Reading the Punjab

Foreword:

First, let me explain how after returning to Ireland from Malaysia,  Singapore, Tanzania and London recently, my reading world became incredibly revolutionized.

It was almost as if on engaging with the photography of specific cultural elements afforded to shopkeepers, restaurateurs, streets, towns, alleyways and marketplaces, plus talking with booksellers and visiting local bookshops in numerous places so that I could purchase and indulge in my own brand of obscure literature… that I received a certain spiritual enlightenment.

I derived such an insatiable thirst for cultural stories in books and films… even greater than usual, from when I  first encountered this passion, once-upon-a-time in March 2008.  Then my life was forever changed after viewing Tehran’s award-winning film-maker, Niki Karimi’s poignant cinematic production titled One Night, on Irish television. I found myself seduced by Persian culture and would forever submit myself to a broad exhilaration of the senses, for my chosen Arts.

Now, it was as if on deciding to return to creative writing – naturally reading follows a close second – I was in the right place at the right time.  Without a doubt, the universe conspired to lavish me with the appropriate energy and miracles;  to once more engage with this astonishing feat.

I am an individual with whom the laws of attraction  often work unheeded for better or for worse, as I have noticed this  in the past with my travels and the dramatized encounters that unfold in fascinating patterns, along the way.

My desire for tasting different cultural flavours and extraordinary moods through world literature, suddenly expanded into a fabulous fusion.  My perplexing curiosity trailed me into newer territories, quieter regions and far more bashful cultural elements.  I am particularly drawn to the lives of the lower working classes, to stories of crowded streets, flats, small towns and rural peasantry complete with an assortment of tradition and ritual.  I read all else but these are the thought-provoking tales that bring me pure bliss.  And where I stay loyally passionate about the Middle East and Greater Middle East, West and North African Literature and the Malay Archipelago, I am now strangely drawn to the Indian Sub-Continent as well especially Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

Clearly, my hunger to absorb such literature, seems magical. It leaps with adventurous alacrity  into the expanded unknown. Presently, I can’t even count the books already downloaded into my Kindle 3G, those still on their way to me from Amazon, Abe Books and The Book Depository plus, the wonderful stories that followed me back to Dublin, in my luggage. Hidden gems, all.

A few thoughts on Voices in the Backyard: Punjabi Short Stories

I purchased a paperback of the above title recently from Abe Books UK.

Voices in the Back Courtyard: Punjabi Short Stories, published in 2010 by Rupa Publications, New Delhi, India, consists of a  collection of 15 tidy short stories purported to the darker melancholia of Punjabi village life and penned among others,  by Punjab’s late legendary poet, Amrita Pritam and also Dalip Kaur Tiwana, Ajeet Cour, Prabhjot Kaur, Bachint Kaur, Sukhwant Kaur Mann, Rajinder Kaur, N. Kaur, Rashim, Sharan Makkar, Balwinder Brar, Chandan Negi, Veena Verma, Baljit Balli and Sharanjit Kaur.

All the heartfelt and in some cases, almost prayerful fictional versions featuring the irony of family life,  the sufferings of the girl child, the throes of love and the trauma of loss, greed, slander and notwithstanding a selfish lawlessness among the poorer lot, are carefully shown up by these glorious women writers.  The chosen tales which are all precise and concise in nature and extremely easy to read, are  aptly  translated in turn by Narinder Kaur Jit, a professional translator and an English Language lecturer at the Govt. Ranbir College, Sangrur in the Punjab.

Now, this would prove my second read on this renewed reading journey.  The first fabulous novel I encountered in London was the Delhi publication of a semi-tragic Kolkata narration earnestly composed  by Saborna Roychowdhury. You can read my review here.

Perhaps I was drawn to the Punjabi stories because my mother is Sikh.

But the title appeared beguiling and inviting at the first instance.  Says Narinder Kaur Jit in her reflective note at the start of the book:  “The translator has a dual responsibility as he/she needs to have a complete command over the socio-cultural nuances of both the languages.”  Kaur also speaks later of how her awe at the splendid writings set before her, would soon reinvent itself as a bond from where Kaur was then able in her work as a translator to penetrate the minds and moods of each writer, whence her work would change into an enjoyable experience.

I have loved the majority of the sensitive renditions and from the rest that merely brushed past me, I was still able to garner wisdom. Personally, I found these pensive ruminations to have turned more energizing, sharper in approach and slightly cutting-edge towards the end.

Already at the start, I sensed a gentle tug of the senses from being immediately  whisked away to faraway sleepy hamlets, where aeroplane flights were unlikely to reach and where in devouring so much translated West African and Arabic literature, I recognised now, how the science of one village would differ from another.

I observed through stories of gregarious if not drunken truck drivers, merciless petty thieves, idle gossipers and greedy parents yearning to make money out of their unfortunate children; how tradition could shape personalities….that of the simple cowherd or the resigned spinster…to either subdue or kindle a sharp tongue or a courageous heart.  In this case, as the riveting tales stretched themselves to a lingering forethought, many decisions were birthed in community gatherings held in courtyards of one kind or the other, whereupon scornful womenfolk may have offered slander or the lonely housewife, silently mulling over her whispering demons, while  stirring the inside of a cooking pot, in the cooking area.  Insert:  Inset: Amrita Pritam

Amrita Pritam’s Shah’s Harlot was not without its sarcastic irony and here, the famous writer stood in invisible defence for a wife over a mistress, no thanks to the silliness of menfolk and gossipy women, lacking in compassion. A dancer cum prostitute, the belle of the brothel, called Neelam, had been a frustrated challenge all the while, for the Shahlini, once her husband, the enviable and charismatic Shah, began to conduct his affair with Neelam, in a clandestine manner.   On finding out, the Shahini threatens to end her life with poison but the amused husband is instead   coaxing,  flattering and cunningly persuasive of his wife’s traits. Finally, Neelam will meet Shahlini and here, Pritam sketches for her reader, a commendable battle of wits.

Preferring people-stories, I sadly, wasn’t ready for the classical rendition of God adhering to the change of seasons, in God and Seasons by Dalip Kaur Tiwana. The introspective tale is shrouded by metaphors and figurative elements in that clever, puzzling way.  Still, I  gathered one line of a wonderful wisdom, to cradle in the memory, for the rest of my life.  In an intense dialogue between God and the season of spring, Tiwana writes her genius. “Here it is only after death, that the people come to know they had been living.” I could meditate on a line like this for days and still, be seeking  answers.  Deeply philosophical in its approach, the parable may be seen as a tender reprimand for the reader to grab each breath of life without hesitation.

Seven spinsters who are best friends and simply whizz at a game of cards, are stuck without husbands in The Seven Maidens and Agony of a Daughter, stays beautiful to the senses and the tearful heart, with its bearings of a classical tragedy.  Then too, there was the case of the naked ghost in Spook, who appeared to a lonely woman, insisted a crowd of busybody neighbours. Of course, the lonely woman vehemently denied the existence of such a chilling encounter but to no avail.  I found this intriguing tale by Rashim to be a splendid page-turner.

My favourite had to be The Purchased Woman, an astute, considerate story that lends itself to a gallant romance and brillliantly penned by Veena Verma.  The beefy, former police inspector…now gone a little wayward, Maghar Singh is a truck driver. He purchases a demure virgin, an older girl,  Lacchmi, whom Verma sketches out with great care.

“Two months ago, Maghar Singh had purchased her from Calcutta, only for twelve hundred rupees; that too, in partnership with three other friends of his. He had taken his truck to deliver some goods there, and picked her up on his way back.  From there, he directly went to Ludhiana, to his buddies, but there were not there at that time.  Ultimately, he had to bring her to his village… he usually brought a woman at night and took her away in his truck at dawn…” - The Purchased Woman, Veena Verma.

It turns out that the meek Lacchmi, who is magnificent at whipping up a superb fish dish,  who adores her simple rice and lentils curry and loves pinning flowers to her bun, falls in love with the totally insensitive Maghar Singh who may live now and then for his bulky truck, his friends and his ale, but nothing more. Singh through gullibility, was once swindled out of the promise of a good bride, by a  faithless friend and was promptly told off by his resigned Dad, who takes a fondness to Lacchmi, without hesitation.  Now, this doesn’t please Maghar Singh at all and he plans to  cart the heartbroken Lacchmi out of the way,  for good.   Thus, the big question remains on how to set about winning the affections of such an insensitive loudmouth before it is too late.  Without question, it is the unfortunate woman whom society in this case, dictates who should suffer the most. Lacchmi possesses no vindictive ambition so it is left to chance and the heavens to hero down a miracle.

Verma tempers her gift of high comedy by slotting tender ticklish scenes with tasteful elegance into this enchanting love story.

Also:  How Amrita Pritam Inspired Me

(I wrote this article a long while ago but have reposted it here as I feel it’s a perfect supplement to the little book above on Punjabi short stories.  Some of you may have read this before.)

Captions: Amrita Pritam in retrospection & inset, with her faithful sweetheart of many years, Imroz.(Amrita Pritam’s autobiography titled Rashidi Ticket or The Revenue Stamp.)

Here is my story of Amrita Pritam, the late Punjabi poetess consumed with passion and a courage to defy the norm and of how her magic resonated with me. These are the strange lines that first danced in my head and started me on my own journey of writing serious poetry.

*****

Amrita Pritam, the late Punjabi poet was consumed with passion and a courage to defy the norm and her magic resonated in such lines as these:

“There was a grief,

I smoked in silence,

like a cigarette

only a few poems fell out of the ash

I flicked from it.“

The prominent grand dame of Punjabi letters together with her fiery, passionate poetry and the doyenne of its country’s literature, Amrita Pritam, passed away on October 31 2005 at 86.

By then, she had earned herself orbituaries in several world newspapers. Pritam once declared that love meant admiration of a woman’s mind and body!

“A woman should come to a man as body, stressed Pritam. …as a poem and as a person all-blended and fused into one total being. She does not chide the male ego in the process.

” Man, she went on to hint, was a hunter, as evolution put him on the highways of time and space. Woman was then a transmitter of knowledge.

Yes, from the very prenatal state, the female had to tell a child – what was wind and storm, tree and bird, and what was an apple and snake, long before a holy book said it in so many words. “

No one”, finished Pritam, “has ever peeled a woman.”

Here was a woman who had earned world respect in every sense of the word. She essayed through prose and poetry, the gory events of the Partition, earned herself admiration from both sides of the feuding Punjab, won herself awards a-plentiful, authored over a 100 books with her first poetry collection being rocketed into fame at just 16 and had her works translated into several languages including French, Danish and the Japanese.

Her best known novel, The Skeleton was later made into a powerful Hindi film called Pinjar in 2003. It dealt with survival and hope despite chaotic riots, displacement of families and human suffering.

And this is for you if you want to catch a breath of her verse:

“Who will ever stitch a torn phulkari of light?

In the niche of the sky the sun lights a lamp.

But who will ever light a lamp

On the parapet of my heart…” - Amrita Pritam -

And Pritam would have known a solid thing or two about romance. The petite poetess (she was barely 5 ft tall) was described as precocious from young. For her lover the writer Imroz (pictured above and not Muslim inspite of his name) who devoted most of his life to her until the moment of her final fading breath, “he painted her eyes everywhere on walls and doors”, and when ailing, she was finally unable to move, he looked after her to the last.

Pritam already had children; her daughter, Kundala and son, Navraj from an early broken marriage. The thing is Pritam confessed to being in love passionately and intensely only once in her life and this unfortunately, had nothing to do with the star-struck Imroz.

Pritam who once took to cutting off a great chunk of her hair and smoking heavily in a show of defiance, was known to be head-over-heels in love for most of her years, with the charismatic lyricist/poet of an incredibly great stature, whose name was Sahir Ludhianvi. Ludhianvi already had a wife and other women.

(However, there are studies that question the prospect of such a feverish crush ever occurring, thanks to Pritam’s age and her absence in the locations mentioned.) Anyway as the ‘story’ goes…

The famous songwriter of Hindustani films (an industry that would complete Pritam’s fascination with fantasy – she loved Hindi cinema), who passed away in 1981, was known to be a heavy drinker and to shout profanities rudely and loudly when things didn’t go his way. He died after suffering a heart attack while playing cards.

Pritam had met him for the first time at a press conference. She took to immediately scribbling his name excessively all over her palm, fingers, wrists and on bits of paper. She even asked him to autograph her palm, “promising never to wash the signature off.”

Ludhianvi on the other hand, stayed attracted to Pritam in a cold, silent way. He said nothing, just stared at her, in what I suspect today to be in the most sensual fashion, puffing away at cigarette after cigarette.

After he left, Pritam smoked all the crumpled butts that were hastily rescued from the ashtray!

This was the start of something electrifying yet bizarre. Ludhianvi would visit Pritam, continue to say nothing, but to sit in front of her, looking straight into her eyes, smoking cigarette after cigarette. Then he would get up without a word to go. Pritam who nurtured this lifelong crush with the fragility of a diamond, would stare in morbid fascination.

Later, she wrote some of her best poetry based on this strange but highly-seductive encounters.

The poem described her fantasy lover’s every body language and slight movement and it was clear how she adored each memory.

“There was a grief,

I smoked in silence,

like a cigarette only a few poems fell out of the ash

I flicked from it.”

********
I first began to read this poetry that was published by Femina Magazine in Mumbai, India.

Femina is known to be the equivalent of India’s fashionable Vogue. The stylish read was edited at the time, by Vimla Patil in Mumbai.

Femina was at the time, a main sponsor for the Miss India/Miss Universe/World competitions.  The magazine held all the right ingredients for a winning mix of the glamorous and artistic. Patil chose an enchanting  picture of Pritam to go with her poetry.

The poet posed with a natural sophisticated flair, lying back slightly on a wicker chair with legs crossed, one hand thrown backwards while balancing a cigarette and penetrating almond-shaped eyes that were without a doubt, bent on seducing the camera.

(Insert: Vimla Patil today): One of India’s most senior journalists and who edited Femina magazine for 25 years in Mumbai. Patil was the first editor abroad to recognise my own poetry potential. (I am Malaysian) just before my poems were accepted by literary presses in England at the time. For a little while and knowing nothing of the tale, I became tightly drawn to Pritam’s verses.

Recognising them to be different from anyone else’s I began to savour her words slowly, letting them rest in my mind and reflecting on her own emotions before it dawned on me that I should try writing my poetry again in a serious way after a long hiatus from my school years.

I was never trained to write poetry but it appeared that through Pritam’s own supposed passion for Ludhianvi’s smoking fetishes – as the saying goes -, she was slowly guiding me in that subconscious way as to a new knowledge on embracing the right rhythm, tone and pace for a love poem.

I begged inwardly to reach her deepest secrets, that were so profoundly wound into her lines.

In other words, I learnt from her by ear.

I was already at the time, reading the British poets in what was known as the Movement comprising a special group that was made up of Sylvia Plath, Randal Jarrell, Ted Hughes, Kingsley Amis and many others. I related to Plath the best. Something – I’ll never know what – about Pritam’s stylish elegance and the pride she took with her verses convinced me that I too, could make a go of it if I wanted.

After awhile, I summed up enough courage to send a few on to, Ms. Vimla Patil at Femina. Patil responded quickly – she had selected 3 poems out of 5. Later, she would take more, of course. But at the time, I was ecstatic. Then I began to send them on to England.

There must have been a rare star milling around somewhere. It was a time of acceptances and not rejections. (Insert: Pritam photographed by Outlook Magazine.) I often wonder at the turn my destiny would have taken if I had pursued this passion and not simply stopped for years. I don’t think it’s too late now – there’s still a tomorrow and the same editors are all around, though they’ve commanded striking portfolios by now.

It’s funny when I heard of Pritam’s death in 2005 – I was instantly haunted by her memory.

At the end of the day, she turned out to be the invisible catalyst of my small successes. Diamonds mixed with mud for the years to follow when I felt unable to write.

Yet now I’m on another path, writing my book. Again, my long and winding road retraces itself back to the same forgotten years. What Pritam once inspired in me would still trail the root of this accomplishment. In this respect, I succumb to joy that such a good slice of that precious past was mine and perhaps most of all, that it can never be changed.

“I will meet you yet again

How and where I know not

Perhaps I will become a figment of your imagination and maybe spreading myself in a mysterious line on your canvas I will keep gazing at you.

Perhaps I will become a ray of sunshine to be embraced by your colours

I will paint myself on your canvas I know not how and where —but I will meet you for sure.

Maybe I will turn into a spring and rub foaming drops of water on your body

and rest my coolness on your burning chest

I know nothing but that this life will walk along with me.

When the body perishes all perishes

but the threads of memory are woven of enduring atoms

I will pick these particles weave the threads and I will meet you yet again.” – amrita pritam

- Translated from the Punjabi by Nirupama D

Credit: Painting of Amrita Pritam in golden orange hues, courtesy of Farzana’s WordPress

At Last, Here are Details for 4 and not 2 Plagiarised Short Stories by Aneeta Sundararaj, in a Malaysian short story collection called Snapshots!

by Susan Abraham

After years, I’ve secured the  necessary evidence.

Caption: The camera shot of Fourteen Stories by Pearl S. Buck, is my own. I don’t believe there is any other cover image for Fourteen Stories on the worldwide web. This is one of Pearl S. Buck’s lesser known works – a more obscure find.

Part 1 of the First Plagiarised Story

Recollection

In early 2009, while browsing at a popular bookshop in Kuala Lumpur, I came across this Malaysian collection of short stories by Aneeta Sundararaj, Saradha Narayanan and A. Jessie Michael, titled Snapshots!.  The stories were edited by Craig Cormick and the paperback, published by Oak Publications in 2006.

While glimpsing through the pages, I recalled  a disturbing  memory, of  having read a couple of short stories that were purportedly said to be written by Aneeta Sundararaj.  All of a sudden, there lay that faint whiff of nostalgia, from a forgotten time. I was certain I had read the same stories before.

After some contemplation, I would frown at the close similarities of original memorable works by the late award-winning novelist, Pearl. S. Buck. Buck had won the Pulitzer Prize in 1932 for her novel, The Good Earth and in 1938, was handed a literary celebration of great distinction, The Nobel Prize for Literature.

To see what I mean about Sundararaj claiming these stories to be hers, you may refer to a local newspaper interview over HERE, where Sundararaj shared some chat, on how she drew out these particular ‘tales.’

Here is what I wrote in a blog post at the time of the two copied stories by Sundararaj:

“The ideas, central themes, stuctures, narrations, characterisation and plots have been lifted off the original, almost in their wholeness. I had read all of Pearl S. Buck’s short stories as a teenager, her books easily available in the school library and recognised the stolen stories at once. They were my favourites.”

and here.. “I also recognise another copied story…”  and here,  “These tales have long stayed out-of-print and would be very difficult to trace. I am surprised that I had read them all as a teen enough to remember them with clarity. They are gathered together with other modern American stories.“

Then and Now:

Nothing has ever been mentioned.  Besides receiving a few poison-pen notes under my blog-post comments – more of taunts & heckles  – the individual mentioned, has never approached me and to the best of my knowledge has never made any public reference to these copied stories, or offer any attempt to rectify the allegations.  In fact, I had mentioned discovering the plagiarism before spilling any details all those years ago. The individual concerned who kept a close watch on my blog had plenty of opportunity to approach me privately but failed to do this. Finally after a length of time had passed, I wrote about it.

Since then, neither has anyone else openly made any reference to it. One or two did but spoke in praise and defence of Sundararaj with regards to her immense and helpful support for other writers.  As far as I was concerned, this plagiarism issue stood as a serious matter on its own.  But it appeared to me that my discovery was swiftly brushed aside. The silence on the issue as regards the Malaysian book scene at the time seemed so deliberate – I’m not sure on my part if this is fact or illusion – but the air was so still,  you could hear a pin drop.

Because I relied on memory and could not remember where exactly these stories were first collected together – Buck commanded a vast bibliography – I let the subject go.

However, in recent months, I felt that for the sake of my credibility alone, that I should  prove the plagiarism in greater detail. The thought of such an encounter  felt daunting… akin to searching for a needle in a haystack. Again, I let it go.  Finally, by some chance, on browsing through Abe Books for some favourite antiquarian collectibles, I came across the title Fourteen Stories by Pearl S Buck – all of secondhand copies.  I immediately questioned if the original works might be in here instead. Because of copyright infringement, I was unable to trace these stories on the web.  I decided to take a chance on ordering the book and I was right.

So far, I’ve discovered four plagiarised stories by Aneeta Sundararaj, in Snapshots! and not just the two as I had earlier concluded.

The book Snapshots! should have long been removed but is still being displayed in the present time (up to May 29, 2012) as a past accomplishment on this person’s portfolio. Please see…

Profile of Aneeta Sundararaj on Suite 101
Aneeta Sundararaj’s Profile in Arabesque Editions
Aneeta Sundararaj in LibraryThing
HowtoTellaGreatStory. Please scroll to bottom of page.
Also, some international library urls, that still list the book in their stock & others.

**********

Here is a clearer version of the Plagiarism.  There is too much of copied detail by the individual concerned. I will place only some vital points of the 1st part of the plagiarised story as Sundararaj has copied the entire longer short story from start to finish.

The four stolen stories first appeared as original versions, tucked away in Fourteen Stories by Pearl S. Buck as a John Day edition published in the US in 1961. My version is a January 1976 edition, published by Pocket Books in New York.

First Part of the First Stolen Story: Original: Enchantment by Pearl S. Buck.  Plagiarised Version: Enchanteur by Aneeta Sundararaj.

The first stolen story by Aneeta Sundararaj is called Enchanteur on page 7 of Snapshots!  Enchantment is featured as the third story in Buck’s paperback and it begins on page 48.

Summary: The story that takes place within the stretch of an evening, highlights how a tired office executive meets a very beautiful woman on a crowded train. She approaches him for assistance. He is completely seduced by her sophistication but remembers with great fondness and affection, his  plain wife, Ruth. Ruth stays the loyal and devoted companion. Uncomplicated, sure and trustworthy. The story is a study of women who may be judged by men as to the strength of beauty measured against worth.

Buck – “The train was crowded and he was late.”

Sundararaj: “The commuter train was crowded and he was the last passenger.”

Buck: “…up and down the car, he thought that there were no seats left.”

Sundararaj: “Looking around, he noticed that there were hardly any seats left.”

Buck: “Then midway, he saw a woman sitting alone.”

Sundararaj: “Then halfway down a compartment, he saw a woman sitting by herself.”

Buck:  ” He thought of the easy days when he stepped out of the office building into an air-conditioned car. Poor Dixon, the chauffeur lay dead, somewhere in a jungle probably – dead anyway. He had been a good driver, a restful sort of fellow…”

Sundararaj: “He thought of the easy days when he used to step out of his office building and into a quiet, air-conditioned Mercedes.  Poor Samad, the driver, had been killed only a week ago by robbers in this frightening new thing, ‘road rage.’

Buck: “…and he made his way down the aisle. “Is this seat taken?” he asked the woman without looking at her.”

Sundararaj: “He made his way down the aisle. “Is this seat taken?” he asked the woman. He did not look at her.”

Buck:  “No, it isn’t,” she answered.

Sundararaj: “No, it isn’t,” she answered.

Buck:  “He lifted his briefcase and tried to find room for it on the rack. But packages crowded it and he was uncertain of its safety.”

Sundararaj: “…he thought of the danger of leaving his precious lap-top  perched on another’s package.”

Buck: “…she was looking up and their eyes met. He felt a shock of surprise. She was absolutely beautiful. ‘I’m afraid this isn’t safe,’ he stammered.’

Sundararaj: “…she was looking up at him. He was startled. She was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. He said, somewhat softly, ‘I’m afraid I’ll have to keep this with me. It isn’t safe up there.’

Buck:  (I skipped some lines.) “He lifted the briefcase from the rack, sat down and put it between his knees.”

Sundararaj: “He sat down and placed the briefcase between his knees.”

Buck:  “…he was tired and anxious to get home where Ruth was waiting for him.  Together, Ruth and home made the background of his life.”

Sundararaj:  “He was tired after his day in court. Together, Padmini and home made his life bearable.”

