimes give you thoughts about the legitimacy of your state’s representation, let alone the Northeast as a whole. Let’s leave nuances alone for the tale’s sake here. I think this expectation of me to speak about the mysterious land and its secrets has confined me to an extent. Now, I know it’s very important to talk about my identity and gather wins at every chance at representation, but sometimes I just want say something like “Every 60 seconds in Manipur, a minute passes” and be acknowledged. 

In a bid to fulfil all the recommendations I get asked for on books to read from North-East, I had to commit the shameful act of googling (I ran out of books). Here I found Easterine Kire’s “Where the River Sleeps”, a fictional marvel touted by one review to be similar to that of Ursula Le Guin. I opened a random review page (one of the few) and found out that the book is along the line of folk stories, based on not much of the modern landscape in Nagaland that is familiar to people. Nothing based in the modern, perhaps free of the conflict that often finds itself in headlines about the place. I scrolled through a few lines and found this:

“Yet, it is not the Nagaland we know from the headlines, or from the pictures of the Hornbill Festival. Her Nagaland is primeval, distinctly local, and universal at the same time. Some readers may complain that she missed a great opportunity to explain the reality of the state to her readers. She has done it in her other novels. Here too, she doesn’t ignore the immediate reality, only it’s not her focus.”

This is one of the most sensitive reviews I have come across. It acknowledges the diversity in literary culture of the Northeast, refuses to give in to binaries, and yet, somehow does not do without the mention of the absence (rightly) of something that is expected out of a novel set in Nagaland, even if in defending it. The review acknowledges that she has done her job of representation in other novels. So why is there pressure to tell the audience that it was okay for her to miss it in this one?

People from marginalised identities often bear the burden of representation. As with Kire’s work, statements questioning why one did not talk about the conflict that plagues their identity are common sights, and although often this conflict is the everyday, we have to remember that it disqualifies anything that may exist outside the realm of identity and conflict. The talk of the banal and slice of life is for the privileged. Most books I have read on living life to the fullest, fulfilling dreams, silly romances, spirituality etc. always sport a spine representing the ones who don’t bear the heavy burden of identity. 

Let me go back to the discomfort with my reading habit’s demise. I am frequently upset about losing a habit I acquired, and to an extent mastered, in just two years. Sometimes I want to cut out every page that mentions the author’s name and anything related to them, so that I can read in peace. Do I resent being told of context, which has essentially put too much on my table as criteria before approaching any book?  No.

As much as this was force-feeding, I had to go through due to a lack of privilege, not knowing it would be disastrous as a reader, and impossible as a writer. I think I understood this once I started writing myself. First, I wouldn’t be acknowledging the social consequences of what I am consuming, and not even think twice before marvelling at Pablo Neruda’s poems, and consequently, him. But more importantly, it would somehow make it impossible for me to write, since that always comes in context to who I am. 

I often have a hard time finding literature from home not rooted in or dealing with the perceived collective umbrella of identity, which is surprising to say the least because there obviously exists a world of everyday, contrary to what the occasional news feature shows. There are old men sitting in front of teashops languishing their days playing chess; there also are the bustle of second-hand markets which are single-handedly championed by women, the slaughter of a single cow, whose meat is portioned and distributed through the village, the traditional planting festivals where people sing songs that have been passed down for generations, and children riding carts made of wood and worn down car-bearings. 

The question of whether it is wrong for my work to always bear the burden of representation may even be pompous, since it can only be examined if I have a work in the first place. It is impossible to escape this position, for I am not only instructed by an external voice to speak within a box, but also by my consciousness which dictates (rightly so) the necessity to do as much as I can. Even after having lived in one of the most accommodating spaces in the country, I think what was expected of me has still moulded into what I expect of myself: courtesy identity. 

[Aditiya Thapa (b. 1998, Manipur, India) is a student of English Literature and Journalism at Ashoka University, Delhi. He loves reading and exploring the complexities of identity and conflict. He also takes interest in writing and translating.]

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