Brahmaputra tales: A literary homecoming

I was invited to speak at the Brahmaputra Literary Festival held at Guwahati recently on the panel “Lost and Found in Translation”. This was the second edition of the festival jointly organised by the National Book Trust and the Publications Board of Assam. The fare at the three-day fest was interesting with panel discussions on interesting topics like Are we experimenting enough — new perspectives on storytelling; Shaping content — do editors matter; I will (not) write that — self-censorship; Telling stories to children — the multimedia experience; Are graphic novels changing the way we write?; Literature in the market place — publishing, lit fests, and book fairs; and Flipped at the counter — disappearing neighborhood bookshops. 

The organisers had taken some trouble in inviting authors and writers from other parts of the country, including David Collin, a French writer living in Switzerland, Bee Rowlatt extending her stay from the Jaipur litfest, and Vayu Naidu, teaching at the SOAS in London. 

An enterprising book distributor, Bhaskar Dutta Baruah of the famous Lawyer’s Book Stall, had a organised a lit mart, an open forum where launches and book signing sessions would take place.

The agenda looked promising and I was happy to visit as Guwahati was a homecoming of sorts for me; I had taught at the North Eastern Hill University in Shillong over 40 years ago. The fest had a more business-like purpose to it and was organised over a limited area at the Sankardeva Kalakshetra near the Shilpagram. It was easy to navigate the three main halls, named after famous writers like Madhav Kandali and Tolstoy, that were holding parallel sessions. 

At the session on Lost and found in translation, an early translated work which was lost, found and lost again was mentioned. This was the work of the Indian monk Kumarajiva who travelled from Kashmir to Kashgar and was later converted to Buddhism. He found his way to China and also helped spread Buddhism. He translated one of the Buddha’s sermons The Diamond Sutra from Sanskrit to Chinese in about 401 AD. While this survived in manuscript form, in 868 AD it was reprinted in book form through the block printing method by a printer named Wang. 

This was the first dated printed book in the world, a translation meant for free distribution. The book with other texts and artifacts were suppressed by Buddhists later fearing persecution. The Diamond Sutra along with other priceless manuscripts were hidden in the Mogao cliffs near Dunhuang. They were kept there for many hundreds of years, guarded by surviving descendants of monks who only knew they were the keepers of something but were not aware of its value till the caves were discovered by the British archaeologist and scholar of Sanskrit, Marc Auriel Stein in his explorations of the expanse of Buddhism across the Silk Route. He bribed the monk with a paltry inducement and carted away the priceless relics. The Diamond Sutra is now exhibited in the British Museum in London, a case of lost, found and lost again.

Chief at the fest David Collin spoke of his writings with reference to both collective and personal memory. He mentioned that personal memory was short and sometimes writers had to jog the collective memory. Writers had to record stories based on suffering as a result of genocide or ethnic cleansing. These stories ensured that these historical truths were not forgotten by succeeding generations. 

Some truths could well be unpalatable too. An audience reaction drew attention to the suffering of poorer Bangladeshi women at the hands of the soldiers during the liberation struggle. This is being documented in story form only now and the tragedy is that these women have still not been acknowledged, given their due and integrated into the society.

The current director of the National Book Trust, Rita Chowdhury, released her book Chinatown Days at the fest. This is the English translation of her work Makam in Assamese, which won her the Sahitya Akademi award in 2010. It tells the poignant story of the Chinese brought as indentured labour to work at the tea gardens. It started with the East India Company and continued during the years of the British rule. 

What is not known is that during the Sino-Indian conflict, many of the Chinese families were rounded up, treated as enemies and interned in a camp in Ajmer, Rajasthan. Families were divided and the Chinese who had originally tried to escape famine conditions in China now faced privation again. 

Worse, they were now deported to a China that was not happy to receive them. These Assamese Chinese are now a part of the diaspora and Ms Chowdhury has recorded their stories. 

A few Chinese families continued to live in Assam and Ms Chowdhury was happy to introduce a third generation Chinese Assamese at the fest. He spoke of his experiences and was happy that the family histories were being told.

Another Sahitya Akademi awardee Kula Saikia released If a River and other stories at the fest. This is a collection of his short stories translated from Assamese into English. The opening story describes children playing a game called “river” in a desert in Jaisalmer. The river was a figment of their imagination as no one, except one among them, had ever seen a river. Speaking at the fest, Mr Saikia contrasted the ocean with the more placid river. “You can sit beside the river and tell it all your troubles,” he said. “It will absorb it all” and flow gently, “but the ocean will break its waves on the shore and bring all the troubles back to you.” 

The session on Publishing, book fairs and lit fests saw a spirited discussion. One of the speakers at the session said that literary discussions should be shorn of crass commercialism. The speaker feared the “commodification” of fests and felt that literary nature of fests was being sacrificed.

To this a publisher in the audience pointed out that a writer transmits his ideas to the readers in the form of a book and unless the book, unfortunately a “commodity”, sold at the fests, this transmission would remain unfulfilled.

The writer is a senior publishing industry professional who has worked with OUP and is now a senior consultant with Ratna Sagar Books