Buck:  “He could endure the crass annoyance of his over-crowded days because he knew that outside the city, set far back from the tree-shaded streets of Lynnton, his own house stood in inviolable quiet, filled with beauty and composure.”

Sundararaj:  “He could endure the nonsense of court and the harassment of an over-crowded city like Kuala Lumpur, all because he knew that each day, outside the city, set far back in Seremban, his house stood quiet and welcoming.”

….. (I’m skipping some parts here where in Buck’s original version, the man and his wife Ruth have 2 sons who were abroad while in Sundararaj’s copied version, the man and his wife Padmini have 2 daughters who were also marrried and living away.)

Buck: ” He had the evening paper in his briefcase but he never read it until after dinner, when he and Ruth had the evening together.”

Sundararaj: ” Although he had the newspapers with him, he did not read it then. As always, he would do so only after dinner…”

(I’m skipping parts.)

Buck:  “…he opened his eyes. The woman was looking at him. She was fantastically beautiful.”

Sundararaj: “…he opened his eyes and turned to his left…only to look straight in the face of the woman next to him.”

(By the way, she wears a coat  in Buck’s original version and a sari in Sundararaj’s copied version.)

Buck: “Will you help me?” she asked in a whisper.  He sat up, surprised.

Sundararaj: “Please, can you help me?” she asked in a whisper.  He was stunned.

Buck: (skipping parts)… “He had been riding back and forth to Lynnton on this train ever since the war began and had spoken to no one and had been spoken to by no one….. he would have distrusted this woman at once except that she looked so honestly into his eyes.  ‘Where do you get off,’ she urged leaning to him.  She drooped her head so that the big hat…

Sundararaj: “All this time, in any journey on any mode, he had not spoken to anyone …. his instincts…told him not to trust this woman but one look at the almond shaped eyes and he knew that her request was made in earnest and in all honesty. ‘Where are you getting off this train?’ she asked. As she did, she drooped her head and angled….

Buck: “He was wary about telling her. ‘What can I do for you?’ he asked evasively. ‘Just let me walk beside you, wherever you get off,’ she said softly.  ‘As soon as we leave the station, I shall not need you. It is only to get off the train.”

Sundararaj: “He was even more wary now. ….he asked her, ‘what is it I can do for you?’ ‘Please, just let me walk beside you. Anywhere, you get off,’ she said, almost whispering. ‘As soon as we get out of the station, I shall not need your help. I just need to get off this train…’

Buck:  …”You had better tell me a little more.”

Sundararaj: “You had better tell me more, don’t you think?”

And at a later encounter (I’ve skipped many other copied parts)  when the man meets his wife:

Buck:  “She was terribly pretty, wasn’t she,” Ruth said pleasantly. They got into the car and she took the wheel as she often did, when he was tired. “I suppose so,” he said vaguely. “Certainly so,” Ruth said. “I always notice a really beautiful woman.”

Sundararaj:  “She’s very pretty, isn’t she,” said Padmini pleasantly. They got into her car, a Proton Wira Sedan and she drove home. …. if he sounded tired, she would bring the Proton. (I’m skipping added lines.) “Yes,” he said absent-mindedly. “She’s really beautiful,” Padmini repeated. “I always know a beautiful woman.”

*************

It goes on in this way for all the four stories, copied in their entirety.  What I have placed here, is just the tip of the iceberg.

When I first discovered the plagiarism, especially in the second copied story in Snapshots! called Brought Back to Life, it was a line on trees that made me remember, I’d heard it all before. A family crowds tenderly around a dying man in a hospital while a young male intern listens and from the rush of flowing love, takes on board a few heartwarming lessons about life.

Whereas in Pearl S. Buck’s Fourteen Stories, the original version is called Death and the Dawn. (page 216 of Fourteen Stories)

(Buck’s original lines) : The cherry tree will be full of cherries again this year, Dad,” Mary said.  She leans her elbows on the bed, her eyes fixed on her father’s face.  “When they’re ripe, George must spread the net over it, for you. The starlings are already waiting.

(Sundararaj’s copied version). “Our mango tree is full of mangoes, Appa,” Preeti said. She leant her elbow on the bed, her eyes fixed on Mr. Pillai’s. “When they’re ripe, Ashok is going to pluck them…that is if Ashok plucks them before the crows eat them.” 

Buck: George laughed. “Those starlings, Dad! They never learn. Remember how they come every year and sit on the net and stare down at the cherries inside?

Sundararaj: Ashok laughed. “Those crows, Appa, remember how we used the elastic to chase them away? They never learn.

This story too, has been copied from start to finish.

I also discovered a third copied story in Sundararaj’s Aishwarya. Its original version from start to finish is actually titled With a Delicate Air by Pearl S. Buck.   It begins from from page 60 in Buck’s paperback.  A couple dressing in their bedroom, discuss their daughter-in-law.

Buck:  “And I say, Setsue spoils him,” Aline said firmly.  She sat at her dressing table, trying the effect of her gold earrings with her new black frock… (I’m skipping parts) above her own handsome reflection, she saw her husband’s… the two of them together were a stunning combination.”  - With a Delicate Air

Sundararaj:  “I tell you, Purnima is spoiling him…… Annapoorani (‘Anna’ for short) was seated at the dressing table. She was trying to find the perfect jewellery that would go with her sari….Above her own reflection, she could see that of Ram’s.  They made a handsome couple.” – Aishwarya

(Copied from start to finish).

The 4th copied story on page113 in Snapshots! is called Bad Luck (revolving around a poor Sikh family) and Sundararaj plagiarised the story content from a Chinese peasantry tale by Pearl S. Buck, also to be found in Fourteen Stories and called Parable of Plain People, nestled on page 103 of the original version.

Buck:  “His two sons were good young men. The eldest was married to a girl from a neighbouring village, the daughter of an old friend. When his friend was young and he also, their marriages were within the same month, and within three months, their wives were pregnant and they vowed their children to each other, if they should be boy and girl.”

Sundararaj: “…as the eldest son, his marriage was arranged and Harinder Singh’s wife was the daughter of a close family friend…. (am skipping parts)… he and his childhood friend were married at about the same time as each other and in time, their respective wives became pregnant.  They promised their children to each other, if they should be boy and girl.”

Buck: “This second son was not as strong as the first.”

Sundararaj: “His second son was not as strong as the first.”

Buck:  “…Only then did it occur to him to ask if the girl were good-looking. It was too late if she were not but still he owed it to his second son to warn him if she were not. … “Son, beauty in a wife is useless. It does not cook the rice or spin the silk or light the lamp.  On the other hand, it beguiles a man into wasting his time… He lies in bed when he should be up and at work… “

Sundararaj: “It was only after the engagement was agreed upon and the marriage date was fixed that Harinder Singh thought that he had not asked to see the bride. Was she good to look at or was she hideous? So he called his second son …”Son, beauty in a woman is secondary. A man who has a beautiful wife puts aside his work…indeed, he thinks more of reproduction than production….”

*******************

At the start of Snapshots!, there is a line that reads ‘Copyright © of stories belong to the respective authors.”  But the copyright of these stories placed partially here, called Enchantment, Death and the Dawn, With a Delicate Air and Parable of Plain People, all  belong to the late Pearl S. Buck’s estate and her trustees, and definitely not to Aneeta Sundararaj.  In Snapshots, no credit is given to Pearl S. Buck in any way, her name is simply never mentioned.

The stories above, have a long way to go and 95% of all the lines in each of the three stories and about 75% for the fourth story,  have been diligently  copied. The complete execution, character personality, structure and time frame are all copied directly from Buck’s own imaginary tales, personal inspiration and idealogies.

I leave you with this link that shows the author signing her book if you scroll all the way down:
Aneeta Sundararaj signing her book, Snapshots!.
and a post you might choose to find somewhat interesting,  considering.  Taking Snapshots.

I think that there should be a public explanation and apology made  to every hoodwinked reader.  I’m just relieved to have escaped the trickery and to have finally, unearthed the fraud. - susan abraham

Blue Mirror

Outside my Hotel Window in Dar – photography © susan abraham, april 2012. Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

by Susan Abraham

The fabled Indian Ocean lays me a table and I wake to a shaky blanket of inky blue, out the wide, bay windows… where birdsong on dancing mirrors, promise a Broadway hue…a prequel to breakfast, from a seashore plate that may never break!

Let us not Forget the Corners of the World where the Lanterns Don’t Shine…

Somalian Refugee on the Walkway.

“And we walk the old streets, the old streets, the old streets…and we walk the old streets, so cold and sad are they. And we walk the pained feet, the pained feet, the pained feet. And we walk the pained feet, so sad and cold are we.”

- words & photography © susan abraham, april 2012. Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. East Africa.

Sri Lanka of the Shy and Beautiful…

“I returned two days ago, from having listened to an enlightening discussion at a Refreshingly Sri Lankan event; on the subject of the recent flourishing of Sri Lankan literature. It was held in conjunction with the annual Asian Festival of Literature, held at Asia House, New Cavendish St. London.

What a packed house!  I was relieved to have made it in time for a seat of my choice. Considering the bleak  and somewhat wintry scene outdoors, a fair bit of stylish colour to an alluring fashion  sense, complimented the light mood.  I believe the event was sold out!

Here’s to sketching out a few highlights.

First, a mini-concert consisting of Sri Lankan instrumental music followed by a speech and later, George Alagiah (a famous BBC journalist) moderating the writers’ session, in the company of Romesh Gunesekera who has just released a new hardback in The Prisoner of Paradise, Roshi Fernando for her linked stories titled Homesick and of course, the Singapore based award-winning novelist, Shehan Karunatilaka for Chinaman. Karunatilaka arrived in London, just a few days ago. He was flown over by one of the Festival’s sponsors, Sri Lankan Airlines.

It was amazing how both the invited writers and the audience couldn’t get enough of exploring ideas on cultural and individual identity.

Published excerpts of each author’s work were read out with a sharp air of confidence. With what tenderness and worship, were the passages carefully sketched out to the formation of vivid, illuminating scenes by the  respective authors. With what enveloped beauty, did each writer hold court to that distinct literary ownership; one of ongoing contemplation to the tricky if not fascinating subjects of world culture, identity and displacement.

A series of varied questions then spilled out from across the scale, ranging from mother tongues, the priority of the English Language used in Sri Lankan literature, the animosity on subjects that refuse to ‘meet’ or ‘blend’ with each other eg. war stories & community stories that never seemed to be placed together in their proper context or harmony when written about in Sri Lankan books etc… Did anyone for instance, notice that Sri Lankan writers tended to avoid war stories..and so on…

Not really, chipped in Karunatilaka who then offered intriguing examples of local writers back in their homeland, now tackling the painful subjects of history and violence in the past. Although, he couldn’t really be sure if these were fiction or non-fiction. There were certainly plots involving suicide bombers and the Tamil Tigers, he recalled wistfully. There was a time, he added with an air of pride, that you’d be lucky to find the works of at least, two Sri Lankan writers anywhere in a Colombo bookshop. Now, it would be perfectly normal to happen upon a burgeoning row staring out from the display shelf.

Sadly, not all of the homegrown titles managed to rise above average fare. Which was when Karunatilaka, felt that if he put his mind to it, he could tell a pretty good story himself… at least do a better job than a few others he’d read earlier. Some inspirations for war stories were given. Nigerian literature in this context was praised highly, especially the works of Chimamanda Ngozi. There were murmurs of approval.

Meanwhile, remarkably funny one-liners, refused to be left out and peppered the discussions. When a Bangladeshi, Punjabi, Indian, Sri Lankan Tamilian or Singhalese sit together on a South Asian panel, they all have one thing in common, interjected Karunatilaka and that is of course, that they all love dhall curry! The audience roared! Karunatilaka was a natural comic and often had many in stitches, with his stories on drunks and cricket plus, give and take a few solemn bits, his extravagant humour on life.

In a pub in Colombo, you never worry who’s Tamil or Singhalese, smiled Karunatilaka, broadly. All you care about is, ‘how far the fellow was batting…’ That was the small show of definite unity amongst a lot of us. “We all lived in a bubble, you see,” he went on to explain. Bombs were going here…bombs were going there…and we just thought…well, that’s them and this is us. Life had to go on.”

The questions continued to pour in. Were Sri Lankans in Europe as friendly with their neighbours as those back home?

An elderly Sri Lankan gentleman stressed that he had lived in England for 45 years and on taking a bus to Scotland, the nearest passenger would still not have bothered to say anything to him, more than a smile or perfunctory greeting. Whereas if you took a bus in Colombo, by the time you reached the next bus-stop just five minutes away…everyone in the bus would in a blink of an eye have found out about each other’s ancestry, uncles, aunts, cousins, generic charts and what-have-you. Be warned! Even skeletons in the closet might have been accidentally unravelled.

Fernando disagreed that this was the case. That she liked springing conversations with people or strangers, was in no doubt. Perhaps it was the writer in her, that made it an oddly curious or fascinating thing, to want to do, she admitted shyly.

Gunesekera agreed with the elderly gentleman that people tended to leave each other alone now…and not as they would have done, years before. He said that we lived in a time where it would seem politically incorrect, rude even…to ask someone where they were from.

Someone asked Fernando if she continued to feel Sri Lankan or British? How about Romesh or Shehan? Was Roshi secretly Homesick herself which is why she titled her book as such?

From somewhere in the front, the lady who first broached the question of homesickness, hinted that Fernando had psychologically placed herself in her fiction. She continued to plead her case stubbornly to Fernando for a few minutes and I think that this sudden observation, caught several people unawares.

“This is a new age of movement,” explained Gunesekera kindly who had himself, travelled a great deal and so he felt that not just Asia but also Africa, Europe and other island cultures all tended to collide with each other when it came to cultural similarities or community living. The writing on the wall was simple. In 2012, no culture stays insular!

Everyone speaks English now, enthused Fernando. “That was my mother tongue. Only our parents and older relatives spoke Singhalese to each other, so they could keep their family secrets hidden.”

I really enjoyed the experience on a personal level.  Not just that a fair bit of humorous quirks and jokes on cricket stories were brandished about.

George Alagiah was afraid of being late that he rushed from the BBC studios after presenting the 6 o clock news. Never in his life, he said laughingly, had he read the news so fast. Viewers would have been taken aback! Fernando was the most chatty…she had a lot to say and intensity ruled her conversation. Her answers were often rambling slightly but her eloquence was delightful to watch. Her fluidity and grace were most apparent not just through her sophisticated personality but also in the way, she read her passages with care and love. I was reminded of an elegant ballet dancer, intent on polish and refinement, while managing a  nimble piroutte.

Karunatilaka stayed the most bashful.  Still, everytime he piped in, the audience would reward his rollicking good humour with a laugh. Gunesekera offered an absolutely pleasing air where, an endearing schoolboy charm accompanied by a longish silvery mop, would ensure he always mirrored the tall, lanky lad.

As Gunesekera read from The Prisoner of Paradise, where he said, he aimed to capture ‘the world in his book” – he had after all mentioned this to George Alagiah the day before when Alagiah had telephoned the authors to let them know how the session would run within the opening 3-4 minute frame. In this way, Gunesekera could explain what he was ‘trying to do.’

As for me, I slid into my seat and could think only of the affectionate, lost characters in Reef.  With such a pleasurable memory laid before me, tears of joy sprung quickly to my eyes as Gunesekera’s voice resonated through the room.

Note: Photograph of Romesh Gunesekera is by Yemisi Blake.

Further Reading:

a) The Prisoner of Paradise reviewed in The Telegraph

b) Romesh Gunesekera on YouTube

c) Homesick reviewed in The Guardian.

d) Interview with Roshi Fernando in the New Welsh Review.

e) Chinaman by Shehan Karunatilaka reviewed in The UK Independent.

f) Interview with Shehan Karunatilaka in Eleutherophobia.

Saborna Roychowdhury’s Glazed Calcutta Summer Shines in ‘The Distance’

Title of Novel:                 The Distance

Author:                             Saborna Roychowdhury
Means of Acquisition:  A personal purchase – Kindle version/Amazon.com
My Current Location:  London, England

*************

by Susan Abraham

The first e-book I paid for, I downloaded at the time into an Adobe’s Digital Editions installation for my computer. It was a tempting Waterstones purchase in the form of the famous travel classic, Travels in West Africa by Mary Kingsley.  There soon appeared without warning,  upon the book cover… a larger-than-life version of half-naked tribal women, posing gracefully atop the boulders while in meditative repose and huddled close to a watchful ocean. A row of glistening dark skin and shiny humongous breasts, decorative necklaces, shimmery skirts and crew cuts all measured the keen eagle-eyed expressions of each solemn woman as she gazed wistfully into the camera.  From somewhere in the group’s middle,  a little boy with twig like arms and an obese little belly, peered out with a half-smile.

I learnt than that I was at home with my e-reader, in the same way,  a lazy curled-up cat would just as well have  exchanged wedded vows with  its comfy sofa.

I recognised the familiarity of being able to devour books like the wind on screen while being held  transfixed by a sea of words, not open to interruptions in any way and hungrily embracing a fascinating, lost intimacy. For 20 years, I have scribbled writings  only on my laptop and now read all my newspapers faithfully on the web.  Thus, it didn’t take me long to welcome e-book downloads with open arms, attributed even to the challenging rambling tale. On a tablet, I prefer  to gaze longingly at films and music bands, held aloft with their arresting images

Thus, it was with the discovery of this happy philosophy, that I plunged into American immigrant/Calcutta novelist, Saborna Roychowdhury‘s impressive and sometimes heartbreaking, novel, in The Distance. Its Bengali protagonist, Mini grows into womanhood while her story is being  narrated with splendid brisk clarity by Roychowdhury.  The novelist  in question, is eager to shroud her invention’s youthful, virginal character with the darker landscapes of college-bound social revolutions and  precarious relationship adventures before leading the naive Mini on to a subdued immigrant assimilation in Vancouver, Canada.

The pursuit of such a monumental transatlantic crossing, especially in the cause of leaving a  seemingly careless first love for a new husband bottled up with ambitious manners,  tends to be  masked as a bed of roses, by agreeable in-laws and thankful mothers.  Here are female elders who know of no other way out for their daughters. Naturally,  the two  contrasting cultures offer Mini an uncomfortable juxtaposition for harmony and even more sinister a contemplation…the threat of never being able to adjust altogether.

Now, besides the refreshing landscape of Calcutta’s striking everyday culture for millions of industrious families and this, afforded to the state’s working class – here for instance, is Mini’s irate grandmother who fights tooth-and-nail for her own  buckets of water – and seen through the eyes of Mini’s own difficult relationships; the novel does have a tendency to slump somewhere in the middle with the deja-vu themes that accompany immigrant narratives.

Think at this point… Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake and especially Monica Ali’s Brick Lane or even Preeti Nair’s One Hundred Shades of White.  As a reader, I feel I’ve heard it all before as the science of social adjustments in Canada don’t seem all that different to those of Britain.  Perhaps, this simply stays a woman’s rite-of-passage that has to be covered… characters mulling over the odd show of racism, wives gossiping over the bizarre necessity for polarisation and  men measuring the subtle greed for Western currency and its accompanying materialism, over drinks.

After celebrating some of Roychowdhury’s more scarlet episodes and clamorous everyday family life played out in a modest Calcutta household and sketched out very much in the guise of  picturesque travel literature that may be  held equivalent to scenic views or unfortunate, violent escapades broached of a painting…I found the chapters featuring Mini’s Canadian life sadly lagging. I became slightly tired of the read and a little bored, if not restless.

However, the best part of Roychowdhury’s work was yet to come and the fervour would soon rise as Roychowdhury sharpened both her pen and imagination for unexpected conflicts. The mood of anticipation hurries with the racing plot as it swerves about the closing pages for some extremely memorable drama. Characters hurtle along the winding roads that end up on even stranger crossroads. At the end of the book, no individual may stay the same. Not the sad mother. Not the memory of a long-lost grandmother. Not the rigidity of Mini’s stubborn father, who through his bull-headed ways, costs his family the loss of personal belongings and a treasured heritage. And what of the husband and the lover both stranded in alien cultures and so create a confused identity for Mini. I am instantly aware of a powerful love story, fashioned very much after Rosie Thomas’s 1986 classic in The White Dove.

I suspect Saborna Roychowdhury to be a really good writer from her lucid introductory passages of modern Calcutta life in working class households, where everyday scenes like a long film reel, are described with sophisticated clarity. Roychowdury is an excellent storyteller…not at all a writer that fringes on the pensive or thoughtful but displaying instead, a splendid ease of alacrity. She is quick on the mark and doesn’t give drama a breather till the deed is done. Her stories, especially of an Indian setting grabs the reader with intensity, forcing attention on painful subjects like unfair politics, corruption, thievery and works of gangsters. The novelist is angry at the thought that such things exist in her traditionalist society, yet she is far from self-indulgent in any way. She is content always to be the ghost to her book, or the onlooker waving an invisible pen.

Roychowdhury also possesses an unusual talent – I don’t always see this in novels – where she makes good use of every opportunity…manvouring even the tiniest fictional scene to reflect, something of the real, useful or necessary current affair in Calcutta society and then too, capturing wherever the chance arises.. the disturbing feelings of an emigrant who may suddenly find herself in the wrong place at the wrong time. Thus, in The Distance, the reader is unlikely to find a snippet, episode or scene, out of place.

As a by the way remark, the proof-reading services are definitely wanting towards the closing chapters. However, such a splendid story – and it’s been a long time since I read a memorable work when I consider new titles, that the author is instantly forgiven. It is the power of the story that will grip you…and the tender moments of main characters that stay in the head and heart long afterwards.

I was finally moved to tears…no different than if I had read a book in print.  This, considering that Saborna Roychowdhury is not a sentimental writer in the least. There is no passionate torrent of sonnets, no gushing Valentine displays, no emotional outpouring, no mawkishness.  The Distance does not command a saccharine flavour.

I would recommend The Distance by Saborna Roychowdhury for any reader interested in world literature, the cultural working classes or the deeper layers of Calcutta life, that go beyond the superficial. The Distance would be well settled with a Western audience and had it been published in the West, would have commanded a wider readership – I am very sure of this – rather than being rooted to a homeground where, in that famous saying, ‘A prophet is never recognised in his own country,’ the story may have ended up reaching an audience who already take their environment for granted…or where situations appear jaded. Whereas anyone in the West would most likely pounce on this novel with an interested imagination and fresh eyes, ready to be educated and informed.

So Glad I Met Vidal Sassoon

I feel very sad that Vidal Sassoon has died.

Once before, I had the great pleasure of meeting this legendary gentleman.

At the time in the Nineties, I worked as a writer for Female Magazine Malaysia and was fortunate to have been given a personal interview with the visiting Sassoon, among other events. My article later ran in the Singapore edition as well.

Sassoon and I took tea together one afternoon at his Suite at the Regent Hotel in Kuala Lumpur. We were accompanied by his pony-tailed personal assistant – a tall, gorgeous Adonis who later, led me out to the lifts – as both men knew with amusement, how bad my sense of direction was, at the time! Of course, I shall not mention the clumsy way at which I had turned up for my appointment. The photographer had already been and left. Naturally, Sassoon, with all the right noises of sympathy had asked his assistant to help me… ha-ha!

Earlier, Sassoon had also talked with me for about two hours on some fascinating topics that didn’t involve the creation of his classic bob in London’s Swinging Sixties. He rambled on especially about his love for architecture & Jewish history. Sassoon didn’t like superficiality, hated flattery and may have seemed silently amused while someone else rattled on. His straightforward manner meant he could also be cut-n-dry in his speech. I still recall  the late Sassoon relating some personal banter he used to engage in with Mary Quant – they resembled a few of the famous pioneers for London’s Beatles era. We had a delightful time. I remember that the famous hair-stylist really loved Beverly Hills. I feel blessed to have met and known him.  For some reason, his death leaves me heartbroken.  RIP Vidal Sassoon. – susan abraham

On Paul Callan’s Forthcoming Malaysian Novel – Shadows Beneath the Fronds

Paul Callan, an established Irish novelist in Malaysia who is  well-known for his first historical novel, The Dulang Washer, published by MPH Publishing Malaysia, will launch, what promises to be an appealing second novel, in the third week of May, in Kuala Lumpur.  This is called Shadows Beneath the Fronds. I have not read the story as yet  but the back- jacket blurb shows up an unusual, arresting premise; a subject of Indian families in old Malayan estates, rarely spoken about in local fiction and possibly almost forgotten, amidst Malaysia’s current, if not impatient urban rise.

