Musings on Factual Fiction
Fiction is just improved reality.
Everything I know about life I learned from movies. No, that isn’t true… television and rock and roll have also been heavy influences on who I am today. Not to mention numerous books (novels) and several magazines, particularly the New Yorker, have contributed to my mostly Western, post industrial, post romantic, postmodern point of view.
You may wonder why I have not mentioned real people or real life experiences. Reality.
First of all, Reality Isn’t What It Used To Be. (By Walter Truitt) explains all the ways reality has transformed, like some shape-shifter from an episode of The X Files, right under our noses without us grasping what is going on. The paradigm has shifted far enough to unbalance almost everybody. There are instances of confusion in every segment of society.
People are still trying to cling to facts as if they will save them. I don’t blame them. Denial is also a useful psychological tool and has been serving us well since Genesis. Truth is on shaky ground as well. I’ve noticed the way it has been eroding on the shoreline of consciousness year after year. Spin, opinion, multiple points of view, are all taken as equally valid. Everything is a matter of interpretation. Multiple modes of reality bump up against each other on CNN, BBC, Aljazeera, and Fox News. Sometimes the same pictures (footage) appear on several channels at the same time and we sit in our unseen rooms and say,
” Boy, Did you see that! What is this world coming to?”
My friends have started telling me stories from their lives as if they were episodes from a sit -com or a crime show. They are secretly pleased to relate the queer fantastic quality of an actual event in their barely significant lives. They make an effort to squeeze as much wonderment as they can and they want me to confirm their experience as reality, to agree with them so they are reassured that they are not wrong and alone in some opinion that is only important for the time being and will have little or no merit tomorrow.
My friend Uma Anyar showed up unexpectantly while I was writing and said, “You will never believe what has happened. It is so weird!”
I clicked save on my computer and turned away from the screen.
“ What is so weird?”
“You know that story I read at the last writer’s meeting?”
“Angry Ghosts?”
“ Yea, and you remember that the main character steals a tennis shoe from her son’s girl friend in order to create worry, confusion and frustration?”
“I remember that.”
“Well, You are not going to believe this but, the other day I picked up my new shoes at the shoemaker. Those cute Chinese style ones I brought back from Hanoi, in black silk. You liked them.”
“ Yes, I liked them. I would love a pair just like them but in green.”
“Well I had the guy make two pairs one in yellow leather with red piping and the other pair in red leather with yellow piping. Very Cute! And I also had the black pair repaired from where the dog had chewed on the heel.”
“Yea,”
“ Ok, so I take both pairs of shoes and I try on each color, red on my right foot and yellow on my left foot. They looked so cool I danced out of the shop and into the car where my husband and Akkiko where waiting for me. I showed the shoes to Akkiko and she said they were cool and then put the bag with the shoes on the seat beside her. “ We dropped her off and drove home. I had to pee real bad so I ran into the house without collecting all my packages from the back seat. My husband didn’t bother to bring them in either.”
“Uma, this is boring get to the punch line before I fall asleep.”
“ Hold on there is more. So the next day I take the basket with the remaining packages from the back of the Taruna and pull out all the stuff from the plastic bags. And I can’t find the yellow right foot shoe or the left red shoe. They are gone. Vanished into thin air!”
“ You can make another pair of each. Or wear them as different colors. That is the sort of thing that you would do.”
“ You are not getting the point. Where did they go? Who would take a pair of mismatched shoes from the back of my car? And more importantly, that is exactly the situation I had written about in my Angry Ghosts story. Only that was fiction and this is real life.”
“What? Do you think Akkiko stole your shoes? She wouldn’t do that!”
“I know. I know. I don’t believe she took them but I am starting to think an angry ghost or a prankster coyote, a naughty spirit in Native American mythology has.”
“ You are not an Indian or Chinese so why would a spirit bother with you and your mismatched shoes?”
“ It’s one explanation. The other is that life imitates art.”
“Oh, that happens on a regular basis only we don’t catch all the occurrences because we are doing something else, like watching TV or DVD or VHS or Listening to I pod downloads while we check out news on the internet.”
“ Still, where did the shoes go? It is a mystery.”
“Maybe it is meant to be one. It is about pondering the possibilities. It is a slap in the face of logic and rationality.”
‘I feel so unsettled. This is the second time some small insignificant object has disappeared almost in front of my eyes.”
“ You have lost mismatched shoes before? “
“No, mismatched socks.”
“Ok, explain.”