The blurb details a close friendship between Saravanan and Gnalam, with tragic elements caught up in conflict, among plantation workers in a rural setting. The protagonist, a carefree Tamilian lad called Saravanan, is the son of estate workers while another Tamilian girl, Gnalam, turns up as the daughter of the foreman – herself a gifted and studious young lady, expected to enhance her family’s status through a good marriage. Trouble gatecrashes the idyllic setting when the workers are forced into squatter camps, after being suddenly thrown out from their plantation homes.

Gnalam’s father, desribed as embittered and frustrated, drives his daughter to burrow herself in university studies. Meanwhile, a disappointed Saravanan turns to  a life of crime and violence.  Years after their separation, Saravanan’s destiny will collide with Gnalam’s once more as they campaign for the rights of plantation workers. Will their childhood bond have conquered past sorrows or will old secrets stray away from loyalty and love ?

*****************

I yearn for this fictional treat as an engrossing read.  I grew up with the differing Indian social classes, very much at play in Malaysia.  I was raised in Klang, Selangor after the first four years of my life in Singapore.  My parents had moved to the Causeway, a few months after my birth. While growing up in a middle-class suburb in Klang, we often went to visit a brood of uncles, aunts and cousins who lived in the estates. I remember the delightful excursions.

My father is Malayalee and Malayalees from Kerala worked as estate managers.  In 1970, I even spent Christmas with a beloved aunty and her family, at a sprawling estate. I remember my experiences well… for instance of how the generators would go off by 9 at night while in the middle of watching a faithful b/w television and of the lively poultry everywhere. As a little girl, I had a field day with the other children running all over the place.  We chased the irate ducks, chickens and turkeys and laughed as they fled helter-skelter.  I remember the community of Tamil workers who lived in the nearby quarters and stayed dedicated to their work. It was not uncommon for a housewife to be up at 4.00 am just to be feeding  scurrying chicks or ferrying heavy pails of water about.

Eventually, in the early Seventies and due to the fast-changing political landscape, a great number of these Malayalee estate managers would relinquish their posts and return for good, with their families, to Kerala.

From having read The Dulang Washer, that exhibited the tough tin-mining camps of Perak’s Kinta Valley in 1890s Malaya – I have penned my thoughts Here,  it is easy to see that Paul Callan stays deft at sketching out a roomful of characters all at once. And this too, armed with a flawless grace while manouvering the challenging  fray of painful hierarchies or a series of mismatched social bearings, that thrive from circumstances of displacement or society’s unforgivable ailments.

Shadows Beneath the Fronds also reveals the treasure trove of Malaysian stories often camouflaged in all of its different layers of social acumen, stretching far off from the predictable and still waiting to be told.

It was also very kind of Mr. Paul Callan to have mentioned one of my comments/name on the back cover of his novel and for which I stay immensely grateful.

Update on The Dulang Washer.

Paul Callan’s The Dulang Washer has been nominated by Popular Books for the Popular Readers’ Choice Awards 2012 under the Fiction Category.  Callan has also been chosen by Popular Books as Author for the month of May. Here are his book tours nationwide:

12 May (Sat) 4pm – 5pm – POPULAR Bookstore @ IPC Shopping Centre, Mutiara Damansara, Kuala Lumpur.
26 May (Sat) 2pm – 3pm – HARRIS Bookstore @ AEON Tebrau City, Johor Bharu
27 May (Sun) 1pm – 2pm – POPULAR @ Gurney Plaza, Penang
3 June (Sun) 7.30pm – 9.00pm – POPULAR Bookfair @ Permata Exhibition Hall, Level 5

Further Reading:

Paul Callan is written about in The Star Newspaper, Malaysia.
The Dulang Washer in The SunDaily.
Book Review of The Dulang Washer in The Ipoh Echo.
Booksigning by Paul Callan featured in The Bookaholics.
Novelist Paul Callan speaks about his labour of love on YouTube.

And he said… “If you’ve not been to Istanbul, you don’t know what you’re missing…”

It appears for me that the tenacity of writing beckons in a new way.

I have lived out of a suitcase for the last two months and must now try and finish at least one book project, before I travel again in July.  I have so many stories to tell but need to clear my mind to do this.  I have to try and rediscover my own words…remember what it was like to settle in a gloriously empty room and compose poetry, infinitely haunting as the thought may be. So often, an encounter with a solitary space breeds an extraordinary energy, sometimes surreal and sometimes tearful.

My own thoughts currently feel like a prism and the sparkles no longer  hurt by the thought of any cultural city, clutching at my footsteps.  I walk in Dublin this last week as if I never left.  In East Africa, I moved as if, it was my first time back in nine days and not nine months. In London on an adjoining road caught between the Hammersmith train stations, a Turkish cafe owner, still waxes lyrical about the Black Sea and whips me fresh salads in the way I like them.  These endeavours are sealed by his forever mantra… “If you’ve not been to Istanbul, you don’t know what you’re missing…”  And then in Singapore, I had rushed with expectant bliss to a bookshop on Orchard Road, remembering its seductive capacity for world literature. And even in Malaysia, the Bangladeshi restaurateurs ask why I’ve not been  to pack  my usual Nescafe takeways.  They hint at my sinful absence. And so and so…

I am trying to unravel all the reams of storybook material in my head and willing myself to talk at ease about the books I’ve read and the films I have watched. In my head, I’m still on a flight so here’s another picture for the meanwhile.

A young Masai poses shyly for me in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, East Africa. April 2012. Photography © copyright Susan Abraham

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I’m Back…

May 4, 2012: Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to update my blog all these months as I was extremely busy with travel and collating also, a backlog of travel material I had accumulated in the past, with the hopeful ambition of trying to get some easy system back on track.  In this way, I would have a clear record of my experiences and  be able  to pen my stories, here in Dublin, Ireland, without difficulty.  From that aspect at least, I hope I’ve succeeded. I’m really happy to be able to continue with this books blog and look forward among other things, to be talking about an eclectic stack of world literature I had purchased and read diligently, over the months.

Fishermen off a coast in a Tanzania, East Africa. April 2012. Photography © copyright Susan Abraham

Returning to Writing

It is time for me to return to this books blog. It is time for me to write. I have closed my Twitter account and am taking longer erratic  breaks from Facebook until I complete my next book manuscript and also accomplish a few other things.   Otherwise, too much time flees from social networking sites and so I resolve these present weeks of temporal languishing days to be  held precious. In about a month, I shall be travelling again for two months. At the moment, here I am, safe and sound in Dublin.

Since my last post, I have made two separate trips to London and purchased at least 45 books – yes, 45 gorgeous reads featuring all kinds of layout and colour – that comprised interesting essay collections and novels; serious literature that I’d be hard-pressed to find elsewhere. I was really keen on regions from the Middle-East, Greater Middle-East and the African continents.  Still, I  bought a few new titles currently out in England, by debut novelists like Alison McQueen.

I went to two quaint and well-stocked Arabic bookshops off Sloane Square and in Westbourne Grove and also visited Daunt Books on Marylebone High Street (Baker Street Station), a good few times, among other big bookstore chains like Waterstones Piccadilly and the faithful, gleaming row on Charing Cross Rd. I made new friends with helpful booksellers. I enjoyed the flair of  intriguing observations, significant  of cosy cultural communities, tucked away in Middle-Eastern cafes, in the heart of Notting Hill Gate.

Last weekend, I was caught in the Heathrow fray, over a gatecrashing snowfall from an unrepentant Artic snap. Thankfully, I encountered no disruptions. My flight to Ireland, was at the worst, delayed for an hour and a half, so that was considered pretty mild. Unfortunately, I returned with the start of a winter cold, no thanks to the minus zero temperatures in London.

Am looking forward to my reads, to blogging and also to a time of serious writing.  © susan abraham

Note

Am in London at the moment. My days are pretty full but will post within the week.

Poetry has Returned to Me

“Mine is a Dublin afternoon in January. The days are cold and the gales are wild. My disillushioned poetic muse, having  escaped to a mysterious sabbatical in the far South, has  returned.. Its absence may have counted a season wrong, for my homesick craft still bears within its plumped-up beauty… the oversized pastoral frolic of a summer’s day.  Did my runaway poetry feast too much on its escapade to Eden? Was it still a warm, bright green day when I last composed a verse or hummed an ode? Sadly, I can no longer measure the rush of an hour.  Yet, donning a masquerade of lightly-threaded shadows, how fragile the demeanour of my art, how enigmatic its response. I tell you now, the time for tears is over. My poetry waits to clamber up my back and wrap its long sticky hands tightly around my neck in sweet embrace…Oh! But for its kiss-me-quick lollipop scent, plastered breath and my favoured piggy-back ride, my long-lost poetry so ethereally once-upon-a-time mine..for here it is once more, having finally returned to me.” – susan abraham ©

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Dear Readers,

I am thrilled that my writing days are shaping up so nicely, with nary an effort on my part to recreate that lovelorn magic. This revelation surprises even me.   To understand what I mean, you would have had to read my last few posts at year’s end.  Then I had explained that in the last two years, I did not feel able to do too much either artistically or creatively as my energy path was filled with the unnecessary clutter of controversial human relationships.

Of course, I have no one to blame but myself. I had invited noisy crowds into my life, naive and trusting and without batting so much as an eyelid. The result being, that I had to subsequently free my path eventually. As an individual I desired to breathe again and discover my newness as an artist. At the time, certain situations had turned up great distress. I am happy that I sought the courage to pounce upon the right introspective decisions about my life, no matter how painful the angst.  It’s amazing how one may grow  sharply wise overnight.

Once my journeying path became clear – and this happened towards the second quarter of last year, many lost and beautiful, artistic pursuits which I had initially cherished, returned to me. I think, a dramatic one had been the return of an overwhelming love for Arabic, Persian and Turkish literature, which had earlier encapsulated my reading time in 2008 and 2009 before suddenly vanishing into thin air.  The desire to embark upon this beloved pastime engulfed me last July.

As for poetry, I am able to engage with the craft only when my thoughts are crystal-clear…My relationship with poetry holds the fortitude of an iceberg, with the exception that the season for poetry-writing may well melt away, without any warning.  While it hovers though, I view the world as being imbued with romanticism. Meandering lines or  watertight ones shadow my footsteps. My well-encountered bliss may later show up, through vivid descriptions of  nature’s celebrated beauty… garden birds, seascapes, landscapes or the erratic mood of a season. Sometimes, this pastoral effect has made me weep with great feeling.

My writing ambitions for prose, have never really left. But my carefree nature that often allowed for the space of poetry fled, somewhere towards the end of 2010. In my life, poetry stays the root to everything, even if I am consciously unaware of its existence. Someday soon, I hope to share with you, my personal history with the subject of poems.

Two days ago, while mulling over a novel display at a bookshop, poetic lines began pouring spontaneously into my thoughts.  I knew my annointing for writing poetry, had returned with a vengeance.  I was delighted over life’s New Year gift to me. One of these stayed a verse that intoxicated my own senses. Let me just say, that it involved the dusk, lamps and lighted lanterns. I  yearn to share it with you but hopefully later, after publication. I would place it here but of late, have become really worried about the vulnerability of copyright infringement/plagiarism and sadly, the educated people who prey upon and steal another’s work,  then claim success, with not a fraction of conscience or care in the world.

Slipping into 2012 – my first post of the year

I have begun my New Year a little late but  rather resolutely and with no complaints on my front.  2012 embraced me heartily, with diligence and a seemingly peaceful fondness. It placated my tenacity if only for a moment to grant me that essential rueful reflection. The clock graciously withheld its chimes. Now, I am  raring to go.

At this point in my life, I thank my beautiful God, that I harbour no turbulent emotion, no obvious sorrow, no painful regret, no lack of focus or waywardness. I ended 2011 on a pleasing note.  In the recent past, serenity has shrouded my life  with its generous layers of silent companionship and crayoned too, my earthly destiny with marked enthusiasm. Each calendar date still on its way to the  finishing line, has willingly passed on its baton of calming kindness, with which to appease my gentle spirit.

As a result, I have now found myself busy but happy busy if you know what I mean, in getting my plans off the ground.

In the present time, I have to schedule everything in my life around the prospect of travel. Such is my addiction to wanderlust that I perform this errand with bliss.  This year, I have been good with my journals and relying on a firmer organisation of things. My mind has stayed clear of stress, hassle and the perplexing anxieties that often trailed me in earlier years.  Thus, I have settled for a few Penguin notebooks and journals.  I have so cultivated a love for my Moleskines when I didn’t before.  And I do love my Penguin accessories…yes, yes…those brilliant coffee mugs too!

On the horizon is another week’s trip to London and I am pretty much excited about it,  just envisioning the bookstores I missed when I was there last, on the second week of a Christmassy December.  I can’t wait for Daunt Books, as always Hatchards  and also Alsaqi Bookshop in Westbourne Grove, which is, if I’m not mistaken, currently one of the biggest Arabic bookshops in England. And I do love Foyles and the BookHaus off Sloane Square… the latter with its overwhelming collection of elegant translations featuring West European and Arabic literature.  I can’t wait as always to conduct my little wayfaring jaunts, plus much of the staff at the little English hotel, where I stay have now become friends. As a voracious reader and proper bookaholic, I feel like a smug little cat, licking off the last saucer of milk and perhaps also,  the jubilant adventurer, ripping open an ocean’s treasure chest.

I did buy two books downtown in Dublin this afternoon, although if the truth be told, I promised myself  stupidly, no more till England.  One appears to be a compelling woman’s story called Africa Junction by Ginny Baily. It was published last year in London.  Now, how ever did I miss this  intriguing book featuring colourful settings and  unnerving plots derived from such remote places as Senegal, Liberia and Timbuktu… The novel sounds inspiring enough for me.

Another very beautiful little book – please see picture on the right – features reams of enthralling poetry from Istanbul. I shall slip this little paperback into the pocket of my long winter coat for the next time, I stop at a cafe for a cocoa, sitting by the window and watching the rain dance on the streets or a gale sashay by.  And by the light of the dusk, I shall remember the beautiful magic of a Joan Baez or a Marianne Faithfull song even as the late Turkish poet Necati Cumali whispers to me of

A New Love…

Once I used to go
everyday to meet the ferry
and hang about the stations
when trains came in.
I spent my life
in parks and boulevards,
Ah, how could I know
these are the places we haunt
before a new love. – Necati Cumali (translated by Ruth Christie)

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Something About the Writing:

1. Thankfully, I have managed to cross the chasm of learning to painfully combine writing with travel.  In February and March, I shall be returning to a few familiar international locations to complete my novel. I had first started to do this in May, June and July of last year. I flew out of Ireland again in October but was not well at all, to continue with travelling so I returned without being able to finish my novel as I had hoped, to the best of my satisfaction. I am someone who needs to be in a certain location if I am writing about it. I think this definitely is a little extreme but in my case a necessity as I have been a wanderer for so many years, that I could not imagine describing a  cosmopolitan setting, no matter how well I knew it from the past or how excellent my research, if I wasn’t actually there.  Otherwise, I would never be content submitting a manuscript, no matter how well it was written. So I have my work cut out for me this first quarter of the year and any new travel adventure/regions shall be reserved for the later part of the year.

Credit: Free picture of wildflowers, courtesy of KarenWhimsy.com

My Reading Plan for 2012

I’m wary about parading the word ‘resolutions’ as it always seems to represent a starting point and never the finishing line. I’ve heard the word tossed about with frivolity since I was a child and frankly forgive me but I cannot place much faith as it stands, on a stoic New Year promise to oneself.

But let me approach the intention differently and than that works for me.

Finishing a year feels like closing the pages to an old book and opening a new one. I thrive on an assortment of  mirrored reflections but am keen to rush on with the New Year.  For example, the  Turkish Nobel Prize Literature winner Orhan Pamuk, who is currently touring South America to promote his recent collection of essays, The Naive and Sentimental Novelist, spoke  in Uruguay recently.

He stressed on how he often ran the risk of jumpstarting  the fragments of a new novelistic plot, before he had conjured up enough discipline, to complete the old one. Through the YouTube interview, I did indeed, pick up Pamuk’s impatience at the memory and of how that remembrance alone, had commanded the instant ability to place him on tenterhooks.

I haven’t yet succumbed to that point in my writing naturally but have often felt the same exhilaration, about my reading journey. This is what one calls passion or devotion to a craft because than the desire is grown from within the subconscious and not just reduced to a careless consideration of the everyday intellect. Devotion to me signifies an enraptured swamping of the senses where no logical explanation is justified. A tender nurturing love and intense need towards a spiritual encounter, an individual or situation, stays framed by the prospect of immeasurable time and sacrifice.  “As long as it takes perhaps, I must complete reading this book…. …just the last chapter…I must wrap up the  writing…just that last chapter.  I’ll have to make time for it. As long as it takes, I shall get it done…”

In this vein, I’d like to modify my idea of the resolution, to something that leans towards the devotional…perhaps  a reading pilgrimage of sorts or a celebratory quest in the imagination.  I am presently threading varied reading journeys that have currently engulfed me ever so strongly from the last quarter of the year. I suppose there exists a longing to make my interests focussed and not to take them so much for granted. If I can accomplish at least 2 of these 4 reading journeys throughout the year with no lengthy gaps, I would be eternally confident as to other hopeful accomplishments.

Here goes:

1. All of this year, I have become more closely drawn to the memory of a celebrated childhood in Klang, Malaysia. I remember my father with a fabulous collection of books, that he prided himself upon. I learnt to read when I was four and my Dad always made sure I had a new picture book in store. I want to draw my influences from the delights of my faraway six-year old heart at the time. It was an atmospheric childhood based on a Dusty Springfield/Andy William and a Woodstock/hippie season. My father’s many friends consisting of young, ambitious men, often came by in the evenings and on weekends. There they would relax around a glass table on the verandah, lost in a series of intellectual discussions and those of other social situations especially subjects purported to travel.  Some  had already made plans to leave for Europe (at the time West Germany being a popular destination) and my father himself could never stay still in a place for too long.  What were the books  read and exchanged at the time? What were the paperbacks that lay affectionately next to the beer mugs, the sandwiches, coffee cups and ashtrays filled with cigarette butts?  My father was liberal in nature but made sure I stayed away from his prized adult fiction… Still, I do remember exotic film noir-type covers and attempting a sly peeop into those shy stolen lines, when I thought no one was watching. I was just 6 then. There was a lot of West European literature…Parisian cafes, artists’ garrets, poised models, books on Switzerland and also the Malay Archipelago. There were war and sea stories, tales of steaming jungles in South America and African wildlife/stories.  I want to go back to this time. I want to go back to as many of these settings in novels that I can find and relieve that lost precious time.

2. To re-read Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor…one of my favourite plays.. when did I last pick up a Shakespearean comedy? Too long.

3.         Something surreal happened from my Christian faith. My love for the universe exploded within the confines of my soul and begged to be set free.  But first let me explain. For many years especially in my twenties, I must have read hundreds and hundreds of works of British fiction. I couldn’t get enough of them. That was a very special time of my life and these were the books that were persuasive enough to lure me to the West.  I read sometimes almost as if in a trance, forgetting to eat or sleep properly. I can read books like the wind.  I loved British fiction, poetry and theatre plays so much.   What a valuable time that was in my life that urged me to more lavish dreams than the usual. I also earned immense courage to singlehandedly  abandon the rat race and hone a serious ambition of travel.

That was when the seeds of change were first sprung on me.

But this meant, that I was also a rigid reader. I knew everything that was to know at the time about British fiction but not much about other literature. I sensed my life with Christ – and it’s a pretty liberal lifestyle on my part – opened up new worlds to me like magic. My reading journey unfolded like a restless bloom and  excitement wielded from within me.  I was seduced by its accompanying literature. I also felt intoxicated by cultural films and cuisine. I felt truly blessed with a new beginning.

Then sometime in 2008, when I was in Dublin, Ireland, I watched Nikki Karimi’s Iranian film on televison, called One Night. Something beautiful gripped my spirit and suddenly there I was, head-over-heels in love with Persian and Arabic literature… How my senses happily drowned! I hurried over to the Irish booksellers who were kind enough to introduce me to many translated Arabic novelists with prize-winning titles that I hadn’t heard of before. My days changed and my reading journey blossomed. I was in love with Arabic literature and soon thanks to Elif Safak, Turkish literature also followed suit. 2008 and 2009 were magical times for me in Dublin and even while I travelled to places like East Africa.   I still allude this strange astonishing love for Arabic literature to the hand of my Christ and see this affair as deeply spiritual. I hold  such a yearning blissful ache for countless stories from the Middle-East.  Interestingly, the Bible does elaborate heavily on the Arabic and Persian regions.

When I joined Facebook in September 2009, I began to gradually lose the magic.  I had this really long list of  ‘friends’ but I wasn’t with the right crowd. My carefree energy eventually became burdened. No one lived my kind of life. I wasn’t watching the clock to wake up. I had long given up the 9 to 5 grind. Compared to many, I had an almost complete sense of freedom. Yet in reading all those daily updates, I felt I was imprisoned in everyone else’s heavily-routined lives…and I didn’t find any of these, uplifting. Many griped about little things, many whined. When groups of people talked about world literature, I knew straightaway that here again, for many, their interests were lukewarm…donned more from curiosity than anything else. Few had actually read what I read.  Some were clearly afair of serious fiction. They did not understand it. A few of the of the ‘voices’ later turned intrusive and my entire fiery interest in Arabic literature whittled down to that of a sad flicker before vanishing for good. This is what happens when the wrong energy comes upon you. You lose sight of your destiny. Other peoples’ actions especially if they are pessimistic in nature, may blind you to an original vision or at least, that is what I learnt in a hurry. This took place  for me all through 2010.

At least I realised what had finally happened, so I opened a much smaller FB account, only surrounded by those I felt safe with. And I made a very painful but necessary effort to free myself of those who were still on my path emotionally in some way but definitely did not wish me well.  There were also a few noted betrayals and slander with some of these individuals.  It was very hard work and in the first three months of this year, I travelled with pain constantly latched in my heart. In this way, 2010 did not end well for me.  I also became ill….  After the first quarter of 2011 had passed, all the oppression flitted away and by the time May came around, I could hear my thoughts clearly again. I felt light-hearted, I felt I could breathe again. I learnt to be very careful about who entered my personal realm.  That attentive detail alone made for a complete, effective remedy. I was the wiser woman to the outer facade of a stranger.

My adoration for Arabic literature returned to embrace me like a long-lost friend. Once more, there was a new motivation inspired by literature and the cinematic arts from the Middle-East. By October, the passion had grown so deeply,  I thought my heart would burst with joy. Just recalling the thought, made me extremely happy. I recognised that my life was slipping back to 2008.  I had in fact already celebrated this resolution by making two trips to London in November and December. I spent many a-happy moment at favourite bookshops, purchasing certain world literature that would not be placed elsewhere. So I have already begun this quest. And I look forward to an enthralling 2012, plunging delightedly into Persian, Arabic and Turkish literature. Imagine how much I will absorb, imagine how much I can learn.

4) I learnt to also cherish the essay in 2011, in the later part of this year when my life had already turned  peaceful and serene. It was Orhan Pamuk’s The Naive and Sentimental Novelist that did it for me. Then there was Umberto Eco and also Ryszard Kapuściński. The essay taught me to analyse everyday situations thoroughly. I began to see life differently, to better understand myself.  I learnt to make decisions with a sharper brand of confidence and to be authoritative with any stand that I had taken, all the time asking myself why and making sure I was content with my immediate answer. Reading essays stopped me being feeble or timid in any way and helped turn me into an obvious, critical thinker.  This led surprisingly enough, to a calming spirit. I do feel that Pamuk, Eco and Kapuściński are my necessary tutors for the writing craft.  In this vein, I now desire to read many more essays by famous essayists and to study and master the craft of skillful thinking through the art of literature.

5) I also hold a couple of dedicated writing ambitions but dare not talk about these for now, as I fear jinxing something that presently lies reverential from within me. Blame my careful, analytical mood from my recent study of the essay. See where it has got me today and nicely so.

Credit: Free clip art of vintage woman courtesy of Karen Whimsy

And I’ll Say Goodbye to 2011

Well…here we are now with an impatient 2012 just hovering about with gay abandon at the universe’s gateway, while waiting to knock at our doors.

I am clearly excited and thrilled as I often am; wrapped with that strange sense of animated childlike delight, everytime a New Year marches in and with nothing short of a feeble embrace, lifts me endearingly, into its arms. I catch a balloon or two, slip on  a streamer, spill champagne and I am happy.

I wrote on  my Twitter account this morning that I do indeed feel grateful, enriched and extremely thankful at being blessed with another year to remember or at least, God Willing – and I use that phrase more often these days – to start with.

From a personal platform, I hold no complaints about a kindly 2011. The second half of the year turned out to be peaceful and serene, without effort on my part. Peace sought me rather than the other way around.  On retrospection, I found myself travelling this year, not for adventure but to forge closer bonds with lands and people I already knew and visited regularly. That happened automatically as I did research for some stories I wanted to write on intimate places and streets. Those stories are still in the bag.

I was also healed of many things and dodgy relationships in the earlier part of the year…so by the time, May turned up, my energy path was properly revitalised. The wonderful result was that certain loves for specific book and cinematic titles and other meditations and beautiful situations I felt I had lost in an over-crowded destiny from the recent past; returned to me.

In this way, my infant resolutions already stay an ongoing journey…something that my spirit itself yearns for, rather than any deliberate effort of the everyday consciousness. And I can say goodbye to 2011 for cheerfully offering me one of the sunniest times of my life, in the last decade.  This was also the year as an adult, that I came into my own as a reader for the loveliest literature that chose to define my individualism.  For the first time, I also received a suave, shiny confidence as a solitary traveller, confessing to an almost complete lack of self-consciousness for wherever I went, derived from years of ferrying luggage through odd places and difficult airports. In these areas at least, I have overcome my challenges.

PS: Tomorrow, I shall blog about my reading resolutions, which I have already engaged with, slightly.

Credit: Free clip art of fairies in art courtesy of KarenWhimsy.

Slowly but Surely Part 2

I’ve been thinking about what I feel led to read, in the New Year.  I think this is an upcoming season when my writing shall have to take priority over my blog posts.  By this, I mean in the way that information may be dispelled.

The majority of industrious bloggers that connect themselves with a bookish theme or subject would often lend themselves to what was going on in their specialised fields for instance- new writers, new titles, interviews, the sharing of links  etc…  I realised after a while that these were individuals who love their blogs, are serious about each post after an intellectual fashion  and so craft their web pages into a tireless hobby.  At the end of the day, that is where the energy for their written word, rests.  They’re not professional writers, aiming for publication, I don’t think.  Thus, time is naturally kinder on both the senses and the bones.

Then there are writers who have published books and their blogs are used mainly as marketing tools…a post filled out on some promotional musing or hidden advertisement, every once in a blue moon.  Readers are subtly used as potential customers and the occasional self-adulation is necessary.

But then again, there are also a flourishing group of  in-betweeners…the majority of whom I observe to be from England or the States, who have run up blogs quite a few years old now, who have been hard at work  on their keyboards and so gained a respectable audience.

These are a league of professional writers especially poets, essayists, novelists and the travel writer, who turn up substantial publications and yet zinc up their blogs with spectacular literary reviews and essays.  These are writers who pen their blogs regularly not just because they love the primary idea of a worldwide internet communication  but  for the fact that writing runs feverishly, through their veins.

I believe I fit very loosely into the third category. I don’t fit into the other two, although I used to in earlier years. For one, I shall never again blog in the way I did before and as most bloggers still do today, by way of posting new information or links. Not unless a publication is really special to me. I think writer interviews can also be painful sometimes if they don’t go right, so I shall consider this seriously as well, unless it’s for a friend or someone who inspires me.

I would never fit into the second category either. I don’t think I can bear the idea of begging readers to please go to Amazon and buy my book, kind of thing, with every blog post. That just seems so sad, yet I see it happen often. I just can’t do that. Maybe once or twice but not all the time. And not without first giving readers something good to go by. I would do my promotions on a website where my publications lie and not on a blog, unless I could think up something really creative. But I wouldn’t beg a reader.  Of course, there are no rights or wrongs about this and it’s still, to each his own.

My only problem is that I have several adjustments to make. I need to fix my writing craft, get a good disciplined schedule going and then fit my time for blog posts. In earliers years before the internet, I wrote as a career and in my own time. I wrote all the while.  Then I answered a spiritual call and did nothing but travel. Then I blogged. Then I travelled some more. Than I blogged some more. When I began to write creatively again in my own time, it took a year of painful adjustment to fit in writing and travel. And in earlier years when I blogged predominantly, my creative writing lagged terribly behind. Now, I’ve got to turn my little hourglass holding these two passions, upside down, where writing for publication becomes the dominant factor. That will be my challenge for 2012.

Where my blog is concerned, I shall  focus on my favourite literature and their accompanying regions through reviews and essays. I would also like to include world cinema. And I do love books on culinary journeys as well. Let me describe to you tomorrow, the themes and subjects I am drawn so passionately to delve into, like never before. And when I do manage any writing accomplishments as they come along, no matter how small, I shall hopefully mention them, if I can somehow conjure up the nerve.

Note

It has been a day laden with quiet festivities for me.  Still, I’ve had quite a few good hours of them. If I’ve not yet properly recovered from Christmas day for a blog post tomorrow, than I will return again on the 27th December.

Slowly but Surely Part 1

I’m ready to return to this books blog after such a long time away and I suppose for someone like me, there isn’t a better moment to do this than a few hours shy of Christmas Eve.  After all, it is extremely peaceful here in my Irish neighbourhood. I have travelled all this year and been surrounded by beautiful friends from different countries, noise and crowds. But for now, here I am in Dublin, nicely still and silent. I am surrounded by all that I adore and my lovely, lovely books with a host of other goodies, lie scattered about me.

I was quite surprised to observe from some vague remembrance, that a book review I wrote on a novella titled The Patience Stone by French-Afghan writer, Atiq Rahimi, now residing in France, had been published in The Iranian.com on April 2010.  This review rested  on one of my older blogs before I decided to submit it.

How faraway that seems…. a date that holds a significant message for me, which I will tell you about in a moment.

But first…  It is always quite a delight to glimpse something of mine out in a foreign publication…online or otherwise.  Especially too, when its editor is not my mate, friend or even a casual acquaintance, but simply a stranger.  Such a delightful situation offers complete credibility against any conflict of interest or prejudice and lets the slush pile stay strangely dignified.

I believe that this modern Iranian site with its tagline Nothing is Sacred is based in America with an overwelming number of Persian members who submit all kinds of gorgeous, artistic endeavours.   In 2008, I had quite a few reviews published on the site under the name of Suzan Abrams.  The thing is once you submit your contribution, you have to wait for the editor to give it the green light.  Two pieces of my work have been rejected in the past, but the majority have been accepted. I am probably also one of the 3 to 5 per cent of non-Persian writers on board.

In this context, I was surprised to see that I had a review out, having forgotten all about it.  This time, I had submitted it under my real name of Susan Abraham. The significant tone that spoke to me seriously enough was that April 2010, was possibly the last time I submitted anything for publication.

I understand the reasons for this.

In 2010, I was onto a lot of adventure jaunts in East Africa…especially at the National Safari Parks. I was also very badly distracted by a lot of people on Facebook.  I was a novice then and this vast social media network with my very long, unnecessary list – especially when I hardly communicated with half the people on it – proved a painful orientation for me. I  met many good people but also not so good ones where ethics and the conscience were concerned.

I suffered a fair bit at the hands of little known writers and especially one small-timer. The arrogance was artificial. Although these were those published traditionally by small presses, you never ever saw their titles in bookshops, even on homeground, with the exception perhaps of the odd  neighbourhood watch…who knows. I learnt that so intense was the level of competition and the desperate need for publicity, you could on having volunteered to help…well, get your face clawed if you were not careful in handling certain demands of these writers. Clannish cliques where lots of lavish praise meted out, were obvious.  Friends from the FB list would be pinched in a desperate need for favour and for any unsuspecting individual to buy another’s lesser-known novel.   I also went through a few betrayals.  As a result, I wasn’t in my best form.

Later, in the year – Christmas 2010 to be exact – , I published Call the Ships of Dar-es-Salaam with YouWritePublishing.com who at the time, had space for just 200 writers in a publishing round for a major print-on-demand venture.  This was in England and at the hands of excellent publishers. I am glad to say that my paperback featuring some alternative poetry and prose, still holds a superb online distribution worldwide. Sadly, I wasn’t motivated enough to promote it. I think 2010 was a major learning curve for me when it came to dealing with new relationships via the social media – also an important platform for the writer, eager to build an audience.

Thus, the start of 2011 saw me exhausted and emotionally drained. It was around this time I decided to let go of many things and people that were no longer beneficial to my wellbeing. It was probably the first time in many years, that I actually attended to this with a deliberate seriousness.

Not just to cut off ties but to longer focus on them. How painful this was but thankfully, I succeeded. Although I had made resolutions to write and publish work, there was still no inclination for this. In fact, I just longed for a wellness of my soul and finally succumbing to a spiritual force far greater than myself, I decided to go with the flow.  Serenity and peace met me with comforting pats on the back.  This was a year when I completely escaped calamities but felt constantly guided, protected and blessed by the living power of a Christ I happily clung to.

I’d say that 2011 marked a timeof spiritual healing for me and also one of renewal and refreshment, with a  crutch well-rested on my Christian faith. Around the third-quarter of the year, my great passion for Arabic, Persian and Turkish literature which had been suddenly ignited, first of all in 2008 and then turned subdued what with so many cross-currents on my energy path; finally returned to me in great abundance.  I felt that my destiny had given me as a writer and reader, the all-clear and how relieved I was to have my focus on literature, returned to me.

About a month later, came the desire to once more write for publication and to finally step out of the shadows. This review that is marked April 2010 is too long away. That marks my period of absence from allowing my writing to be published in magazines and such.  I believe although I did manage to publish a book, that my spirit had unknowingly shut down and that I had settled for a blog-presence to blanket whatever it was that I had to say….in the darkness.  2012 is definitely the year – and I already knew this in November – where I would finally cross the chasm and write widely again. How thrilling my days feel now…how exciting the feel of possibilities that seem to increase with each passing hour, readily conquering even the festivities of the season.

Updated December 20, 2011

I hope to start posting again from tomorrow even if it’s just a few lines to match. I’m trying to search a theme for this blog that holds my interests in certain book topics in a definite way.

It’s also about wanting to recover the ability of discipline when I’ve been away for so long. That’s really hard. I have been to London once more since I wrote the last note. I returned to Dublin a day ago on Sunday night. I have been really enjoying myself just feasting on the literature that seduces me so much. London is full of titles that not found anywhere else in my familiar regions.

Books, Writing, Films & Travel. I hope for these loves to steer me forward into a good year.

Update

Dear Readers,

I hope to start blogging on books again and also the travel experience in about 2 or 3 days.  I shall be returning to Dublin tomorrow after a 2-month sojourn away. I’m sorry I wasn’t able to write at all while here in London but posting articles on my love for world literature, will certainly be possible once I am back in my apartment in Dublin and having rested up. See you then.

I’m Back

Dear Readers,

I’m now in London for a week on my way to Dublin and feel more adjusted to things. I’ll try my best to start posting from tomorrow which is a Thursday.

November 15 – Update

Dear Readers,

In these last two months, my travel plans have not worked out with the vibrant rhythm I normally encounter them, as I have been unwell. Thus, I have decided to turn back and return to Dublin, Ireland.  Thankfully, I have managed to gather enough raw material and footage with regards to research with which to begin writing my stories so I shall spend December as a writer in my apartment and of course, living it up with the upcoming Christmas festivities.

I plan to resume my travel activities towards the end of January when my sense of wellbeing would be far more promising. Dublin is all the rest I need and this historic, serene city is very much my beloved sanctuary in the present time.

I shall resume my blog posts with greater fervour once I reach Ireland sometime in the next fortnight. I have been reading a lot and also indulging in my other new hobby….mainly the purchase of rare books pertaining to world literature.

With my blog posts, I shall also be renewing  my reviews & study on the stories of Sir Hugh Low. (British Malaya).

Next Post

Dear Readers,

Sorry I haven’t posted for awhile. I shall return shortly, in the next few days.

 

The Voices of Marrakesh by Elias Canetti

A slightly old-fashioned manner no doubt,  on narrating the tales of a modern wayfarer but one held with  an easy mastery and a fountain pen akin to that of a magic wand. The Voices of Marrakesh, surely a memorable work of travel literature and made up of a deliciously condensed 103 pages, wonderfully translated from the German by J.A. Underwood… worked immensely to soothe my own travelling spirit and impatient luggage like a hearty tonic. The late prolific Bulgarian writer – and as you shall see from his profile, Elias Canetti was many things, considered the modernist novelist to that of a travel writer – and also once, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1981; his remembered genius is enthusiastically spun in this  wondrous rambling description comprising intriguing if not bizarre scenes, colourful voices, strange gestures and a medley of sights, sounds and smells, that go on to make an atmospheric flamboyant true-to-life classic tale in a humble Marrakesh square.

Thus, each everyday landscape may be seen as a spectacle, every backdrop a fable, every grumpy or sinister face… a wizard that may have sprouted from a fairy-tale….

From the long-suffering misfortunes of unfortunate camels and donkeys at the hands of their bullying masters and then on to somber-faced souk owners and their seemingly ethereal relationships performed with bazaars and their accompanying ornaments and from aggressive beggars, secretive families, holy men and arrogant storytellers  to peculiar customs and furtive glamorous women that masquerade as ladies-of-the-night, Canetti is subject to a series of unforgettable adventures that hail from the different behaviors of race and heritage in this case, made up of the Arabs, Jews, Europeans and Americans.

The writer’s treasured kaleidoscope of events and images through ever-shifting momentary episodes, turned up as my sacred morning-time reading today.

Once more, the traveller’s spirit was awakened in my own caravan-ed soul as I stayed alert to the fables and extraordinary dramatic encounters that impressed upon my being, the hidden secrets of alleyways, pavements, market squares and that even the ritual of bargaining mind you…that fleeting cryptic relationship between customer and shopowner, may hide a wealth of puzzling information.

Besides what I had described above, three particular things spoke deeply to my own hopeful ambitions as a travel writer. One of these surely had to serve as an ointment for I shall forever stay the poor linguist. Yet, I was especially gladdened to see how Canetti deliberately ignored the study of a language, just so that he could catch the power of foreign sounds in all its strange and bewildering magic. This proved indeed comforting.

Here he says, “A marvellously luminous, viscid substance is left behind in me, defying words. Is it the language I did not understand there, and that must now gradually find its translation in me?  There were incidents, images, sounds, the meaning of which is only now emerging; that words neither recorded nor edited; that are beyond words, deeper and more equivocal than words.” – The Voices of Marrakesh -

The second bit of remembrance lay in the depth of Canetti’s honesty for he often stayed candid while meditating on a recollection of disjointed, maligned affairs.  How often like Canetti, I too, the stranger in an unfamiliar place had sometimes been the butt of a joke for having failed to understand a custom or ritual, that I too may have once in a while relied on wrong instructions, been caught embarassed at the wrong place and the wrong point or stayed clumsy in my approach for the use of say, an insular tram system in a small town.

Thus, how vividly in this context then does Canetti goes on to describe his own abashed expressions, his lost sense of direction, his alonness, his longing and wanting for things he often had to search through wayward paths, a long time for. I adore it…these little shy confessions confetti-ed all over the place.

For me, the solitary magic line had to be perhaps the most ordinary thing when Canetti wrote… “…and we wondered whether the camel caravan had crossed the Atlas…”  Crossed the Atlas…such a powerful line that commanded the capability to instantly hold me enraptured. It would be like reading of a traveller who on a mundane morning suddenly remembered an episode of when he had strolled into the Artic, seen the Everest, climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro, leapt across the earth’s dateline…

I instantly recalled a film…a French dvd which I have had the foresight to carry in my luggage…where a man gives up his day job without notice and travels to Italy one Monday morning, when he’s supposed to report for work at the factory. He’s tired of the routine and yearns for something more. He goes to visit a rich forgotten uncle who once worked in the Foreign Legion. The young man is heartily welcomed and the uncle soon takes out his  letters, documents, diaries and cigars…  He carefully elaborateson how his little treasure chest contains his years in Constantinople, Alexandria, Cairo…  Instantly, I as a viewer had tasted the magic of his memory.

Now reading Canetti in a hotel room, my luggage terribly impatient for the next flight, I too, see a string of camels crossing the Atlas in my hidden spellbound eye and soon I am on an invisible magic carpet, higher than any plane could possibly whisk me. – susan abraham

Libyan-Tuareg Novelist Ibrahim al-Koni’s Gold Dust Helps me Understand the Nature of Gaddafi’s Death.

Dear Readers,

“For days, I felt extremely sorrowful by what happened in the final dying minutes of the late Libyan dicatator Col. Muammar Gaddafi‘s partly-wretched and  vanquished life and in the ensuing days when his corpse and that of his son, Moutassim and an aide, were displayed as a global spectacle – I’m thinking YouTube – from a freezer in an old Libyan market in Misrata.

What joy could after all, have been retrieved at the hands of a lynch mob or what it seemingly appeared to be for me anyway… from all that amateur mobile footage that demonstrated a weak, bloodied man… his matted hair being tugged at violently while the frail despot himself, being  pinned down and repeatedly beaten in a primitive fashion, by a near-hysterical crowd that was said to make  for a part of the Libyan Rebel Army  in Sirte.

How could I  cheer such barbarism and the gruesome pictures that were splashed in the papers the next day? How could such a revengeful conscience be haloed and rewarded  while accompanied by a thunderous applause from certain Governments? Why did the initial disgust of the West slip down to a whimper? What did it mean when Gaddafi, his son and aide were later buried secretly in an unknown location, said to be home to the crushed dictator’s Bedouin tribal ancestors? Gaddafi had himself in June, 1942, being born in a Bedouin tent.

Did anyone really relish staring down at Moutassim left alone to moan  a nasty wound in his chest?  And this…bearing that effect of sensationalism that the pictures were meant to convey? Were you able to smile at seeing a young man openly suffer while isolated in a small dark room, even if he may have deserved some of his trials? What if that happened to someone we knew as a friend or acquaintance? Or even family…

I know from being born and raised in Malaysia that Muslims are supposed to bury their dead before sundown or otherwise, as soon as possible..  Why did the West suddenly go all silent over the lengthy, lingering burials if they had no intention of bothering with a post-mortem? To me, that would straightaway suggest a cover-up for the  initial protest of the Army’s denial at execution, that was possibly placated at the end to allow for a n uneasy truce… a reluctant and distorted, I shall add… world peace.

Overall, if those grisly photographs were meant to shock, in that aspect they failed. The internet has been around for a long while now and I have from years ago, already been subdued to a cold numbness by bizarre graphics that continue to show up on Facebook and seemingly innocent advertisements etc. So basically, the media’s lavish photography of the macabre, did nothing for me.  On the contrary, it was the chilling reportage that gave me the shivers.

How removed Gaddafi must have been from the present sphere of time that brings with it, the all-revealing digital age.  The  defeated ruler seemed  unaware of how any failed strategy at fighting his bloodied battles for a land he refused to give up, could in an instant, bring about extreme humiliation worldwide. It is after all, no longer 1969.

Such stories make me question my own upbringing and the ethics from childhood, that has since governed my destiny. Over the years, I have met so many frauds in my own life’s occupation as a writer and these among supposed fellow-writers. I have also witnessed how by way of superficial appearances and by such a  desperation to be recognised as writers even if one had to self-publish or even if one had to cheat and plagiarize other peoples’ stories.  From what I have silently observed of a few people, the idea is to just cheat along the way first and eventually, find adequate ways to  cover it up.  I have seen a Malaysian plagriarist where family and friends helped cover her crime.  Where she publicly declared scribbling and publishing original stories that were actually stolen from a dead prize-winning author, she has never taken responsibility for her fraud and continues to this day, to advertise those stories as her own.   And that those around her have all helped keep up her silence.  It helps her case that the stories are not  seen outside Malaysia.   This episode alone so close to home changed my views of the world in a major way.  I questioned if even  the subject of criminology had turned murky…the very real act of a fraud and theft  observed as a vague grey area measured by a string of  of rights and wrongs, all in hasty conflict with one another.

In this way, I have recognised that some of the most upright of us are not as upright as we like the public to believe. I must lament that so many of us have discarded our principles for a minor glory, so many of us no longer respect the human conscience.  Where have our hearts gone? And in the case of Libya, do mobile phone videos and photographs embody new representations of our morbidly curious and craving souls?

I suspect anxiously that right now, if I cheered the recent vulgarity with a similar vindictive sense of joy, what does that make me? If I shush over a fair trial and allow cruel acts of revenge to have their day, does that make me more lawful, innocent and righteous than what  the Libyan despot once was? If I stepped down to his level in the treatment of another human being, why should I be applauded? Because if I receive a standing ovation for actions that could have represented Gaddafi’s own brutal treatment of others, then shouldn’t the former dictator also have been applauded? Or are there double standards for the world’s practice of its laws and perceived sense of justice?

**************

In this way, I stayed troubled for a long time. But oh…how magical the world of literature as always and it was Libyan Tuareg novelist and now Swiss resident Ibrahim al-Koni‘s Gold Dust translated by Elliott Colla and published by Arabia Books London, that saved the day for me.

Unfortunately, I have only read one al-Koni’s  varied brilliant works but Gold Dust did get under my skin and into my tearful, burnt eyes with a newer, profound understanding of the more painful and disturbing culture and history that marks the sometimes savage ways of Libya’s desert tribes. In this case, that of the respected if not enigmatic, Tuareg peoples.

Please do click on the link and you would learn more about the book. as I am unable to review it at this present time.

An abandoned youth, Ukhayyad and his much-treasured piebald camel flit along their tragic destiny and there are many adventures to be gleaned along the way in the harsh Libyan desert that often bows to severe seasonal environments.

What uncovers through the story, are the jutting, underlying layers of  savage brutality  – told in a somewhat kindly fashion – in a thirst for revenge and barbaric justice. From this gripping and electrifying novella, I learnt that the Libyan desert tribes  featuring in the case of the book – the Tuareg clan – do adhere to an ancient, traditional and straitlaced protocol. Justice is cloaked by an open revenge that may be metered out systematically. Murder and theft of another’s property are considered despicable crime. After much discussion, a punishment is handed out without question.  Often, the men who seek revenge are persistent and stubborn in their chase of the criminal. They will not give up but stay resilient to their cause, combing the land for the hunted, no matter how tedious the journey. They will rest only when the revenge for a crime has been executed immediately and without disruption. Through such episodes, I learnt of the abiding sacredness that appears to crown the laws inherited by desert kinsmen and hunters as once long ago, was so diligently followed by their ancestors.

There is so much more to this profound, yet tragic tale that defines the lasting relationships and strangely-adorable complexities of people and their individual relationships with animals. Or of a novel that sketches legendary desert culture. Gold Dust by Ibrahim al-Koni certainly helped me to broaden my perspectives and to keep an open mind on the different sets of justice, that continue to prevail on the paths of different countries. I do understand the workings of the Libyan Rebel Army as a vast, individual group of their own, a lot better now. I might not agree with the way Gaddafi and his son were killed, nor the way his inner circle had their legs tied up before being beheaded one by one and then for each head to be waved and paraded in the air like Halloween lanterns with boorish yells and celebratory shouts.