‘”One day long ago, when I was seven and watching cartoons on TV in the living room, My mother was washing some laundry in the kitchen sink. She asked me to give her my socks so I would have clean ones for the next day. I pulled off the pink and yellow socks left them by the sink and returned to my cartoons. Five minutes later my mother came in the living room with wet hands and asked for my socks. I told her I already left them by the sink. She said No I didn’t. I said yes I did and ran to the kitchen o point out the socks. They were not where I left them.”
‘ Your dog took them.”
“ We only had a parakeet for a pet”
“They fell behind the sink.”
“How could they? The sink was stuck to the wall. Any way we looked and looked and my mother became angrier as she became frustrated and I got mad because she didn’t believe me. Before you know it a perfectly nice Saturday afternoon became a family battlefield.”
“Did you ever find the socks?”
“ Nope.”
“Did you write about the socks?”
“Not until now.”
“ Ok, so is this writing fact or fiction?”
“Fact! Absolutely Fact!”
“It makes for better fiction.”
“ But it really happened.”
“ So has the story on this page.”
Sunday, October 26, 2008
Tales from Bali-Horror
Horror
By Uma Anyar
The sight hits me, like a slap across the face.
There are four of us in the cramped car stuck in traffic. Judy is prattling on about kite flying evolving into a national sport in Bali. I glance past her hands on the steering wheel and witness a man beating a dog with a big stick on the opposite side walk. The small white puppy is cowering on the ground; a brown man in tattered trousers is lifting the stick with both arms over his head and slamming it down on the hapless dog with all his might. Inexplicably, there is no blood. No sound, just the stick rising and falling like a clever. My hands fly to my mouth, I moan, Judy looks in the direction of my gaze. Everything is too vivid and unreal. A black dog looks on and hops around excitedly. The retched sight is spellbinding, searing itself into my brain like a cattle brand.
Suddenly, as if from the bottom of the movie screen, I see, tourists, a husband and wife, about our age, jumping into the slow moving traffic, maneuvering between cars, waving their arms and shouting at the culprit. Their outrage brings sound back into this picture. Instantly, all noises return. Dogs bark. Car engines hum. Radios play. The frantic couple is moving in slow motion across the tributary of cars. The shocking awareness of violence flashes from car to car like lightening. Simultaneously, the morally oblivious traffic light turns green and we glide forward like logs on a river.
.
Judy says,” I hope the police don’t show up or it will all get worse.” those tourists shouldn’t go in the local man’s house.
“ I hope they kill the bastard!” I say, and I mean it whole-heartedly.
“What happened?” asks Gede from the back seat.
“ You don’t want to know.”
Violence begets violence. The heart boils in pity and fury. And, evil, he just turns his back and saunters into the dark ally like a plump rat, then turns and sneers,” Gotcha!”
.
By Uma Anyar
The sight hits me, like a slap across the face.
There are four of us in the cramped car stuck in traffic. Judy is prattling on about kite flying evolving into a national sport in Bali. I glance past her hands on the steering wheel and witness a man beating a dog with a big stick on the opposite side walk. The small white puppy is cowering on the ground; a brown man in tattered trousers is lifting the stick with both arms over his head and slamming it down on the hapless dog with all his might. Inexplicably, there is no blood. No sound, just the stick rising and falling like a clever. My hands fly to my mouth, I moan, Judy looks in the direction of my gaze. Everything is too vivid and unreal. A black dog looks on and hops around excitedly. The retched sight is spellbinding, searing itself into my brain like a cattle brand.
Suddenly, as if from the bottom of the movie screen, I see, tourists, a husband and wife, about our age, jumping into the slow moving traffic, maneuvering between cars, waving their arms and shouting at the culprit. Their outrage brings sound back into this picture. Instantly, all noises return. Dogs bark. Car engines hum. Radios play. The frantic couple is moving in slow motion across the tributary of cars. The shocking awareness of violence flashes from car to car like lightening. Simultaneously, the morally oblivious traffic light turns green and we glide forward like logs on a river.
.
Judy says,” I hope the police don’t show up or it will all get worse.” those tourists shouldn’t go in the local man’s house.
“ I hope they kill the bastard!” I say, and I mean it whole-heartedly.
“What happened?” asks Gede from the back seat.
“ You don’t want to know.”
Violence begets violence. The heart boils in pity and fury. And, evil, he just turns his back and saunters into the dark ally like a plump rat, then turns and sneers,” Gotcha!”
.
Tales from Bali-The Woman next Door
THE WOMAN NEXT DOOR
By Uma Anyar
The woman next door is mad at God. I do not question her reasons. Words, explanations, advice only skim the surface and do no good. Such angers run deep.