But I understand now, far better why things were conducted the way they were. Readers, please do read Ibrahim al-Koni’s Gold Dust, if you ever get the opportunity. It serves as an excellent education of how the ancient laws of desert tribes continue to hold the fort and blood of its people and for that alone, the Libyan Rebel Army does have my respect. I don’t condone their actions in the killing of Gaddafi, his son and the last inner circle of his men but I accept with the twinned bottled knowledge of both melancholia and my own love for world cultures, residing in the depths of  my soul… the route to Gaddafi’s death. Yes, now I do.”

Susan Abraham

PADDYLANDS: A Story of Malaya

by Susan Abraham

Introduction:

The above image was secured from Amazon Books and so the photograph is not my personal copy, although the cover is the same.

This morning, I purchased PADDYLANDS A Story of Malaya, once written by Grace P. Garnier and illustrated by Nora Hamerton; from Japan’s Kinokuniya Bookstore at the Suria KLCC in Kuala Lumpur.

There stood the steadfast tall book, for a long while, still fashioned after a bashful aristocratic flavour.  What with its fragile tarnished jacket sheltering a green hardback while accompanied by stubbornly resistant colour-pencil drawings that up to now, still stoutly refusing to sacrifice their artistic lustre… Perhaps then seen through the canvas of enthusiastic children from a kampong, ferrying their school slates alongside towering plantations, a little like a faded dame of a forgotten bride that icily rejects the hand of mortality. Soon, embraced by my own excitement, PADDYLANDS would bid goodbye to the bookshop’s locked glass showcase, that exhibited other patient rows of valuable antiquarian publications also.

I paid RM790, about 185 euros I’d say, for my original version. Of course, there are far more reasonably priced ones packaged as reprinted editions and generously displayed online. I collected a 50 Malaysian ringgit book voucher for my extravagant efforts and so picked for free, another paperback edition of Sir Hugh Clifford’s later collection of Malayan rural tales, titled At the Court of Pelusu and other Malayan Stories. I still have a 20 Malaysian ringgit voucher left over.

Some months ago, I had purchased a rare book called Haji’s Book of Malayan Nursery Rhymes also from the same bookstore, that never seems to disappoint with its stock of magical finds. If every astonishing decision of late, makes for my life’s wealth of learning experiences; than I suspect that I am often drawn to a touch of the whimsy.  This,  in my taste for the slightly ancient Malayan publication and especially one that calls for a sudden, thrilling reminiscence of childhood, woven through the musical fancies and narrations of cultural poetry and folklore.

Now, in my PADDYLANDS published by George G. Harrap and Company Ltd. in London; lay an endearing inscription scribbled with a fountain pen and addressed to an English boy called David Porter. It was a present by Christopher and dated 1954.

It was obvious to me that Porter treasured his gift greatly as the storybook is so well-preserved. Were they friends, classmates, cousins, brothers, a father and son? Perhaps even a kindly neighbour? I like to think that both Porter and Christopher may have been pleased by my purchase.  This, from a long-ago goodwill, shared by a similar passion for a romanticised and gentle Malay culture. Hopefully,  wherever these gentlemen may be today since several decades have now long passed; that they would be reassured this treasured find had fallen into the right hands. PADDYLANDS will follow me rather gallantly back to Ireland and have its pride of place, closeted snugly on a library shelf.

I often feel drawn to such books from the memory of my Malaysian childhood and would not buy them, otherwise. Still, this 56-pp book was published  in 1947 a good while before I was born and with a second reprint conducted in 1952 in England.

That Little Oomph About PADDYLANDS:

Garnier’s childrens’ literature of olden day kampong life seems very precious to me. She writes with all the tender love and care, that one could only expect from a woman who must have happily regaled in noisy, merry bands of children around her.

Through this piece of juvenile children, Garnier painstakingly prints a story of a Malay family made up of the book’s little hero, Hussain, his dad called Mat, his mother Habibah and his baby brother called Sap.

The close-knit family live in a nipah palm hut, that has been steadily built on poles, above the padi fields. A stream runs past their doors and the family also command their own rowing boat and buffalo stock.

Some of Hussain’s more adventurous antics are reserved for the wide spaces in between the coconut trees, where all the children play and once, he even gets into a tussle with an angry monkey determined to steal the prized, seasonal *durian fruit.

Naturally, because it is childrens’ literature, Garnier ensures that there is never a bored moment. She gaily uses Hussain’s eager mischief on all counts to offer a detailed educational study on Malay kampong life.  In fact, Garnier’s descriptions are vivid and highly atmospheric.  She pens her tales with an insider’s view and I suspect that she has herself spent time in the kampong and talked to the families.

For one, Garnier outlines Hussain’s many pastimes. These included kicking balls of plaited grass about and playing the wild-bull game. Here one boy would pretend to be a bull, while the others scampered around teasing him, but keeping clear of his heels.

One very interesting game appeared to be that of the ‘fighting fish. The children kidnapped guppies and bottled them securely in glass jars. The fun happened when two glasses of jars would be deliberately placed next to each other. How the ticklish children would scream with delight as they watched the fish while intent on a fierce struggle, trying miserably to pounce on each other through the thick glass.

Garnier also made serious fruitful attempts in her exquisite show of storytelling in which to draw cultures together. She silently brought home the fact that no culture could be compared as being better or worse than the other but that they simply varied. Here then, lay her universal hope for peace and understanding. Through her amusing whimsical tales, she held the graceful art of being careful never to patronize a reader.

For instance, the author was quick to add that Hussain’s cockleshell games with his mates, were very similar indeed to knucklestones often played by children in England. Then there was Blind-Man’s Buff she suggested, although in Hussain’s case, it was Blind Chinaman. Here I am gently reminded of the legendary Malay comedian and actor P. Ramlee’s (March 22, 1929 – May 28, 1973) famous film, Bujang Lapok Ali Baba - Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves – where a trembling Chinese tailor was led blindfolded to a strange house while a famous song played on, in the movie’s fold. The tailor was ordered the grim task of having to stitch corpses back up together again after the mutilated victims had been found sneaking into Ali Baba’s secret cave and hence, been killed.

Garnier also explains with great tenderness, all of the young, energetic Hussain’s chores. These included babysitting which appeared to be the obligated responsibility of the older children  working in the rice fields, cutting and drying grasses and bamboos and then later, weaving mats, bird-cages and baskets. One of Hussain’s memorable boyhood highlights lay in following his father, Mat, to the market while riding the bullock-cart.

Hussain often tried to show off to one of his best friends, the perplexed little Minah, how clever he was. Now and then, he’d warn the cherubic little girl with an exaggerated show of bravery, the shivers she’d better be prepared for or else… Here, Hussain was referring to the sight of the scarecrow in the paddy field!  Of course, Minah had her own set of duties  to worry about. One of her errands was to wash, clean and polish an array of pots belonging to her mother, Fatimah.   She did this faithfully on the river bank until they shone.

Sometimes, the children liked to tease old Awang’s buffalos. They persisted with their mischief until the elderly man finally made a feeble attempt at warning them off, with an angry chase.

Garnier’s goes on to describe other lively and colourful scenes that include a market day, a gripping episode with robbers and an exciting show featuring an exhibition of buffalo fights. Here she would hail the same intense fervour as those likely to be encountered at England’s football matches.

I would definitely describe PADDYLANDS as an essential record marking one aspect of Malaya’s multi-layered cultural heritage. There are four colour plates…illustrations that feature ladies heading for the bazaars, Hussain trotting off to school, Habibah sitting on the doorstep awaiting the return of the men and a trip to market on the *sampan.

Various b/w line drawings by Hamerton also include little boys up an elaborate tree-house, Minah’s mother, Fatimah bargaining at the market place, old Awang making his walking sticks and two ladies chatting in the middle of the paddy field.

****************

*The durian is of the of the bombax family, of southeastern Asia. It commands a tough, prickly rind that shells large oval fruits and what many consider, a deliciously flavored, pulpy flesh. Often enjoyed as feasts for the family table or at community gatherings while in high season, the fruit also claims a lingering overpowering smell, but  not one that may be deemed as unnecessarily unpleasant. The popularity of the fruit thrives on an individual’s personal taste and the common result often being that one either embraces its sweetness without question or rejects it without hesitation.

*The sampan – a small boat used in the Far East, propelled by a single scull over the stern and prodded to movement by the use of oars.

Further Reading:

An enriching article on Malaya, in Malaysia’s The Star newspaper.

Journal

The jet lag that trails me is so bad, that my desire to read has fled. From time to time, there rises within me a faint trace of enthusiasm for a specific South East Asian literature I had sought and wanted to claim as my own.  Then after awhile this too vanishes.

There are seasons when there lies no shadow, no tell-tale sign that I travelled or raced the miles.  At other times, such a foreboding ghost takes forever to leave.  I have been lying awake at nights, falling asleep only at sunrise and waking again at noon. Of course, it is a marvellous thing that the freedom of time is my own.  I have tried to fight this fitfulness of sleep but to no avail.  My consciousness still sees itself in Ireland, at the moment, a good seven hours behind.  And this after a week.  Then there is the humidity…the sweat that starts pouring down my face, back and legs, once I step out into the street from the air-conditioning. Within a few seconds, I am drenched in perspiration.

Dublin has been pretty cold and I am very much used to the frost by now. Even our gales and the kinder blustery command a power to chill the bones. But we wrap up warm and life is good.  Here, there is simply no escaping the dense humidity in spite of the cooler welcoming thunderstorms that draw reminders to a beloved childhood.

What is so incredible is that I adjust immediately with no fanfare whatsover whenever I’m in Tanzania or Australia. Then jet lag simply doesn’t exist.

I should be moving on from Malaysia by now but  am giving myself a little bit longer as there are still a number of things for me to pursue.

Tonight, I’m going to start mapping out my story ideas and making a proper writing plan for myself no matter how I feel. Travel & writing together have never been easy for me, but it is a feat I am determined to conquer.

Some Thoughts on The Dulang Washer by Paul Callan

 

What a superb book The Dulang Washer, that featured the gruelling industry of Malaya’s ancient tin-mining era, turned out to be.  Here then lies an expansive work of essential historical fiction, thoughtfully and painstakingly composed  by Irish writer, Paul Callan in his promising debut career as a novelist.

The Dulang Washer – meaning an old-term description of a washerwoman who pans for tin sediments  at the water’s edge – is  published by MPH Publishing in Kuala Lumpur and bears within its riveting plot, a host of gripping taut dramas that occur in smooth layered succession one after the other.

Naturally, the absorbing novel had me properly mesmerised.

The electrifying storyline of mostly Hakka-Chinese tin-mine emigrants who battle some extremely painful trials from opium addictions and severe  malaria illnesses to the sly agendas purported by greedy Chinese tawkeh‘s, pimps and corrupted English officers in their masquerade of attempted dignity; are vividly portrayed and lend colour and flamboyance to the otherwise bleak atmosphere.  Even the Tamilian bullock-cart drivers seem to be on the take and an overly-harsh English overseer in the character of Donald Redfern, bungles up through his clumsy show of cultural insensitivities, in fascinating ways.

Perfect then as The Dulang Washer hinges its adventurous episodes in an almost foreboding, gothic landscape in Malaya’s Kinta Valley in Perak state as early as 1890.

As a reader and realist – and this accounting only for personal taste – I’m sorry to say that I did not much care for the haloed beauty of the idealised heroine to be sought in the novel’s protagonist,  Aisha and this accompanied by the super-powerful comic hero type pursued by Hun Yee, both of whom seemed victimised only by their goodness and utterly devoid of flaws. Still, I recognise that a healthy market for these kinds of stories exist and I  can respect that fact without hesitation. I’ll also add that Callan tells a love story well measured by a keen display of tender affection, with which to rope  in both humour and light.

 Another aspect I did not much care for were what I felt to be the safe cultural themes drawn from a political correctness especially as the book drew to a neat finish.  Some challenging sub-plots seemed overly-harmonious in their conclusions.

However, what I found especially brilliant and memorable were Callan’s deft skill in sketching characterisation from the varied individuals present in the novel and also, his strategic talent at a punctilious research where customs, rituals and a history to demonstrate the showcase of different races, were all strung together with  sophisticated flair and fringed by intrigue.

There are different forms of storytelling…some complex and literary and shaped especially for its eloquence where the beauty of language is held to an admiration and perhaps others more general that excel at a stirring narrative. The latter would work instantaneously to bring a fictitious world to life.

Paul Callan is marvellous at old-fashioned storytelling…so good in fact, that I could literally view this strange faraway world..that formed an integral part of the Peninsular once upon a time, over a century ago.  This, right before my eyes and one which readily brought enthrallment to all of my nine-year old geography lessons obtained from a classroom so very long ago.  My remembered textbooks were now laced with new meaning.

The Dulang Washer is perfect for all Malaysians and readers and historians worldwide who thrive on the splendour of cultural diversity.

Writing Reflections 10 – From Dublin to Kuala Lumpur

I wanted to place a line or two  on my Twitter account but I can’t seem to sign in on my  wi fi from where I am.  Every other site seems all right though.

I’m feeling so excited about my writing plans, not to a point of delirium, but in a way that offers me a definite sense of identity and purpose. These days, I wear that easy confidence like never before. My plane flight was smooth and the air crew were lovely and engaging. All the three different sets of airport formalities were swift.  I’m happy and relaxed. I’m surprised at being pleased with the obvious clarity of my  focus and vision, to the extent of astonishment.

I’m waiting to roll up my sleeves from tomorrow for some hard work.  An industry that is bound to be exhausting but exhilarating & enjoyable. I’ve found a few superb bookstore cafes in which to write, although I have excellent wireless facilities at my hotel.

The thing is I like writing while being surrounded by books and in my Dublin apartment, often type my drafts next to my library, where I am able to gaze at my shelves in satisfaction every now and then.  All this while  biting my nails and mulling in thought.

I’ve also bought a new Samsung Netbook from my favourite PC World store in Dublin. I’m currently attempting to get acquainted with my little red computer by claiming a new intimacy.  So far, I’m thankful to have succeeded as I was concerned that my excitement over this recent purchase may have dissolved.

I have 3 laptops back home – 1 is a real oldie but which I treasure for sentimental reasons. I also own an additional 2 Netbooks excl. the laptops and 3 phones. I’ve left my Blackberry behind and settled for an LG Android model and a very necessary smartphone. My Android is currently filled with very sharp pictures…photography that counts as an important reference point for my book. My Smartphone is what I personally prefer to use all the time. I’ve also lugged along a dvd  player as a happy solution for some favourite films that I carefully packed away and an MP3 for my music  to help me write   I love my gadgets which I treat as toys and I love my films and books which I wear upon my seduced heart, like dancing elongated shadows.  In this sense, I’m getting more used to the idea of travel and writing. I am able to handle the nomadic situation that I’ve adopted for myself as a writer, a lot better now.  But it took a few years of uncomfortable practical adjustment. Now, these little bits  of essential equipment prove just right for my craft.

I also feel a little comforted to know that MG Vassanji made at least 10 gruelling trips to India in order to produce an excellent work of non-fiction called A Place Within: Rediscovering India. And Sky’s foreign correspondent, Holly Williams was so personally passionate about her subject of illegal prostitution brothels in China especially among the defected North Koreans, that she made several trips to China of her own account to turn up superb educational documentaries on the subject like North Koreans in Prostitution and Slavery after illegally Crossing into China.  Williams talked about this for her promotion trailer on Sky TV recently.

I too, understand the familiar restlessness and that similar striving towards perfection. Certainly, travel has become a lot more cheaper and accessible now than it ever was but in truth, it isn’t all that inexpensive and still commands a small fortune. Already, I’ve returned to Malaysia this year alone, too many times to count.

I suppose my writing craft is like my baby and for me anyway, my art will always receive just that right amount of tender, loving care even if it means that I have to shoulder painful investments on the wallet.  After all, at last I can. - susan abraham

Credit: Free clip art of picture courtesy of FreeClipartNow.

Update

I think about how I want to write my stories and of how too, the whole year has almost flown. I think about locations and it isn’t just one location I’m concerned about but different countries as well. I know that many writers use libraries and the internet for research. Because so much of my current work is triggered by experience or memory from a present era and I am often on the move outdoors, I don’t use libraries but find YouTube videos on a historical era or the classical works of writers who went before, useful either to evoke a memory or with which to respond to my tenderly awakened subconscious spirit. I also buy all my reference books as years later, I hope these specific material will help me recall the excitement of the season.

 I’m in Kuala Lumpur at the moment, tired but happy. I hope to have more regular posts. I am just badly jet-lagged.  I needed to return to get some details right for my book. I’ve been travelling for 12 years now and I think that clearly, I am someone who must always be at any intended location if I am to get my story right. I’ve found a few favourite cafes I could see myself writing in. I need to talk to people and study more places although of course, I know my country like the back of my hand.  I’ve returned just this year alone quite a few times already. But I still need to do this. I also need to go to other places and my time is limited before I must return to Europe.

It’s probably the first time where I am returning to Malaysia not in transit as a traveller but in my proper role as a writer.

Note

Am at Abu Dhabi airport in the Emirates and in the middle of two long flights. Will return to this blog on Wednesday.

Interlude – The Calm Before the Storm

Tanzanian women wait anxiously at noon for the fishermen’s haul, on the coastline that fringes the robust Kigamboni market in Dar es Salaam. The bountiful catch will later be ferried to villages to be sold to individual families after sessions of loud, furious bargaining go adrift. Shoals of freshwater fish so readily available from the Indian Ocean, make tempting meals for locals at the dinner table. The resilient women think nothing of tramping several kilometres on a hot dusty day, with each one brilliantly balancing a heavy pail  on her head. Photography by Susan Abraham ©

Writing Reflections 9 – Calling Time on Call the Ships of Dar-es-Salaam

Caption: Thick coffee brew sweetened with condensed milk, served at a traditional Chinese coffeeshop in Singapore.  Photograph © Susan Abraham

A little while ago, I wrote in an earlier post that due to unforseen circumstances, I was not able to promote my first book of lyrical writing titled Call the Ships of Dar-es-Salaam – pictured on left sidebar – and published in England last Christmas.

I could have attempted a fair bit if I wanted to but there were several issues going on in my life during that season. I was left feeling  spent and unsure over which rollercoaster direction I seemed to be toppling into.  My life was still excellent as a whole. In the earlier part of the year, I travelled often and enjoyed myself.  But this emotional drain was due to a betrayal, the painful disappointment of it, which trailed me everywhere for a long time  like a ghost-in-waiting.

That’s all gone now of course and a few weeks ago, I contemplated once more picking up the pieces and once-and-for-all making a fervent  attempt to tell the world something about my book. I am however, a pathetic marketer but then this is me being lazy.  In truth, I considered myself a merry old-fashioned artist first of all.  Still, I confessed to a know-how and  gamely thought I would test the waters.

Then to my horror, much as I loved my alternative poetry and prose tucked away between those slender pages; the old enthusiasm had simply vanished.  Sadly, there was no  desire to conduct even the first step.   In my spirit, I had already moved on.  That chapter of my life had  closed when I dealt with the issue of the betrayal and shut that door.  I recognised that my personality had evolved. I could no longer relate to the exciting time when my paperback was first published.  I had found other reasons for joy. Which frankly, is a  relief as I had taken to the idea of being published in the first place, very much in my stride like a duck to water. I did not bat an eyelid even at the time. I wasn’t awed. I wasn’t overwhelmed.

More importantly, I had moved on to a new confidence and a brand new sense of energy.  I realised I wanted to attempt  ambitious writing projects… bigger challenging works. I possess the resources and capability. I travel erratically and often. How about some travel literature for a change, my mind beckoned.  And I still own a partial manuscript of Malaysian ghost tales lurking somewhere about… And there are other ideas too. I have always been a versatile writer.

At the moment, I’m involved in the completion of  my novel and this time-consuming task alone has risen from within me like a shooting star. It encompasses all of me. It shapes the colour of my days. It presently commands my reading material for research and my journeys for remembrances.  I also love my new seclusion, a tender reward from having obtained the courage to temporarily draw away from online social media – an activity that seemed all at sea and had taken up too much time for nothing.  This works for many people of course but not for me. I put my efforts of the last two years down to an over-zealous exuberance.

Clearly, I am someone firmly rooted in the present. I am futuristic in my thoughts.  I look back to the past only in the way of practicalities. From time to time, I savour all the right melancholic moods of wistfulness. My saving grace is that I am not a sentimental person.  I become impatient  if something sedate in the past clutches me for too long and my graceful sense of wellbeing is threatened.

With all these in mind, I have decided to call time on Call the Ships of Dar-es-Salaam. I feel that instead of promoting a little-known paperback of poetry – the hardest of all to market, although I’ll affirm to a quality piece of work – that my energy would be better invested at where my passions presently lie. That beautiful saying… Make hay while the sun shines…sums up my perfect sermon.

I know from years of observation that writers are sometimes virtually unknown for their first-time efforts especially those who choose to publish alternative literature with small publishers, not of the mainstream. But then they go on to be published traditionally at some point with a bigger publishing authority where worldwide bookshop exposure is evident and suddenly, all their older works are eagerly sought.

For example, celebrated Indian novelist, MG Vassanji, who was born in Kenya, resided in Dar-es-Salaam and then went on to live in Canada as an international bestselling author, stays especially popular with the reading public in Tanzania for a little known book of stories about Dar-es-Salaam’s Asian residents.  It was called Uhuru Street and was first published in 1992.

Here in The East African magazine, a journalist who captured Vassanji’s return to Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and attended his much feted book signing at an expatriate location alongside Dar’s coast called The Slipway in 2010,  adds the following…

Vassanji is the author of eight acclaimed novels, the best known being The In-Between World of Vikram Lall and The Assassin’s Song. But the most popular here in Tanzania is by far Uhuru Street, which is a collection of stories based on the author’s perceptions of life on Uhuru Street in the 1960s. – The East African

I know the colourful, quaint Uhuru street. I have passed that way many a-time. The crowded street lies in the heart of Dar es Salaam, is populated by locals and a successful community of conversative Indian businessmen and their extended families, who all devoutly follow the Muslim faith. Please do click onto the link to  Uhuru Street above, to read a little more about the list of eccentric characters that helped shape Vassanji’s early talent.

Another UK novelist, Preethi Nair, self-published her first novel, Gypsy Masala, after facing numerous rejections, some years ago. When through a stroke of good luck, HarperCollins finally signed her on for a 3-book deal, they also took it upon themselves to re-issue Gyspy Masala.

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I believe I should let go Call the Ships of Dar es Salaam for the moment and it will eventually resuscitate itself when my audience is bigger, when an alternative portfolio of my works are published and evenly distributed and when my readership is secure. I have only just returned to the writing life.

I love my little book. It will always be one of my pet beauties. It serves as an excellent validation for a record of all my pastoral poetry and simple philosophical musings. My writing is not for the pessmistic soul but rather it seeks those who catch life’s meaningful approaches from the silver lining on a dark cloud.

The rhymes on absurdities are suitable for both grown-ups and children. Women who are devoted to serious literature may just adore the added touch of romance that spills about now and then. A naturalist could just as well celebrate a series of Irish garden descriptions  and in the dark winter months to come…wish for summer through my carefully-painted verses.

Having said all of this, I cannot bring myself as many other writers do, to keep trumpeting for the hopeful sale of my book. I’m just not made that way. I feel that if I were a good writer, I would eventually gain a readership. Not straightaway of course. With time and diligence, that comes later.  The quality of my work should speak for itself.  At least, for now. But then again, I can afford to do this. I’m not writing for the money.

Call the Ships of Dar-es-Salaam will still continue to be sold worldwide. A consumer can purchase my product from almost any country at all through scores of online booksellers. Anywhere from India, Japan, Australia and New Zealand to Hong Kong, the States and Scandinavian Europe.  A print-in-demand venture and chosen from a publishing round last year by a small UK publisher, my book will always be in stock anywhere at all while packaged as an excellent quality paperback.

In this way, I have been so very fortunate as being published in other international regions may not have afforded for that same grand number as regards  online bookseller displays.

And so as I begin a new writing chapter of my life as evident from previous posts of Writing Reflections, I’ll bid adieu to my little book and all that’s connected to it in the past. I’m sure I’ll meet it somewhere up the road, not too long from now, when life finally signals for a much-deserved party.  May it hibernate in peace…

Writing Reflections 8 – Nigerian Cinema and the Writing Form

I often think it’s the inter-parallel equations that silently work to measure and thread varied passions within an individual’s singular destiny. A love for the cultural arts has long helped me banish what might have otherwise proved a stereotyped personality and instead allowed me to embrace one, laden with fascinating complexities.

These days, I am able to easily distinguish the glimpse of new discoveries in my renewed life as a writer.  With a real celebration of this aptitude, I   absorbed an unexpected fruitful lesson just the other day, from world cinema.

On free nights, I do from time to time relish cultural films or documentaries.

Generally, I purchase films that appeal in a certain tantalising manner. I don’t tend like many do, to borrow or rent them. I have a serious burgeoning collection hidden away in my cupboard.

The majority of endearing ones stay the slightly alternative European, Asian, Persian and Middle-Eastern stories, that hinge their  persuasive charms on  generational  family life especially those which highlight the artistry of cuisine, culinary journeys or the romantic moods of tender, rural landscapes, wound into elaborate village tales.   I am bowled over for instance, by gatherings set around a crowded dinner table, breakfasts in the gardens, wine toasts that tiptoe with gentle docility upon the remnants of  an earlier argument in the dining room, picnics that hover close to a wild windy sea…in other words, a creative sumptious menu that may just as well, tempt the mind’s palate with the aesthetic pleasures of taste and this, complete with unforgivable generosity.

I am also a diligent viewer of classic British sleuths, a jolly hobby I’ve pursued from girlhood.  Naturally, my choice of Midsomer Murders and Hetty Wainthropp Investigates episodes are likely to follow suit.  Still, nothing is complete without my carefully packed away boxed set featuring a memorable American tv comedy, Everybody Loves Raymond. I never tire of losing myself with unescapable joy in the re-runs.

When I travel,  I slip my favourite dvds into my luggage.  This  allows me to dissolve my restlessness into the allure of a remembered film, providing of course, that the sandman cooperates and discreetly fails to arrive in a foreign hotel room.  Perhaps too,  if I’ve had a good day lapping up the outdoors or when nostalgia impatiently beckons, I’d happily reward myself with a film. Often, I observe in a silent way, the technical aptitude of how scripts are written…the kaleidoscope of images that make for sharp sorrow or comedy  bending to its wry humour and especially the motley characterisation in film that offer countless ready ideas for the novel.

To me personally, literature and the cinematic arts connect more closely in my life than I dare imagine.

Of late, I have found myself cheerfully devouring Naija films, complete with its enchanting pidgin English lingo. I love African cinema as it often serves the perfect reminder of my Tanzanian friends. An overwhelming nostalgia slyly enthralls before I soon find myself yet again on a flight, halfway around the world.

In modern Nigerian cinema, where so many impressive stories are based on expansive plots locked away in rural villages or  rambling bungalows in Lagos; I have soaked  with delight the eccentric characterisation of say, the over-zealous church goer, the witch doctor, the wicked mother-in-law, the greedy landlord or a jealous sibling. Then there is the roomful of fashionable, flamboyant wives…the hangout of jobless husbands…the rushing footsteps of the noisy inquisitive neighbour….the stingy angry farmer…all sorts.  At first, I found myself engaged in these robust films,  simply for pleasure and as a hallmark for one of my more ideal forms of a vibrant escapism.

Then on a more serious note, I must say that despite the extravagance of intricate plots and numerous characters, I began to recognise the evolvement of the screenplay itself to be very tight.  This,  especially when wound around  the more colourful modern folktales produced  by the local Yoruba people whose communities reside mostly in Western Nigeria. The Yoruba language is one of the Niger-Congo family of languages.

No doubt, the respective film-makers seem to own a high talent for lavish ancient traditions, rituals and profound religious philosophies  in particular…a trait that often inspires and astonishes me. I notice that while a major plot and its accompanying series of sub-plots are all  bound by complicated twists and turns, they finally come together like rivulet ribbons to a welcoming brook and rather seamlessly too, in that tie-up to  a superb finish.

It wasn’t too long before I was happily seduced, caught in rapt attention by these stories and desired to create characters like these for my own tales. Oh…what excitement when I discovered this wanting! I couldn’t understand my bliss following such an encounter but knew the desire to be forthcoming and getting stronger as I studied varied films with real earnestness in a way that I purported to be educational and consistent.

Then to my surprise, I recognised the reason why I myself, was now drawn to create a party of lively boistrous characters, all boastful of skeletons in the cupboard. But do I dare… What exhilaration! What a challenge!

Ironically, this goes against my reclusive self in real time of late. In recent weeks, I have presently, pulled away from the online crowd. I can’t remember when I last left a comment or engaged in superficial banter.  In fact, I shudder at the  lost time.  I have certainly grown far  more reserved about my daily activities.  I am more guarded definitely. Lost in the new luxury of an intoxicating writing world,  I have for  the present moment, left  the  past to fend for itself come what may.  I myself with bowed head prefer to get on with my journey with nary a thought that my voice should add any more clamour to feisty opinions already alive and kicking.  Thus,  I have  returned full circle to once more resembling the shy violet lass, readily apparent when I had turned 20 and some.

For years, some of my best writing steeped from a taut individualistic self which commands a style of its own but could just be rigid in the way of experimentation. I  often observed enthralling pastoral happenings as a fly on the wall, lending its invisible ear to many things while gleaning secrets within my shy, quiet self…  As the owner of varied musings, I subconsciously became concerned never to intrude upon the broken heart of a lover or disturb the melancholic orchestra being strung by the merry herring gulls. I do possess a skill for this guardian angel watchfulness, I admit.

I remembered also that when  in my 20s, I wrote children’s plays for Radio Malaysia and much of these drama, were often extravagant in personality with a host of different voices scattered clumsily  in excitable speech.  A handful of  characters would chatter or yell with  enthusiastic flutter above each other’s heads, all at once.  I recalled that one  of my  early children’s plays lay  in how a devout, secret team of  spiders and lizards worked together throughout the dark night, so as to rescue a tearful picture on a wall from being sold to a dank shop in another town. What a ticklish kerfuffle I had created on the page!  Strange when you think of how I had pictured myself, a bashful introvert in earlier years but  at the same time, an easy extrovert with the representation of my children’s stories.

In later years, the opposite happened. I became nothing short of an extrovert while my career would steadfastly sprout wings with magazine journalism.  To my great surprise, I flourished in assignments that included having to conduct candid interviews with several showbiz personalities.  Again very much unlike my old self, when I travelled – and this followed up from the magazine journalism career – I found myself all the bolder. I was more inclined to chat with strangers in an assortment of settings when called upon to introduce myself and you know, just the public glare of airports says it all.

Around this time, I turned the introvert with my artistic craft. Beautiful words all readily composed if I may dare to describe them myself and slightly distinct too, but my manuscripts represented a form of writing that stayed  attuned to a quieter rhythm.   As a broad example, there lingered, only just the one voice observing, whispering, sketching and reciting thoughts in a poetic demeanour and that one voice was me.

This is what Nigerian cinema unearthed about my personal history  which confirms my theory that every race and heritage has the ability to soar across a boundary, that all of the universal cultural arts are interlinked in some way. And in that, that a culture so foreign as Nigeria, could teach me this surreal quality about myself. Wonderful isn’t it. This is what makes me currently so excited about travel, even if it may be nothing more this time round, than just to familiar locations, so as to research and write my novel.  Still,  the flavours and charms of the orient all beckon, to thoughtfully introduce me to new worlds inter-connected and bathed in light. - susan abraham

Writing Reflections 7 – The Gloss of Travel

I wrote the post below and placed it on Facebook about 16 months ago.

At the time, it was the first post on a new blog I had set up to write about Africa. Later, I took the blog down and subsequently removed the said article. Now, poring over it again, it’s proved to be one of my better pieces and features some introspective reflections I like very much.

I find the poignant words still hold true to my spirit. I’ve not changed in that sense at all, with the exception of course, that presently and in the next two months I must will myself to travel, not for hedonistic pursuits  but to work on various writing projects.  Most precious to me is the novel.

Adventuring is part of my work, when you think about it.  It has offered the memory raw, blissful material.  You can say in a way that I have returned to the work-force but far from a daily grind…I’ll be engaging in the things I love and purely that, although the tight schedule I’ve prepared for myself promises  a satisfying exhaustion at some point.

I also hope to return to journalism…I finally have succumbed to a renewed interest for it. I’m thinking more of a columnist or essayist for one international media at least.  That  would be a promising start and I shall be aiming for this. I have to start again from scratch but I’ve gleaned a fair amount of information from the cultural arts and travel to a few specific regions over the years that I’ve already got a few pet subjects up my sleeve. I really have no clue how any of these would pan out…it may just be months yet before something definite works out but I hope to enjoy the whirring carousel.

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Below is the article I found and love very much for the definite sense of identity it presents me with:

“A constant travel over several years has in the recent past, treated me to an inate sense of elation that cannot be mastered by conformity, rigidity or the scheduled timepiece that wills the industrious heart to a safe, mainstream life.

Somewhere, in the last years I fulfilled a childhood dream by smashing upon a plastered predictability, otherwise determined to have glued my restless soul and moving limbs together with the strangulating purpose of a straitjacket. Naturally, I would view that prospect of a nightmarish episode like a dabble with sticky plasticine; in other words, something dark and closely akin to horror.

I was fortunate to have escaped with grace and am now no longer bound by the mainstream. Instead, I tether on the edge of disbelief and surrealism willing either emotion to work; just so I could taste a bout of the extraordinary, everytime I swing a trolley bag through Departures.

I’m happy.

I’m happy because I’ve got my act together albeit a clumsy spit’ n shine polish. Travel, mountain-climbing, my bookcases, my love for world films and good cuisine…all of that. Oh, and did I add that I was a magazine fashion writer for many years? Now what is left is for me to return to the writing of stories…a long-lost love once fitfully abandoned and now properly ‘prodigal-ed’ and to choose books over journalism..to pick up that chewed stub of an ancient pencil with cautious pleasure and waltz with the imagination.

I am strangely excited. Where do I begin? How do I start? As I sing with resounding delight, clutching to falling chorus-sheets in the true masquerade of a voluble Edith Piaf, let me not trip over or that my raw toes be stepped upon. For now, I am bewildered but pleased.” - susan abraham

Credit: Free Photograph courtesy of World-City Photos

An Interview with Malaysian Novelist Chan Ling Yap on her Writing Days & Forthcoming Book, Bitter-Sweet Harvest

by Susan Abraham

Introduction:

The UK-based Malaysian novelist, Chan Ling Yap will celebrate the release of  her second novel Bitter- Sweet Harvest, to be published by Marshall Cavendish and out in the bookstores  in Asia this autumn. Marking a sequel to an earlier fascinating novel on old Malaya available worldwide and titled, Sweet Offerings,  Bitter-Sweet Harvest by contrast,  offers a unique multicultural flavour as it salutes a promising Malaysian tale that  describes captivating contradictions of culture and religion plotted through an enduring love story. It is expected to be launched in the UK and Europe in early 2012. Sweet Offerings was first published by Indepenpress UK in 2009 and later, Marshall Cavendish in 2011. Both the books stay complete stories in themselves and can be read in any order.

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Something about Chan Ling Yap:

Chan Ling Yap was born and raised in Kuala Lumpur. She later obtained a Phd. in Economics while receiving further education in England. After a stint of having held a lecturing position at the University of Malaya, Chan Ling Yap joined the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome.  She worked for 19 years as a senior commodity expert responsible for rice.  She was Head of the Rice Commodity Group in the Organization and eventually returned to the United Kingdom with her family in 1997.  To find out more about the accomplished writer, you may visit her website and do scroll below for an interview.

A newspaper interview with Chan Ling Yap may be found in The Star, Malaysia while a short magazine one may be found in   Her World Malaysia Recently, Malaysian booksellers Popular nominated Sweet Offerings for the Readers’ Choice Awards.

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Upcoming Author Event: Chan Ling Yap to Speak at at the Thame Arts and Literature Festival, UK on 14th October 2011.

Thanks to the overwhelming popularity of the novelist’s first expansive novel Sweet Offerings from where she recited with exquisite, meticulous flair,  the  tale of an impoverished young maiden who leaves her rural village to work for an overbearing tyrannical matriach in Kuala Lumpur, Chan Ling will be a guest speaker at the Thame Arts and Literature Festival (TAL) at 11.00 am on 14th October,  in the upper gallery of the Thame Library, North Street, Thame in Oxfordshire, OX9 3BH, UK, as part of the First Novelist Panel for the TALExtra Festival Fringe.  Chan Ling will share her morning with another debut novelist, Angie Voluti and in this free event organised by the Oxfordshire library for the TAL, the novelist will talk about her newest atmospheric fare, Bitter-Sweet Harvest.

Chan Ling was also invited recently together with novelist Priya Basil to speak to budding novelists at a VAANI (for Asian Women Writers & Artists) event on a theme called, Love, Pain and Cheats. Both pulled the enjoyable event off like a dream.

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In This Rare Detailed Interview, I Speak to Chan Ling Yap About Her Writing Life

What are your feelings in general about speaking at the Thame Festival?

“I am absolutely delighted to have the opportunity to do so. I was told that Sweet Offerings is a ‘constantly borrowed’ book, so I expect that, in addition to those that have not read the book, I will be able to meet many who have read it. Having direct feedback from readers, is very important to me. I am an avid reader myself and I know that when I am involved with the characters in the story, my enjoyment of it is more intense. So I look forward, with some trepidation, to see if I have achieved this.”

What will you bring to the table about both your books, at the Festival?

“People who have read both books – Bitter-Sweet Harvest in manuscript – say that they have learnt a lot about Malaysia, a country that they had previously known as a spot on a map, or a country that produces rubber and tin. So I would say both books bring a deeper understanding of Malaysia, its’ history, the diversity of its people and their culture, subjects which are so topical in today’s world. I quote from some readers’ reviews on Amazon.”

How do you think book festivals help novelists?

“Book festivals are very important for readers and authors. They are two sides of the equation. Without readers there would be very little incentive to write and publish. Without authors, there would be little to read. Novelists learn from readers; the latter, if constructive (a very important caveat), can be their best critic. I have on occasions found myself liking a book recommended to me by ordinary readers much more than one that has won a literary prize. For me, I read for enjoyment; I don’t necessarily just enjoy a book that is promoted by literary pundits.”

Do you suffer from stage fright?

“My previous post as Secretary of the Intergovernmental Group on Rice in the UN Food and Agriculture Organization required me to speak in public forums.   That said I still have ‘butterflies’ whenever I speak. Speaking as a novelist is not the same as speaking to delegates at an intergovernmental meeting. Speaking as a novelist is more intimate, more personal. That in itself can be daunting. However, the people you meet are often so warm and encouraging that they carry you and bring out the best in you.”

Please tell us the setting for Bitter-Sweet Harvest.

“Sweet Offerings was principally set in Malaysia. By contrast, the setting for Bitter-Sweet Harvest is quite different. As mentioned in the cover of the book, the story takes the reader on a journey through contrasting cultures: from the learned spires of Oxford in England to the east cost of Peninsular Malaysia; from vibrant Singapore to Catholic Rome and developing Indonesia.”

Tell us about the captivating cover design.

“The cover design for Bitter-Sweet Harvest was inspired by the wish to maintain a central theme that connects this, my second novel, with my first. Hence, we chose the use of an early 19th Century Nyonya porcelain jar to connect with the Nyonya teacup in the first book. This is of significance because it represents the early Chinese immigrants to Malaya that have adopted the way of life, dress and even speech of the Malays living there. The Chinese families involved in the story were descendents of such families. By contrast, the backgrounds in the covers of both books are completely different. In Bitter-Sweet Harvest, you see the Nyonya jar set against a scene where mosques are juxtaposed against the spires of learning in Oxford, and Cathedrals. In Sweet Offerings, you have the simplicity of early life and dwellings as the setting.

“While the idea originated from me, it was Marshall Cavendish, my Publisher, that put it together so beautifully into a work of art. My thanks and compliments to the designer.”

What would the world take from Bitter-Sweet Harvest?

“Both novels are works of fiction and are meant to entertain. So I hope that at the end of the book, I would like readers to say, ‘What a fascinating book!  I really enjoyed it and I would like to read another book from the same author! I think I would like to visit the country to see for myself!  It reads so real and stirs up such memories!’  The book is not meant to preach. Readers will take from the book what they seek and each reader will have a different perspective. In writing both novels, I have never painted a black and white situation. I have tried to give the perspective of the characters themselves, with their weaknesses and strength.”

If readers could warm to your characters, which are the one or two you hope they choose?

“In Sweet Offerings, I would have no difficulty in selecting a character that I warm to the most. It would be Nelly, the second wife. In Bitter-Sweet Harvest, the central characters have their equal share of weakness, strength and ‘lovability’, so it would be difficult to choose between them in an unbiased manner. If I had to choose, it would be An Mei because of what she had to go through, from a young girl, fired with the idealism of love, to a disillusioned and much damaged young woman. My sympathies are with her.”

Do elaborate on your personal thoughts about writing Malaysian literature for the world.

“I think it is always exciting to be writing about Malaysia because the country has all the ingredients of the modern world: multiculturalism. One important point to note, however, is that multiculturalism is not new in Malaysia so it might not always be appropriate to draw direct parallels with other countries recently receiving large inflow of migrants. It has been there for centuries and, of course, we are not talking about pockets of minority groups of different origins in the country. The Chinese represented 45 percent of the population in the 50s though the current proportion is much reduced (one source says to 25 percent).

“It is very exciting to write about people who speak two or more different languages to each other, switching from one to the other with ease; and, of course, there is that all inspiring Malaysian cuisine. Malaysia provides a very colourful background to my writing.”

I read about your creative writing discipline in The Star newspaper.  Did you follow the same routine for penning Bitter Sweet Harvest? Waking up at 6.00 and writing for straight five hours or so?  If not, could you tell us the new routine you adopted for writing Bitter Sweet Harvest?

“I could not follow the same strict writing routine that I had when penning Sweet Offerings due to family circumstances. My husband was very ill. There were long periods when I was writing Bitter-Sweet Harvest that I did not write at all. But the story must have continued to develop and churn in my mind for when I did return to it, the story just flowed. It was a period of my life where I became very sensitive and aware and that, I think, was transferred into my writing.”

Most writers struggle with a fervent writing discipline but you appear to carry this off very well? How do you manage the motivation & focus?

“I have always been disciplined and focused. To say this may seem boastful but I do not mean it that way. It is just that I have always got on with the job in hand rather than putting things off to another day.”

What motivated and encouraged you to write Bitter-Sweet Harvest?

“I was motivated to write Bitter-Sweet Harvest by the readers of Sweet Offerings.  I had the great opportunity to meet with many readers because I was invited to their readers’ group meetings. I attended more than a dozen of these and most, if not all, asked if I would write a sequel. Sweet Offerings ending was open to a sequel. As one reader wrote on my website:  ‘I cannot recall ever reading a book where the very last word carried so much meaning for the future.’

“Another wrote, ‘A book that is impossible to put down and cannot wait for the sequel.’ “

Which is your favourite season to write in and why?

“Winter is still my favourite writing season. I have fewer distractions. We have a very big garden and in summer, there is always something to do.”

Do you write in a room with a view?

“No I do not have a view in my writing room. That would be a distraction. When I need a break, I make a mug of tea and take it to the garden. I like to feed the fish in our pond. We have two fishponds. The big pond with a waterfall is in what we call the wild garden. I would sit with my tea, sometimes with my husband, in the wild garden, by the pond to listen to the gurgling of the waterfall and the rush of water in the little brook that separates us from our neighbour. I find it very therapeutic.”

Where do you write? Tell us about your writing place.

“A quiet room. I write in an office, packed with books and filing cabinets, which I share with my husband. Sometimes, he wants to chat when I am writing and sometimes I talk, when he is writing. So it becomes less ideal for both of us. But other than that, I love him to be in the same room. He is very supportive.”

Do you have any eccentricities that guard your writing desk? What do you write on?

“I don’t have any unusual writing habits that I am aware of. I try to keep everything very neat and tidy. I have a stack of paper on my right where I jot down ideas that I would like to return to. On my left is my tray for matters that I need to attend to. At the other corner of the room where my husband works, the scene is quite different. He has pieces of paper everywhere and they have to be kept in an untidy array because then only can he find them. He does not like me to tidy them. So I write in the midst of chaos and order. I keyboard and I use a Mac.”

You mentioned in a newspaper interview that you were still finding yourself as you penned Sweet Offerings.  As a result, did any new discoveries lie before you with Bitter-Sweet Harvest?

“When writing Bitter-Sweet Harvest, I rediscovered how much I love writing and the research that goes with it. I always try to make the historical background as real as possible. Most people believe that Sweet Offerings was biographical and I am very flattered by it. For the genre of books that I am writing, I believe that you have to make it real for the readers to carry them with you.”

Please describe a good writing day.

“This is on a good writing day. I wake up very early, around 6 am. I lie in bed for 5 minutes or so and go through what I have to do for the day. I get up and do a series of stretching exercises for about 12 – 15 minutes to keep supple. Then I breakfast. I cannot function without eating. Breakfast is just cereals with berries of some sort (blueberries and raspberries are my favourite) and soya milk, and two mugs of tea. I then tidy-up the house, take something out from the freezer for the evening meal and then I shower. I write until lunch. I rest for about half an hour after lunch, potter in the garden and then sit to write for a couple of hours. When I am really into it, my greatest fear is for someone to pop into the office and ask, “What’s for dinner?

“I try not to write in the evening, as I might not sleep because my mind would be active.  The routine is slightly different on days when I run exercise classes.  I still teach Fusion Fitness, an exercise discipline I devised.  These are mainly in the mornings so on those days, my writing is confined to the afternoon.”

When you sit down to write, how do you manage drafts and revisions?

“I write straight through so that I can maintain my story line. In the first draft, it is the story that counts, although I do try to write well. Then I revise and rework over and over again.”

Did nostalgia beckon when you wrote Bitter-Sweet Harvest? Did any memory cajole you to a forgotten remembrance?

“Both books are not autobiographies so I am not recounting my childhood. But I do draw upon my knowledge of all the places described in the novel, and of course, I also draw upon my memories of, say, eating out in Malaysia, sitting in the stalls, hearing conversations around me etc.”

As with your work in Rome, do you bring a high form of strategy to novel-writing?

“When I ran the UN FAO’s Intergovernmental Group on Rice I wrote all the papers for the annual intergovernmental meeting and these had to be translated into four different official languages and dispatched at precise dates. So we had a strict schedule of dates that we had to meet. If I failed to meet them, it would mean that others would also be unable to meet their deadlines andcommitments. This must have contributed to making me disciplined.”

How essential is characterisation to you?

“The characters in the novel take on a life of their own. When I am writing I am totally involved. I am each character. I do not, however, let them take over my life away from my desk.”

What were your sentiments when you touched on the last line of Bitter-Sweet Harvest?

“Once a manuscript is out of my hands and on its way to printers, I always feel a sense of anti-climax. I have worked so hard on it and suddenly it is not there anymore. I try not to look at it again though because I fear I might wish to write and re-write again. It is never as perfect as it can be.

“In a way, you don’t say goodbye because once published, you revisit the story over and over again. You speak about it in interviews and when meeting people who have read the book. It is a lovely and very satisfying feeling when you see your work in print and in bookstores.”

How did you manage your research for both Sweet Offerings and Bitter-Sweet Harvest?

“For Sweet offerings I did a lot of research in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. For Bitter-Sweet Harvest, my research ranged from interviews to reference books. I also did a lot of research. I also did a lot of research for both books on-line.”

Do you belong to a writer’s group?

“I am not part of a writer’s group. I have friends who are writers, but they are not necessarily located in London.”

How do you think you fit into the Malaysian writing scene?