The woman next door has seventeen cats. She complains of trouble with sleeping through the night because she worries about her cats. One did not come home last night, another puked on the bed and a third has taken to making pee pee in her closet ruining two pairs of new sandals with leather straps and designer names embossed on the tread. The youngest one is cross-eyed.
She curls up on the sofa and tells me her life used to be simple. She had no problems. She was moderately friendly, but kept mostly to herself, read good books, exercised regularly, ate healthy foods- raw vegetables, pressed juices and free range protein. She sustained a level of harmony rare to most of us.
That was before the cats found their way into her life. It began innocently enough. First there was the black and white female with the scratched face who was in need of nursing and fresh milk. “ What kind of a monster would I be if I didn’t help the poor thing”? She asks me.
“ A terrible one. “ I respond.
“Then, one morning an orange marmalade momma cat with three kittens appeared and mewed until milk and bits of shredded chicken was served on a chipped china plate. “You should have seen them, so thin, like refugees”. She rings her hands and looks away. Her helplessness is beguiling. I want to stroke her shoulder or pet her head.
“What could I do?”
“Exactly what you did.” I answer.
“ A few weeks ago, I went for a walk, I cut through the rice fields near the Banyan tree, the big one near the cemetery on the road to Penestanan?” She looks at me queryingly.
“ I know the one. It is a beautiful tree. The Balinese consider it sacred. They say spirits live in the twisting trunks and fly from the branches in the form of fireballs.”
“Yes, that is the one. I found a cloth sack stuffed with squirming kittens. No one was around. I could feel death sneaking up through the tall grasses. What could I do? What would you do?
“Grab the sack and run like hell?” I suggest.
“That is just what I did.”
“Then what happened?”
All of them lived and become pregnant and gave birth to more kittens. They were so cute, so soft…. How many cats. . Now? I don’t know.”
Her voice trails off. She has lost count of her cats.
We are both quiet caught in observing the butterflies fluttering over the lily pond in her garden.
“Everything was all right until the cats. I love the cats. But, I cannot sleep because I think they are not happy or that some one will hurt them. Some body killed two of my cats where I lived before. They said I had too many cats. Every body smiled to my face but they kill my cats when I am not home. Now, I cannot go out. What will happen to my cats if I go to Spain for three weeks?”
“ Maybe you can hire a live in cat sitter for the time you are away,” I suggest.
“ Oh no, my cats like only me. They will not be happy with anyone else.”
The woman next door ponders her dilemma. She absentmindedly stretches her arms high above her soft head before continuing her lament. “Life is strange. God is stranger. My life was so simple, so peaceful. No husband, no children. I came. I went. I never locked my door… now, I am trapped by love.”
“Aren’t we all in one way or another at one time or another.”
By Uma Anyar
The woman next door is mad at God. I do not question her reasons. Words, explanations, advice only skim the surface and do no good. Such angers run deep.
The woman next door has seventeen cats. She complains of trouble with sleeping through the night because she worries about her cats. One did not come home last night, another puked on the bed and a third has taken to making pee pee in her closet ruining two pairs of new sandals with leather straps and designer names embossed on the tread. The youngest one is cross-eyed.
She curls up on the sofa and tells me her life used to be simple. She had no problems. She was moderately friendly, but kept mostly to herself, read good books, exercised regularly, ate healthy foods- raw vegetables, pressed juices and free range protein. She sustained a level of harmony rare to most of us.
That was before the cats found their way into her life. It began innocently enough. First there was the black and white female with the scratched face who was in need of nursing and fresh milk. “ What kind of a monster would I be if I didn’t help the poor thing”? She asks me.
“ A terrible one. “ I respond.
“Then, one morning an orange marmalade momma cat with three kittens appeared and mewed until milk and bits of shredded chicken was served on a chipped china plate. “You should have seen them, so thin, like refugees”. She rings her hands and looks away. Her helplessness is beguiling. I want to stroke her shoulder or pet her head.
“What could I do?”
“Exactly what you did.” I answer.
“ A few weeks ago, I went for a walk, I cut through the rice fields near the Banyan tree, the big one near the cemetery on the road to Penestanan?” She looks at me queryingly.
“ I know the one. It is a beautiful tree. The Balinese consider it sacred. They say spirits live in the twisting trunks and fly from the branches in the form of fireballs.”
“Yes, that is the one. I found a cloth sack stuffed with squirming kittens. No one was around. I could feel death sneaking up through the tall grasses. What could I do? What would you do?
“Grab the sack and run like hell?” I suggest.
“That is just what I did.”
“Then what happened?”