“I don’t think I fit into the Malaysian writing scene: I do not live in Malaysia. I feel, however, that those with a Malaysian heritage are best equipped to write about Malaysia because they see the country with the eyes of a local person. The most famous writers about Malaysia, at least for the world at large, are Somerset Maugham and Anthony Burgess, but they see it from an expatriate point of view and do not really get under the skin of the local people. I am glad to see many up-and-coming writers with Malaysian and Singaporean heritage.”

How do family and friends take you to being a novelist?

“I think my family and friends are not particularly surprised. They seem to take everything that I say I’m going to do as something that is given, whether it be writing a book on exercise or a novel.”

Tell us something about your library.

“I have lots and lots of books. I don’t have a library in the sense of a single room filled with books, although I have a tiny additional study area on a mezzanine floor. But almost every room holds books.”

What are some of your favourite novelists and books?

“My favourite authors include: Barbara Kingsolver, especially her novel, The Poisonwood Bible. I like Hilary Mantel – I found A Change of Climate fascinating. I enjoyed The Outcast by Sadie Jones. It was very tersely written. I love The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini. They were books that gave such insight into Afghanistan. I also love Anthony Trollope and was inspired by his penetrating views on the political, social and gender issues of his day.

What remain your present affliations with Malaysia?

“When I am in Malaysia, I visit relatives and friends. My mother died last year. Until then, I spent almost every day with her whenever I visited Malaysia. Recently I met up with old classmates from St Marys and we went as a group to Malacca. Eating and shopping are our favourite activities in Malaysia. When the children were small we tended to spend a lot of time in the island resorts of Tioman, Langkawi and Penang.”

…and surely the classic question of what makes for your favourite Malaysian cuisine?

“It is difficult to say which is my favourite Malaysian cuisine. I like Malay coconut rice – nasi lemak – as much as I like the Indian dosai bread dunked in dhall curry. If I have to point to a dish, it would be the nyonya spring rolls – popiah – and that in part is because it is a healthy dish since it consists mainly of vegetables packed into a thin roll made with rice batter and dipped in chilly sauce!”

What’s next on the cards for a writing project?

“I plan to write another novel. I have two ideas and have not decided which I should pursue. I will let you know when I am more certain.”

Further Reading:

i) An extract from Sweet Offerings

ii) An extract from Bitter-Sweet Harvest

Interlude

I shot this photograph four days ago while on a hurried visit to Dar es Salaam. Perhaps it helps that I tend to exaggerate the packing of my luggage, which frankly is never unpacked.  One of my first memories of Tanzania while on safari at the National Parks lay in the extremely vast skyline that seemed to claim no end. Last week, muted shades and blue hues watched over the fishermen who preyed the cold and somber Indian Ocean at the ferry port, on a surreal afternoon as this. Photograph © Susan Abraham

Writing Reflections 6 – When Slipping Essays into my Luggage

As I ready myself  for lightly-packed luggage in the coming week, I shall slip valuable essay collections from three inspiring, distinctive writers into the bottom of my  bag.  Namely, Other Colours by Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk, The Other comprising a series of memorable travel dispatches, penned by the late celebrated Polish war correspondent Ryszard Kapuściński and the stimulating, profound descriptions of novel-writing to be found in Umberto Eco‘s Confessions of a Young Novelist.  No doubt, these handsome translated editions will rest in my favourite airline’s efficient reliable cargo as silent, appeasing friends. There they will slumber for essential long-haul flights, that I must  now undertake with satisfying zeal, if I am to complete the writing of my book slowly of course, but surely.

Thus, I seal my errand with a smile and a caressing swing of the heart.

I am hoping that the documented essays and lecture series of Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk,  the exclusive travel commentaries especially of those pertaining to Africa and belonging to legendary journalist Ryzsard Kapuściński and the very determined Umberto Eco’s stubborn bold reflections in Confessions of a Young Novelist, will serve as loyal companions and devoted teachers, even as I pick these writers’ brains in between all the errands I must run, on my future novel’s behalf, as I play the enthusiastic role of wayfarer.

Already, I have completed Pamuk and Kapuściński – please see my thoughts on Pamuk here and  Kapuściński here -  but feel compelled to savour their essays once more with solemn repetition for just another magic round. Perhaps in the wistful idea that practise makes perfect. “Read again and again until you understand,” my conscience appears to plead. “Search the exciting ways a writer uses an essay to open windows even from something dark and uncompromising, even from a stuffy, locked house that from somewhere in an unsuspecting quagmire, a startling beauty glistens.”

Through  open heartfelt dialogues on what it takes to capture the essence of a writer’s heart and on reading the intellectuals mentioned, I feel that perhaps here once more, I am lost in the faded dialogues of my father and his clever friends mainly a firm and long-staying group of thinking individuals. Many eventually emigrated to Europe from Malaysia. Opportunities during the psychedelic era  that abounded in Holland, West Germany, England, Switzerland and Sweden were too good to miss.

I was blessed to have a childhood centred around the conversations of these men, where through  a dismal, masquerade role of pretending to fiddle with my Batman cards, I eavesdropped on countless astonishing stories that were gleaned from books and incredible media before these were  discussed, debated and argued upon.  I remember how in those days, Life and Reader’s Digest stayed all the rage.

Let me break away at this point to say that I travel this time not for the enjoyment of travel at all – although I do love the exhilaration of being in a plane  – but I fly this time round for work. I need to revisit the locations of my novel. I thought I had everything down pat but I am still not satisfied.  As a result, my trips promise to be both gratifying and exhausting.

Perhaps I romanticize too much but if such an attribute makes a celebration of life, than why not.

I feel for the moment properly transformed into my novel’s shadow. I playact its mother and guardian angel. My novel is the child running blissfully forth and I must keep up with the trail, panting of course and sweating all the way that befits my anxious, protective manner.

What awaits me are sessions of even more picture-taking than my tidy stack  for  references presently allow for absolute detailing, the  recording and making of  memory notes ie. what-once-was and what-now-is.

Then there are the mirages in my head of  houses, shops, streets, strange alleyways, streams, people, stalls, restaurants, coffee-shops, all sorts.  I feel as if my novel is the awakening friendly giant and I, its happy errand-boy.  I birth it, live, breathe, shape, launder, paint and polish it to perfection.  In fact, I possess such enchanting thoughts about this new subject in my life, that frankly, it deserves a post all its own.

But why this obsession with location?

I think that any genuine traveller who writes a novel, would desire this. If I cannot sketch descriptions vividly enough with which to make the reader feel that she has  climbed into my fictitious bedroom and mulled over an entertaining poster on the wall, strolled my colourfully drawn streets while munching spiced peanuts and staring at a sly old  fortune teller settled on a crowded walkway with his noisy green parrot, or for that matter, stirred a mug of Milo say, in an aunt’s rambling  kitchen which offered the delicious whiff of an appetising fish curry…a kitchen that was built after the Second World War and tucked away in an oil palm estate in a small Malaysian town and where greedy cats waited impatiently at the back door; if I cannot manage all of these… than I have failed as a traveller. I have served my vocation poorly. Ah…I can hear you say that I am being too hard on myself but I can tell you now, that this stays a thrilling hard-on-myself venture.

This brings me back to Umberto Eco which I shall talk more about in subsequent posts as I am still dipping furiously into this essays,  but when Eco wrote Island of the Day, he went to the South Seas, to where his story was set. He says, “I naturally went to the South Seas, to the precise geographic location, where the book is set, to see the colours of the water and sky at different hours of the day, and the tints of the fishes and corals.” When Eco wrote about ships, he studied drawings on ships of that period but also measured the exact length of cabins and cubby-holes. He wanted to know how long it would take a character in the ship he had fashioned with his pen full of labyrinths and mazes, to move from one room to the other. During the time, Eco wrote about monks and monasteries, day after day, he pretended that he was living in a kind of somber enchanted castle.  How clear to me that with his theories as helpful needles,  Eco wove large chunks of his heart, into all of his stories. During the creation of his novels, he did not walk with his tales but inside them.

 Now, this brings me rather eagerly to a sound mention of Edward Docx‘s The Devil’s Garden, a novel published by Picador and longlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2007. The Guardian described Docx’s accomplishment as having followed in Conrad’s footsteps. I was held spellbound on listening recently to The Guardian’s podcast on Interviews with Travel Writers. An endearing favourite, Colin Thubron was the first to be interviewed but while I stayed fascinated with much of what Thubron had to add, I was somewhat mesmerized by Docx himself.  From having travelled widely in the past, the author-scientist conceded how important it was to him, to visit any location that adhered to his fiction. Despite the world being at one’s fingertips  through the outstanding features of Google Earth for instance, Docx reaffirmed that nothing could replace a writer volunteering to be present at any specific location that formed for the said writer’s plot.  The key to a winning form, he asserted, was to make a novel as authentic as possible for the reader.

Naturally, I had to buy his book and was relieved that I managed to purchase a copy this afternoon. I shall read it first thing tomorrow morning with a particular slant towards studying the imagery, descriptions, episodes and encounters that helped make Docx’s novel, a distinctive one.  I shall report back on one of my following posts.

The essays I have chosen to pack away, will work to educate and assist me like the presence of old faraway friends.  All will  talk with me over coffee, teach me in the classroom, point to valuable references in the library and taking lingering walks with me on the many rambling streets like postcards locked into a canvas of interesting forgotten places.

What is presently so amazing stays the expansion of my already eclectic world.  This, representing a sparkling prism of many different passions netted into one. I find now, that in writing my book, I am introduced to a broader scope of different worlds than the many, many writers and books I have already known.  Suddenly, there are oh… so many more…  Like a mythical abyss, an  entrancing Alice-in-Wonderland burrow or a surreal trail of galaxies, my own multitude of welcoming doors too stay eternal. – susan abraham

Interlude – A Preamble I Wrote on Ghosts

Here is a little preamble that I wrote to introduce an assortment of Malaysian ghost stories I sketched in the last few years  and which I’ve been meaning to compile into a little collection. Still haven’t got round to it. I share so little of original writing on my blog as it is and  would very much like to place this extract here, for a change.

Caption: This display picture was taken 85 years ago and is incidentally reported from a true documented sighting in England. For more information, please see true ghost tales.

Preamble
by Susan Abraham

“Do not beguile the spirit of the ordinary as it sits upon your face, dead and with vengeance in its place. I may speak of both  good and evil but take muted delight in the pleasures of the saints.

You will ask me if this is all true. I shall wait no more than a single minute, handcuffed with my own distorted halo and answer with a voice so damaged, so broken and so low, it cuts at my throat with bleeding and with relish. I speak as vaguely as a severe Gregorian rasp; myself in a moment of terror, barely breathing and barely seeing. To protect myself, I may from time to time, walk slouched with bent head, my scalp dressed in a veil or hood. I do not wish to be recognized by the invisible. I do not wish to be seen by enemies that slyly purport themselves to be friends.

You will ask me if this is all true. Where my bladed answer may have failed to separate my watchful face from my body that my blood be poured with wretched humanity into a pail, my answer will form a kiss on your breath or a touch that mocks your sigh and you may have felt for that moment, loved and held by someone far away, whose distance you cannot measure, whose cunning wiles you failed to envision and by whose powerful eye, yours is surely blinded.

I can only propose gently if you long to see a ghost or know one… Do not be impatient and the embrace of the darkness will come in its right moment and through the right coffin. There may have waited a withered dry soul of a corpse called upon,  just to stalk you, by accident or through fate. It brings with it, bizarre consequences. Unless you see a ghost, you cannot begin to decipher the essence of its personality or solve the rigmaroles of its terrifying possibilities. Do not try. You will be the loser for it.

In reading this in discomfort, you may long for a beloved mother who fed you food as a child with her heart in your spoon but then she was gone and you saw her no more. Catch the silver spoon. I have it in my hand. A ghost stole it from your bedroom where you were a child and were not looking. I in turn, stole it from the ghost in a moment of its weakness when angels were called to battle. Which ghost you ask? The ghost that visited your first nightmare, I answer while infused with an old wisdom.

Oh if you could only see me smile that the world may choose to be so foolish and believe in nothing when ghosts curl about the place like dead kittens. They stole the world when the world was not looking but how now they long for the smell, warmth and sensory abilities of the human body, which they themselves are badly starved of. And so I must warn you with sisterly solidarity now and again. Be careful. Always be careful what you wish for. Do not strum them a guitar chord. They care not for serenades, flowers or violins. They want only your blood and your body. They want only to enter you through a weakness or a flaw; through ill-health or a bout of depression.

Once you see a ghost, you will always look one in the eye until the last sunset arrives for when the spirit of death must collect your soul without question or delay. On your part, the careless act for having wished a knowledge so dark, that it mutilates every childhood innocence can no longer be undone.

Now, I call you to come, come then quickly and catch the silver spoon. Your mother is gone and in her place, a witch has come.

Read my secret letter that tells you the story of ghosts which stand out like strange dreams. In my few stories, you may observe scenes that are poetic, black, deep and mysterious. But they are not dreams, I tell you. They are real. In writing this, I remember the incubus.

The kiss or should I say, hiss of the incubus is terrifying. It reveals no definite form but instead commands a wisp of cloud, smoke or shadowed cloak. It will dog your footsteps teasing you with invisible dancing moments. You will sense the stalker and even your spine will tremble as if it may have been made of rubber and not bone.

If in hating you the incubus prepares for an attempted strangulation or suffocation, then be warned that there is no lesser evil when dealing with this force. It has the strength of 10 men. The apparition will scratch you out of delight. It will attempt to kiss you while stamping on your heartbeat.

What stays your only hope may be the healing energies of light as any sensible New Age devotee will tell you and which I must add in some awkwardness, that I have discovered for myself to be true. Light would be any primitive sorcerer’s poison. Light holds the charismatic power of an unsung and unheard Gregorian chant. It is your key to a renewed life if you are at that very moment, in the process of dying at the hands of the haunting incubus. This reminds me too, that when faced with the devil, may in a religious moment, call for a divine source. Believe and you may be just lucky to find one. The incubus will flee as swiftly as it came.

Of course, this is no more evident than a country famed for its thick wild forestation and its seas in the Far East. A country shelled in its oceanic beauty but housed with the angry skeletons of dead buried trees still rotting from plantations long gone and which still hold the smell of the incubus. To have been born in Malaysia with the third eye is to have suffered the most painful and rigorous order of different hauntings and apparitions.

A country. My country. Malaysia. New world Malaysia. Old world Malaya. Rose, Rose, I Love You Malaya. Remember that unsuspecting sixties hit? The ghosts are still there, quiet and hidden. They never went away.

Once more, you will ask me if this is all true. I with a sudden sharp turn of my head will speak so softly, you can barely hear it catch the heart of your spirit…that if your destiny wills… than the answer is yes.

************

What if you don’t believe anything of what I have felt compelled to pen down on paper like bloodied scrawls. Then I salute you. Perhaps you were a fortunate one.

You held no candlesticks, crossed no shadows at night and faced no holes in the deep open ground.

You tasted only the ready, materialistic consciousness of your daily aptitudes open to the idea of affluence and adventure. You never suffered from the folly of extra intuitions or premonitions or God forbid, any hint of a belief in the supernatural.

You prayed without reasoning or acceptance, you prayed with the careless exuberance of expecting nothing in return.

Your eyes may never have betrayed you. You may never have conceived the misfortune to point susceptibility to a firm explanation for that unforgettable needle-prick tingle that had without warning, suddenly brushed brutally against your sad and sallow skin, although it was once as fresh as dew coated with the soft safe carpet of baby talc.

Have you experienced the nasty privilege – while special it may be but cruel too in its taunting way – an alluring perfumed smell, so musky as sandalwood or jasmine, the closest really that I could ever think of bringing my eternally horrific gifts to you, scents and smells that may have wafted down from the trees or the breeze that went before you like a dash of lightning competing mercilessly with your shivers. Never let on the chill in your spine if in the event that such a tragedy should occur. Say nothing and hurry on walking. Walk to somewhere, anywhere, but turn the other way.

Do not let the apparition that masquerades itself with a harlequin mask for a face and the breeze for a gown and musk for the taste of its sharp and ageless skin, dress you with its chill. Of course, I’d have to say that it all begins from infanthood. As a child, you will know already, swiftly and without doubt, the strange terrifying mirrors of your consciousness; it may bypass the ordinary and retrieve instead the mysterious as if it were an important package delivered to your hand. Shadows in your dreams. Names of people and faces coming to you night after night. Than already, you would have known.

Now, I can only plead with you.

You knew your subconscious before you knew your parents and your friends. Be careful then. Once more be careful is all I can say. The subconscious inside you knows every ghost and angel by name. Its vision is omnipotent and deeper than the depths of the earth or taller if you dare, then the height of the galaxies that stand in towering silence before us. I exaggerate nothing.

But all the more I am curious.

Why did your subconscious spirit not demand that you should be chosen to meet a timeless spirit? Are you properly impressionable to the fragilities of the human soul and its layers of unexplained discomfort not yet defined?

Maybe you were one of the lucky ones, preferring to perform a showbiz act for a miserly disposition of the unknown. One only knows that the present dangers are enough to keep us occupied. So tell me and be straight-faced about it if you dare; have you seen a ghost? Do you know if you have? If I may at all be so kind as to give a clue, then the answer already lies inside you. It is remembered and eternal.

Won’t the subconscious be your strange and trusted friend? You see, it is mine! I am the observer of the incubus. I am the ghostly mortal able to see the immortalized through an extra pair of eyes. In Malaysia, they say such people as myself own the third eye. And now, I must go. I can feel a hand heavy on my shoulder. Soon, that hypnotic touch will float upon my skin. Once again, another has come.” - © susan abraham

Writing Reflections 5 – Something about my Poetry

I am presently working on a collection of heartwarming poetry. These draw upon the introspective and mischevious episodes connected to water, ice and snow, with a particular penchant for the severe winter of last November and December which I was thrown into with relish, while  in Dublin, Ireland. It was a time when my subconscious spirit bowed in ecstasy to inspiration.

While stranded for days in my apartment, I enthusiastically produced a series of prolific musings and rhymes, for hours in a row. I love Nature and landscapes speak to me so well through sedate pastoral reflections. I have always stayed reverential to the subject of water…the oceans…rivers, brooks, streams, a running tap…a working well… So many of my glorious childhood memories are infused by the distant rhythms of cold and noisy splashings on skin,  from the nostalgic recollections of old-fashioned bathrooms in Malaysia.  My mind’s eye still journals the forgotten mirrored puddles from where my plastic pink fishes eagerly sought their temporary getaway after a thunderstorm.  I still remember the hazy, scenic views of faraway ships at the nearby Morib seaside also.  Here, my father would gaily drive me to the coast at a time close to departing sunsets, from when I was  as young as four.

********

Due to an unfortunate circumstance with someone last Christmas and the start of the year, I halted promotions for my first little book of alternative verse and prose although I could have attempted a buoyant start. Still, several months have now passed and that disappointing episode together with its accompanying memory, have been thankfully banished, into an obscure time-frame of the past, complete with its vague, murky space.

Thus, I was heartily encouraged the other day, to view without any probing on Google; the number of international online booksellers that continue to pop up, to faithfully market Call the Ships of Dar-es-Salaam. I am quite surprised as a result. I was also thrilled to see my title  on Amazon’s brand-new Spanish site.

I am fortunate that my book is displayed in every country so far that hosts an Amazon site. I have observed that this isn’t always the case for every author and especially not all Malaysian authors who may have been either published by a Kuala Lumpur publisher or self-published. I may not be in worldwide bookstores but wait for me with eventual traditional publishing and I shall get there. Still, on the worldwide web, I am in several continents and countries. I am at a bookstore in Dublin just across the road from Trinity College and my title can be ordered  at the Customer Services section of any bookstore from the UK.  The most important thing is that the book stays  available to the public-at-large and thanks to a marvellous print-on-demand feature, can be swiftly printed and packaged, for any urgent call.

Since this paperback with its excellent quality was produced by a small English publisher in England and is considered hardly conventional  for mainstream publishing, I am responsible as a result, for any dismal sales in question.  But at least the exposure and promising global markets with their aptitude to distribution, both continue with willingness,  to tempt me to begin promotions anytime I want. I think that in all earnestness, I have reached a new chapter in my life where I am now keen to perform this venture with  refreshed vigour and without looking back to past events. I have become superbly self-contained with books, travel and films luring me with cheerful bullying tendency into a futuristic era and transforming my vast perceptions on life and human character, while diligently serving as endearing teachers.

Interlude

Listen to the water fall upon your skin and from where it flows,

like a soft thin veil, then what a fantastic choice…

your lips grazed, moist and bathed in light

as you wear the ocean to dinner tonight,

My, how becoming your fashion sense. Bewitched…

I watch you dazed and swimming to your plate,

The pitcher awaits a mermaid’s fate!

Words by © Susan Abraham

A short tribute to my Zanzibar tour guide & friend who drowned in the catastrophic ferry disaster off Dar es Salaam

Caption: Ferry crossing off the mainland port of Dar-es-Salaam.  Photograph: © Susan Abraham.

         

Lanky, slightly reserved, polite and soft-spoken, that was my Zanzibar friend, Salum Abdallah.  Salum had a toddler son and thrived  for years as a professional tour guide.

Considering the island’s conservative Muslim culture, Salum was used to foreigners and their liberal ways. He enjoyed taking tourists through the routine of the town’s ancient history and architectural heritage sites that made for a former slave colony.  He was unassuming but well-versed with all that went on.

The council problems, the sudden power cuts, the high instances of police corruption he often had to deal with when manouvering his Land Cruiser into the faraway resorts and forests on rough dirt roads. Zanzibar stayed the poorer cousin to Tanzania’s mainland amenities. Life was often hard for its farmers, shopkeepers and fisherfolk.

Without tourism, the island would be finished. Sometimes, political disagreements would mean that rubbish stayed uncollected for days on end or that water supply ran short without warning. Yet, hardly one to complain, Salum banked on an infectious sense of humour for the odd joke.

 A wry smile, a shoulder shrug or a shake of the head was the most he offered in the way of complaint!  The pleasant guide remained thankful for a decent working class life and took everything in his stride.

What I especially loved about Salum was his shy accent. The English-talking Zanzibar resident as a whole,  almost always owns a lilting accent to a seemingly rushed torrent of English words. This commands in itself,  a strange, dreamlike quality I rarely come across when I hear a speaking voice.

Hence, Salum was no different. So much tenderness appeared to be alluded to his speech. Salum spoke fast and bearing that hypnotic sing-song tone that would easily subdue an accent I am now far more used to in everyday life

… the whimsical Irish dialect.

What fun we had the last time, Salum’s  cousin Lewa Katana and myself took the Fast Ferry Catamaran to meet him. We arrived halfway through a misty morning and spent the whole day together. I watched the funny episodes of greedy traffic policemen trying a bribe or two off the ever-patient Salum.

Still, these incidents would command a colourful tale of their own.

We pretended to be lost as we snaked our way along the winding maze that made for Zanzibar’s quaint Stone Town.  We strolled into irresistible bazaars, intimate cafes and bustling marketplaces. We sat on park benches overlooking the smooth creamy coastline. We gazed at the idyllic Zanzibar waters shelled by a palette of tranquil and bewitching aquamarine shades.

I had been to peer at the old prisons, dungeons and  churches on earlier trips.

Now, I sat content to spin dreams.

Then we went once more as we always did to the Spice Islands where Salum’s friend, Fernando who named himself such after a devout admiration for the Spanish, waited for us. Fernando and his group of friends were dressed up in harlequin colours to ensure a memorable fancy time.  Clownish and lovable, Fernando had us cracked up with big grins, while highlighting explicit sexual secrets that were attributed to discreet portions of the special spices.  These were said to be craved by  breastfeeding mothers, lustful maidens and hopeful spinsters  on the island.

Naturally, there was enough room for whispered bawdy jokes, if not that sudden peal of laughter.

Salum had promised to take me to Pemba, another lesser-known island off the United Republic of Tanzania, famed for its scuba-diving and fishing. I learnt so much from Salum..the rivalries and fierce competitive spirit for instance that was often evident between the people of Zanzibar and Pemba, so as to secure more favour from the Tanzanian Government.