All of them lived and become pregnant and gave birth to more kittens. They were so cute, so soft…. How many cats. . Now? I don’t know.”
Her voice trails off. She has lost count of her cats.
We are both quiet caught in observing the butterflies fluttering over the lily pond in her garden.
“Everything was all right until the cats. I love the cats. But, I cannot sleep because I think they are not happy or that some one will hurt them. Some body killed two of my cats where I lived before. They said I had too many cats. Every body smiled to my face but they kill my cats when I am not home. Now, I cannot go out. What will happen to my cats if I go to Spain for three weeks?”
“ Maybe you can hire a live in cat sitter for the time you are away,” I suggest.
“ Oh no, my cats like only me. They will not be happy with anyone else.”
The woman next door ponders her dilemma. She absentmindedly stretches her arms high above her soft head before continuing her lament. “Life is strange. God is stranger. My life was so simple, so peaceful. No husband, no children. I came. I went. I never locked my door… now, I am trapped by love.”
“Aren’t we all in one way or another at one time or another.”
Tales from Bali- The Price of Potatoes
The Price of Potatoes
By Uma Anyar
To get to our house, in the rice fields of Banjar Apuh, (population 180 men, women, and children plus fifteen cows, twelve pigs and a smattering of roosters) we have to drive down a barely paved narrow road past a soirée of free roaming chickens, which scatter like demented hysterics into trash-strewn ditches. Halfway down this country lane, just before Made’s Warung we slow to a snails pace to accommodate the family of geese who live on this swatch of cement like royal squatters. In Bali, no one bothers penning up domestic foul. Curiously, the chickens and geese get along with the mangy black and white dogs as well as the feral cats and the passing cars or motorbikes. No one complains if a platoon of ducks comes waddling down the street. Everyone just slows down and waits for the herdsman with the bamboo pole to nudge quacking tribe into a straight line so that motorists can get by. Both parties smile and nod as if approving the transaction before passing each other.
After the open hut that houses the ping-pong table over which young men thwack resilient balls with great gusto in the early evenings, the same small gang of local children emerge from various family compounds and wave vigorously while yelling “Hello, hello,” as loudly as possible, their tiny wrists twisting in unison, their eyes bright with excitement.
Greetings and smiles are as natural as sunshine in Bali.
When we pass Putu the painter’s house, we wave at the band of young Balinese guys hanging out on their motorbikes, smoking kreteks and shooting the shit in Balinese. They are not as interested in the Bules who have taken up residence in their village, as their elders appear to be.
Bules are foreigners who have elected to live in Bali. There are a lot of us in the Ubud area. Every Balinese knows we are a source of income. And everyone and his cousin have a business of some kind or other. Bules like art and Bules buy things. There are eight different painters shops on the pot holed main road leading to our village displaying Balinese interpretations of Western sensuality. Messily coiffured blond babe’s with puffy lips pout and strike provocative poses from canvases large enough to impress any lusty art aficionado. Tourism has affected Balinese painting styles as well as subject matter. But the sweet smiling bare breasted maiden carrying fruit on her head is a staple and has been selling well since the nineteen thirties when Bali emerged as a exotic place to visit.
Electricity reached Mawang just fifteen years ago. Telephone lines never made it to Banjar Apuh but everyone under fifty has a hand phone and thinks nothing of driving and speed dialing while passing a truck piled high with rattan wrapped pigs on their way to a profitable slaughter. It is impossible to be bored when driving in Bali. In fact it is crucial to everyone’s health and well being that drivers stay alert as sauntering old people, snoozing dogs, soup wagons selling bakso balls and noodles share the road with jeeps and motorcycles.
During harvest season it is common to come across large plastic turquoise tarps spread evenly with drying rice. If you have to drive over the rice then … please do so with care. No one admonishes the road hogs or suggests that they should spread their rice drying tarps someplace less obstreptous to village traffic. Only main roads devoted to speed are free of the brown kernel. Rice is life. Everyone knows this and everyone, even the new orange haired punk boys and the tattooed rebel painters slow down when they pass Ibu’s rice blanket. The local roosters peck at the bounty and no one raises a fuss. Sometimes an old man wrapped in a stained sarong doses on the grass beside the exposed rice, his watchful eyes lazy with the afternoon heat.
Afternoon siestas are normal in most Balinese rural villages. It is not uncommon to see groups of old men pile onto the village bale, curl up on the dusty straw mat and sleep together peacefully as children. No one uses pillows or cushions or covers of any kind.
Sleep is both a private and a collective activity.