A few days ago, an overloaded ferry off the mainland port of Dar es Salaam failed to battle strong currents and sank.  I recognised the ferry or rather, catamaran. I often saw it sail past the bay windows of my hotel suite where I always stayed in Dar. There is  something very resilient about the older ferries and the industrious people that clamber upon the ramshackle vehicles…the mothers…the working market women and fishermen’s wives. The childen going to school, the hawkers, traders and the odd backpacker. Sometimes, even the wealthy swanned in with their stylish four-wheelers or tour drivers with their safari vans.

This ferry was on its way to Pemba and had picked up hordes of Zanzibar folk beforehand after leaving Dar es Salaam harbour. 250 people drowned and I believe up to this moment, that divers continue to search the turbulent waters for another 300 missing bodies. I thought of Salum and prayed that everything was well.

This morning, I was woken to a cell phone bleep that announced a hasty email from Lewa.

It said  to my horror, that Salum having boarded the ill-fated ferry, had drowned. Remember our friend who took us to  Jozan Forest to see the Colombus Monkeys in Zanzibar, Lewa wrote.  He has died, Susan. He is among the 240 people who have died in the ferry that sunk early saturday morning.

If I’m not mistaken, the ferry was carrying locals and a Zanzibar friend I knew well had embarked it.

It was a strange way for life to have conveyed a  secret essence to my destiny, while leaping upon my downcast mood. I did not realise until this tragic incident how closely I had aligned myself to a completely foreign culture in Tanzania. I had walked straight into the hearts of its people. I had not done the tourist thing.  I had not visited Africa just to buy a T-shirt which would advertise I had been. I had not made brief use of the adventure sports and left.  But I had returned time and time again to a culture that bore absolutely no bearing to all that I was ever familiar with. And now, I had made real friends and pronounced roots. For news of Salum to reach me, I considered it a miracle.

How often when we travel do we know what happens to the people who make a mark on our lives and yet we leave so casually behind. But I know. Yes, I do.

Goodbye Salum Abdallah. I shall remember you with great fervour and longing when I next step into the shores of Zanzibar. RIP. – susan abraham

Note

September 7, 2011

Dear Readers,

I find it difficult to post at this moment in time. I’m working on a few major writing projects  and stay resolute about completing them at the soonest. Also, I shall  be flying shortly. As some of my journeys prove long-haul flights – and while I have long immersed myself in a nomadic life – the days ahead may still  prove gruelling.

I’ll be back as soon as I can within the next week or so.

Wild Mulberries by Iman Humaydan Younes

Introduction:

A powerful sense of poetic justice fringes the narrator Sarah’s tale, in piquant moments of a an awakened womanhood, much to the reader’s delight as Iman Humaydan Younes offers a deft composition to her 130-page novella, Wild Mulberries (£7.99), layered with tranquil reckonings.

An elegant work of Lebanese fiction, the title would be translated from the Arabic by Michelle Hartman and  published by Arabia Books London in 2010. Younes’s first novel was called B as in Beirut. There are different renditions to the present title’s cover, but photographed here is the intriguing one in my collection.

Now, this story owes its settings to the lull of a 1930s Lebanon when English expatriates and missionaries appeared to hold their respective influences, in a detached polite manner in their dealings with the Lebanese population.  In Wild Mulberries, they excel in an  uneasy truce; playing characters bearing clipped secondary roles as that of a priest, teacher and elderly expatriate couple, but  in a somewhat tragic classical sense,  rather than anything remotely resembling obvious political connotations.

Far from a narration that spells the harsh reminder of a painful history that I have often encountered with translated Arabic literature, Younes strives painstakingly to summon the indefatigable human spirit on behalf of each of her characters, to resurrect them perhaps, to some form of personal redemption, bearing a wounded poet’s heart.

In Wild Mulberries, the author’s quest is to  set off a series of oppressed emotions, seeping off a dysfunctional  family’s  straitlaced rituals and rigid philosophies.  This, onto a carousel of added complexities.  All the while,  rash decisions and puzzling consequences are swung up, with which to snake out the  tale’s eventual hopeful outcome.  Thus, the order of a forgotten time, yet an era ready to herald change,  is reflected as the novel’s dour  melancholy mood throughout.

Story:

Sarah, a young woman of a temperate spirit, lives in an isolated village, Ayn Tahoon,  that  hinges on  various surreal landscapes. Not too far away is the mysterious sea, holding skeletons to her family’s closet. She lives with her grim austere father, a fading sheikh, who prides himself on little else but the art of raising silkworms  and raking up a happy businessman’s profit, with which he has promised his devoted helper, Ibrahim, that in light of a fortune, Ibrahim would find himself betrothed to Sarah’s aunt, a rather cantankeous heavy-bodied woman.  The aunt is worried about the family’s status and that Sarah may well ruin their reputation by following  in the impetuous footsteps of a careless mother’s abandonment of wifely and maternal duties.

Meanwhile, for two months every year before the merchants arrive, the sheikh’s household is transformed into a sprawling nesting ground for  cocoons. The world stops  as the worms thrive.  He is  utterly obsessed and  fastidous  about his occupation turning up as an infuriating bully for his family and reluctant labourers.  Thus, the origin of the title Wild Mulberries.

Sarah is a young woman with a good head on her shoulders. She doesn’t provoke mischief and as  the narration  is itself, drummed up in the first person; dutifully finds her silent place in the household. In various scenes, she wears  thoughtful observations and masquerades the fly on the wall. We are drawn to her thoughts and constantly caressed and moulded by searching questions, as a journey to the novel’s end.

The protagonist is most concerned with her missing mother who abandoned the family 12 years before, with nary a sign or word to anyone in Sarah’s geographical world. Sarah’s mother with her Argentian roots,  is the sheikh’s second wife. She hears rumours that perhaps her father had cheated her mother out of a rightful inheritance. Perhaps, her mother had found a lover, returned to Argentina and there was even suspicion that her real clandestine father may well have been an Englishman.  There were rumours that a gentleman who drowned in the sea had had an affair with her mother.   The answers mill around her head and throughout the novel, Sarah wills herself to find the mother she never knew but desires badly.

Meanwhile, Sarah has to cope with the spinster aunt who is her father’s brother. Her aunt is scornful at her mother for having run away  and calls Sarah, a ‘cursed child’. The aunt nurtures her moments of celebration and subdued joys but as the seasons flee with no sign of a marriage to Ibrahim on the horizon  – the sheikh has tricked them both – becomes increasingly intolerant.  The aunt’s hair turns silver and by now, Sarah is convinced that her longsuffering relative, secretly hates her father.

 Sarah is also adoring of her elder half-brother who pronounces zero patience with his aunt, hates his father and longs to go abroad. Meanwhile he seeks his escapism in ways that do not involve religion. He becomes known as the wayward playboy. There is almost hope as an English schoolteacher falls in love with him. However, his carelessness at guarding a romance ensures through a hasty dramatic episode, that the fragile relationship is forever at an end. He will scream that his father framed him and destroyed his life. Of course, it is old news that the sheikh had no intention of allowing his son to go abroad, in the first place.

There is also a neighbour, a wilful seductive woman Muti’a who adds colour and spunk to the storyline with her candour and sensual mischief. And then there is Karim, Sarah’s brother’s best friend who eventually marries her and removes his bride from the village. But of course, the novel has a way to go yet with its fair share of unavoidable tragedy, resignation, acceptance and because this is clearly Younes’ call… serenity.

Thoughts:

 The literary premise to Wild Mulberries is refreshing and enlightening. Younes draws up a meticulous architecural plan of the family’s haraa (old style Arab house with large long rooms and high ceilings).  She then uses her protagonist Sarah to take the reader on a  leisurely hospitable tour of the rooms and gardens, in what may possibly be an endearing game of blindman’s buff.  Each space and corner holds a separate astonishing personal history, drama and an individual’s nemesis.

In fact, Younes offers this invitation at a fictitious family’s strange legacy, as an interesting approach and inventive structure, with which to begin a novel.

At first, there doesn’t seem to be a plot. Each member of the family plays their ordinary roles, what with  plodding about their daily tasks. There  may be a bit of a giggle here or a touch of consternation there.  Everything moves steadily and quietly with hardly a hint of a leaf wafting about the place.  Suddenly without warning, conflicts arise. In this aspect, the theme of a personal philosophical yearning for identity and freedom, overrides the plot.

It is almost as if the novel is a gentle meandering brook. The water rushes on and the riveted reader – as I was -  is soothed and lulled by its soft sounds.  In an abrupt fashion, there appears to be a strong current. Perhaps there was a storm or a flood. The water becomes violent. There is hint at a nasty disaster.  Still, before long, every ruffled ripple is lullabied to a hushed restoration once again.

 I felt that the novella held a spiritual voice without its sermon. It coaxed perceptions, hanging on to a philosopher’s gentle counselling gait without arrogance. The words to the tale formed a baby,  that Younes herself cradled in her arms. The character Sarah and her accompanying brood were amiable pilgrims, heading into the unknown.

Indeed, they were annoyed at each other at the best of times  and also had to cope with tensed undercurrents featuring racial and religious unrest, from a judgemental society.  Yet, through flaws and hurried decisions, each character yearned a tender absolution to the self.

Wild Mulberries would be excellent for bookclubs with  various ponderings on personal quests that seek freedom and identity in the face of cultural oppression, universal fears and risks. It would also serve as an enchanting introduction into translated Arabic literature, for the enthusiastic reader, craving a plot’s romantic spirit. - susan abraham

  Caption: In albumen print, a young Lebanese woman in festive dress and photographed by The Bonfils Family in Beirut. More details are available from the splendid Frank H. McClung Museum

Further Reading:

a) An interview by Qantara.de with Iman Huymaydan Younes

b) Samir Kassir’s The History of Beirut – Fayard Paris, 2005

c) a magnificent photo gallery depicting Lebanon’s history, that exhibits its scenic landscapes, heritage sites, political and social values, may be viewed at Habeeb.com

Writing Reflections 4 – Embracing Malaysia

Dear Readers,

I changed my blog template as I found too many writers using the same one and it didn’t feel all that special after that. Perhaps as writers, we are more alike than we realise.  I also found that with present evolving ambitions, my one-month old blog would turn out  to be a work-in-progress that until now, couldn’t settle for a resolution on what it would represent.

At first, I desired only to focus on my love for literature from the Tropics and the Middle-East.  Then while in Dublin, I found myself falling head-over-heels in love with Malaysia once more – the land of my birth – once I began planning for and sketching a novel on my childhood.

I began to view my country in a new light. I appreciated the intrepid cultural communities that lay within three or four major races. I celebrated the memories of a glorious childhood. I was thankful for the democracy and freedom that a Malaysian passport often  afforded its user when alluded to travel, unlike several other regions where in having to secure one, its resident would possibly experience painful obstacles through red tape and countless delays. And because Malaysia is a country full of colour and light, I appreciated being enriched by its incredible blessings that while having silently shrouded me from infancy, demanded no reward.   You could reflect on cuisine, shopping, beaches, forests, high-tech infrastructure…and my country has it all.  I began to cherish all my old Malaysian loves from  a couple of months ago with far greater intensity than I could have remembered over the years.

In so doing, I immediately succumbed to the nation’s beloved history and literature.   However, as I focussed on the reads, I found myself at odds with several introspective thoughts that adhered itself to my renewed life as a writer. I began searching myself in  poignant ways and I allowed for a new series of burgeoning passions  to rise from within my current flamboyant ones.  All collided happily in my heart.  I became aware that I had turned in recent years from a blogger who writes to a writer who blogs.

My efforts at novel-writing has encapsulated so much. It colours my days and fills me with overwhelming emotions especially at astonishing recollections. I think that at this point of time, I am torn between the idea of staying internet savvy and drawing attention to myself.  I write best as an introvert.  I love the silence and am one of the few individuals I know who can derive comfort from aloneness. Saying this, I turn into an extrovert when it comes to travel. I have friends in different countries…a motley crowd of affectionate personalities that first played the role of business acquaintances.  But if I want to produce my best work, I have to be selfish with time and solitary endeavours. I have for the moment, pulled away from Facebook, am producing a dismal attendance rate on Twitter and decided also against other tempting social sites. I have temporarily drawn the line at thinking up comments or indulging in various online discussions. I really need to conserve my energy so as to write. And what do you know…the world failed to come crashing down upon my shoulders.  Also, I am practical enough to recognise that my absence from various social networking sites when measured against the monumental scope of a digital era; will draw no raised brows.

I always think that when I’ve accomplished enough, I’d have a proper website. For the moment, this blog holds a template that would endear a few loyal readers to me but at present, I’m not a blogger seeking a vast readership. I just need to get over the novel-writing first, complete my storybook, get it out there for the world and than return to perhaps, a broader scope of things when I can once more afford that time.  The old blog template seemed a little larger than life and definitely drew attention.

I will be travelling shortly but not as in travel for travel.  On the contrary, I’d consider it work since I need for my own peace of mind, to revisit the locations of  my novel…just so that I get my detailing of descriptions absolutely top, top.  I find the thought alone, engaging and enjoyable.  I shall be purchasing many more Asian and Arabic reads which I shall talk about here.  I do relish this valuable space with which to share my views on books and films…firm hedonistic pleasures that they are. - susan abraham

Writing Reflections 3 – Into the Heart of Travel

Note: This is not a review but for the fact that I have merely made a fleeting reference to having read The Other by the celebrated war correspondent, Ryszard Kapuscinski, as an impressive reminder of my present writing journey.

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I am the accidental individual whose memories and ambitions stay locked by a tender old-world flavour that has now returned to befriend me like a freed prisoner, from somewhere far. I am moved but startled at the faint whiff of remembrance of what used to be.  Perhaps this explains why I continue to wear an air of puzzlement. Ever since I made the decision to return to creative writing with renewed dedication,  a restless forbearance hankers. It stays slightly perfumed at the crumpled edges of my waiting spirit.

Through the nicest form of laziness that perhaps dragged on for a longer time than I had envisioned, I waited for that sacred call in my hidden heart. In these last months, my romance with writing  has returned like a forsaken lover to once more claim my affections and diamond me up for a beckoning aisle. I have been happily wooed and my old talent applauded.  After a decade of silence, I have once more returned to pen and paper.

Hence, perhaps someday, I shall outline detailed descriptions about the magnetic writing charisma of Poland’s legendary decorated journalist, the late Ryszard Kapuscinski whose acknowledged writings combined high literature and colourful reportage with a famous, striking flair. In lapping up his precious essays this afternoon, I sought nostalgia with a sudden dogged tenacity while still misty-eyed. I began to celebrate far more secrets about my own travel accomplishments than I may have dared think about before.

Decades ago while fashioning nothing short of a  meticulous work  in engrossing dual roles both as  reporter and author, Kapunscinski took the road less travelled to dangerous regions worldwide where his courage as a true-bred adventurer was often called into play.  With a dramatic dedication, the photographer and poet happily churned out mesmerising features on revolutions, despots and coups. Kapunscinski was said  to have left his heart forever in Africa especially in the vein of Tanzania, the Congo and Angola.

Africa would be  the continent that eventually brought him lasting  recognition as a a writer of distinction. Africa with its eternal romanticism that I know only too well, proved a beloved lingering passion and a faithful companion that stayed with Ryszard Kapuscinski to the last.  Sadly, cancer would claim him  on January 23, 2007 while he was still 74.  Perhaps, it is a fitting celebratory tribute to declare that Gabriel García Márquez, proved one of the late writer’s closest friends.

Today, I pored through Kapunscinski’s series of collected lectures called The Other, published a year before his death.  The passionate lectures revealed Kapuscinski’s feverish intentions to pursue the role of the individual in its exactness when meeting with cultural regions and peoples outside the said individual’s familiar territory. In questioning intentions and misgivings that stretched from goodwill to distrust and from ancient philosophical eras to current digital revolutions, Kapunscinski plunges into society’s disturbing protocol  on travel, politics, history and social aptitudes with communities, neighbouring states and the world at large.

I was delighted that through his various writings and as something of a wanderer myself; that I could relate instantly to Ryszard Kapuscinski.  I suspect it was Neil Ascherson in the very first paragraph of his Introduction where he reminds the reader that towards the end of The Other, Kapuscinski would quote the great Polish-born pioneer of social anthropology, Bronislaw Malinowski where in his book, Argonauts of the West Pacific, Malinowski wrote that, ‘to judge something, you have to be there.’

This line was what graciously offered a valuable illumination to the new personality I had acquired…one so aptly moulded by travel.

I’ve discovered that in having fastidiously sketched  out the shaping of my stories; that in spite of recent elaborate notes, snapshots and having already visited the same scenes repeatedly a few months ago, that I must now return again. This will explain why I must once more beg a sojourn away from Ireland, pack my bags and catch a flight in the coming weeks to go back once more, to the places where my stories are based. I am thrilled at the very idea that as an artist, I am allowed to take liberties with my artistic pursuits and have the opportunity on a platter at the ready so as  to revisit the old haunts of my fictitious characters.

I am quite sure that for this particular book,   I could already write just as well a the minute.  Yet intuition tells me that if I return once more, I would pen my chapters better. I need to be where my stories and characters are waiting for me. I need my feet to touch the ground they walk on. I need to breathe the same air, eat from a nearby table at a restaurant, nap in a smilar  room next door. I need to live out fragments of my characters’ lives, in the flesh. Enough at least, to taste an atmosphere.

A strong sense flourishes within me that I have begun to make two parallel journeys…one is of the obvious in that it may be afforded to the writing of the novel but the second one is of a remarkable spiritual blend. I am walking once more into the past…I am searching myself like never before…asking questions of why I choose to live my life in a certain way for instance and what led me up to this present moment in Dublin. How did I become me? Where was I before in the imaginings of the heart? Where am I now? Is the road from the past clear? Did my past make me where I may now return to it and watercolour up incredible new shades for those silent elongated shadows? How did I become so fearless and rooted in the present when I was once so timid and often allowed my inclinations to be  relegated to episodes of the past? I find the essays of Orhan Pamuk and Ryszard Kapuscinski both remarkable in that their distinctive instropections allow my individualism to take flight.

In using both Pamuk’s and Kapunscinski’s lectures as textbook material in which to  search my open heart in an otherwise closed mirror, while I am ordinarily enough writing a book, I now observe with some fascination, that I have become an industrious academic student to the self. - susan abraham

Reading Reflections 2

Caption: A few of my treasured new titles: Rosie Thomas of The Kashmir Shawl is a proflic English novelist of many years. Her stories reflect the realistic mishaps of human relationships, complicated love affairs and often, a deep poignancy at the end. The Kashmir Shawl sketches a saga that ties a plot from Wales to an older decade in Kashmir, India. I bought The Manual of Darkness which confesses to an enigmatic plot that appears terribly animated… what with its vivid sense of magical realism and the use of the English Language in particular.  I dub it to be highly eloquent & beautiful – a bit like gazing dreamily at the swing of a tranquil oceanfront. The Oracle of Stamboul spells  enthralling historical fiction on early Turkey & I also ordered and received The Private World of Ottaman Women from Saqi Books London, with which to compliment and broaden my reading on The Oracle of Stamboul. A Vision of Loveliness harks back to the era of Britain’s swinging sixties and feels very much in the vein of a favourite novelist, Lynn Reid Banks’ The L-Shaped Room & its sequel The Backward Shadow. Of course, I need to read it first but this novel contains the actress Joan Collins’ thumbs-up. Interestingly, it also reminds me of a famous London cult film, A Taste of Honey. 

Dear Readers,

My apologies at failing to post in this blog for the last few days. I shall have a rollicking good post for you within a day or so.

My schedule has been packed to the rafters with a list of outdoor pursuits; not helped at all  by my determination still clinging boldly to what may be left  of the half-light at nights and also to  the swift fading hours of a somewhat vague summer, here in Ireland.  I’ve been attempting some daring exercises  as I intend to return to mountain trekking in Africa, a beloved hobby that I’ve had to put on hold for several months.  This, thanks to a bad ankle sprain I had the misfortune to sustain, while on the snowcap of a famous Tanzanian mountain, a year ago.

I’ve also happily purchased a tall pile of gorgeous books.  Gosh! If ever there was an unrepentant bookaholic to be had, that’s me without a moment’s hesitation. The majority of bookshops in Dublin would know me now I’m sure by sight alone, without the usual customary service of goodwill.  I can’t wait to tell you more about my guilty stack.

An outpouring of fantastic titles has turned up this year, very much akin to the resplendent image of countless dancing bubbles.  This, especially with subjects geared towards travel and serious fiction. Or rather, stories that excite me in some way, those I personally enjoy and which motivate me either through life’s inspirational tragedies or cultural tales; from where I may hurriedly succumb to a new vigour. I love reading up on world cultures. I have specific passions right now, for both the Far-East and Middle-Eastern regions. I continue to stay enraptured by Nigerian and North African cinema.

I suspect from years of having shopped at European bookshops, that the traditional publishing industry has prodded for itself, a far brisker competition. This proved a realisation I garnered from personal observation and not from any trade news that still appears understated towards such a fact. There was a time when August in the UK was marked as a dead calendar month for eager book lovers. The majority of people were whisked off to vacations. The shelf displays ran reams of blurred chick-lit paperbacks that would do for the beach.  While still living in London; I  often had to twiddle my thumbs, waiting anxiously for the influx of early autumn titles, come the first week of September.

This time round, a rich variety of literary titles from London popped up on the market from the start of the August month. What shows in the UK is mostly displayed at the same time in Ireland.  Now on nearing the autumn and in the run-up to Christmas, another deluge of bookish treasure chests await the impatient reader. It also promises to be a captivating last quarter of the year for me. I’ll be flying again to adopt an extended research for the novel I’m writing and up to now,  I have steadily adored the energizing vibrance that novel-writing has brought me.

At the moment, the accelerated exuberance in my life glued together from years of travel and cultural literary pursuits is so overwhelming, it simply cannot be measured.  The result of course, cannot be anything other than a self-made bliss.  - susan abraham

Shermay Loh at the Kinokuniya Bookstore Singapore June 11, 2011

On the afternoon of 11th June 2011, when O Thiam Chin read from his work of flash fiction called Under the Sun at the Kinokuniya Bookstore Singapore – please see my earlier photograph HERE – former Singaporean banker turned children’s book writer, Shermay Loh also launched her super new mystery laden with thrills and spins and aptly masqueraded in the form of Archibald And The Blue Blood Conspiracy.  I’d say the event was perhaps an hour or so before Thiam Chin’s. Loh appeared buoyant and radiant.  She would prove very popular with the family crowd. A long queue of hopeful children eventually snaked their way around the bookshelves, longing for an autographed copy of a storybook that would surely immortalise the memory of their lovable bumbling hero, Archibald. It was a breezy, jovial affair. With some admiration, I watched the unfazed Loh  work her animated zest with the children.  This photograph reflects a slice of that moment.  There were too many people about as I attempted a shot.  I also cropped this scene as I was hesitant about presenting  any  picture of a child on the worldwide web, without prior consent of  its parents. © Copyright Susan Abraham

Links to 10 ‘novel’ ideas for splendid literary journeys from CNN International

Don’t know how I missed this  but am glad to have happened upon the article anyhow. Here is a recent listing from CNN International on 10 decidedly global ‘novel’ ideas the bookish soul may want to consider for a splendid literary journey cum vacation.  Although my personal tastes are slightly more alternative, there are some delightful favourites I could consider. Overall, I do like the listing that resurrects a memorable story stretching from East to West, to new life.

Tenderly conjured up from fictitious plots are Haruki Murakami’s Norwegian Wood, Sylvia Plath’s partly autobiographical The Bell Jar, Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina and what I consider to be my personal favourites… Orhan Pamuk’s The New Life – Istanbul and Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie, among others. I watched Dai Sijie’s heartwarming story in its dazzling cinematic version – I have the dvd in my collection – and what  breathtaking scenery indeed, all sitting pretty in China’s mountain villages in Hunan Province. - susan abraham

Here are the links to CNN’s literary journeys. Each links holds a listing of five famous plot locations:

The first five of 10 novel travel ideas &
The second five of 10 novel travel ideas.

Credit: Photograph of Turkish men on an Istanbul street, courtesy of Free pictures of cities