Paul makes his way slowly over the banjar speed bump, we say hello to the bare breasted old woman in the brown sarong and old orange towel over her shoulder. Nenek is on her way to the river to scrub down before the grand- children return from school.
We stop by the warung where Kadek the saucy village warung proprietress is selling candies, soda pop, bottled water, four cucumbers and a single cabbage, the shelves s are stocked with krupuks and chips as well as several small rice concoctions wrapped in banana leaves. Hot coffee- black and sweet is available if the thermos isn’t empty
It is rumored that sexy Kadek recently had an affaire with our architect’s uncle. There are whispers of an abortion. But no one is pointing fingers; no one is avoiding her wooden hut resplendid with junk food and a few vegetables. Good and bad deeds get absorbed or stored for future scoldings. Kadek wears tight blue jeans and form fitting tee shirts. She watches and assess like a cat sizing up her opportunities. Her teen-age daughters take after her. They are lovely to look at and ripe for trouble. But no one will be too upset if one or the other is pregnant before she marries. Most brides are at least three months expectant when they marry.
Paul parks the car and we take out the blue and red plastic trash cans purchased specifically for the village square. “Hallo” smiles the old Nekek with the towel then turns quick as a ninja and swats the orange rag at a pair of barking dogs who run off. Paul shows the Village counsel leader the lids and the handy handles on the large containers. “This is for plastic,” I say. Plastic trash in the streams, rivers, ditches, roadsides and village area makes me crazy. We have decided to risk looking like interfering Americans and have helped instigate recycling in our tiny community.
Think Globally but work with your local banjar is our new motto.
Removing the trash barrels from the car has exposed our groceries and household items in the back of the jeep. Within minutes Kadek has wandered over to look into the bags noting our brand of laundry detergent and the back up mop refills and the cling wrap and the packages of light bulbs. She has no problem asking me how much I paid for the light bulbs and the towels as well.
Balinese have no issues with privacy. Or they don’t have it around the same things that westerners do, like money.
Money is of prime concern. Every body knows how much the local farmer sold his land for. Everyone also knows what we spent on our car and the cost of the extra electricity, which powers our swimming pool.
I watch Kadek paw over my tomatoes and watermelon “How much you pay?” She shouts holding up the plastic bag of potatoes.
“Twenty thousand rupiahs.”
“ Mahal!” she exclaims. “ You go to passar in Sukawati. Better price.”
She sees it as her civic duty to instruct Paul and me in the economics of grocery shopping. Only a fool would ignore her advice.
The price of everything and anything is of such interest to most Balinese villagers that at times it can seem perversely humorous. One day I was telling Made’ our neighbor about the program I saw on the BBC exposing the sale of children for the sex industry in India. “Is this true?” Made’ asks, bewildered by the information. I realize she has little awareness of the world outside her village. But in true Balinese fashion her curiosity gets the best of her and her practical nature takes over.
“ How much money they sell their children for?” She asks innocently.
By Uma Anyar
To get to our house, in the rice fields of Banjar Apuh, (population 180 men, women, and children plus fifteen cows, twelve pigs and a smattering of roosters) we have to drive down a barely paved narrow road past a soirée of free roaming chickens, which scatter like demented hysterics into trash-strewn ditches. Halfway down this country lane, just before Made’s Warung we slow to a snails pace to accommodate the family of geese who live on this swatch of cement like royal squatters. In Bali, no one bothers penning up domestic foul. Curiously, the chickens and geese get along with the mangy black and white dogs as well as the feral cats and the passing cars or motorbikes. No one complains if a platoon of ducks comes waddling down the street. Everyone just slows down and waits for the herdsman with the bamboo pole to nudge quacking tribe into a straight line so that motorists can get by. Both parties smile and nod as if approving the transaction before passing each other.
After the open hut that houses the ping-pong table over which young men thwack resilient balls with great gusto in the early evenings, the same small gang of local children emerge from various family compounds and wave vigorously while yelling “Hello, hello,” as loudly as possible, their tiny wrists twisting in unison, their eyes bright with excitement.
Greetings and smiles are as natural as sunshine in Bali.
When we pass Putu the painter’s house, we wave at the band of young Balinese guys hanging out on their motorbikes, smoking kreteks and shooting the shit in Balinese. They are not as interested in the Bules who have taken up residence in their village, as their elders appear to be.
Bules are foreigners who have elected to live in Bali. There are a lot of us in the Ubud area. Every Balinese knows we are a source of income. And everyone and his cousin have a business of some kind or other. Bules like art and Bules buy things. There are eight different painters shops on the pot holed main road leading to our village displaying Balinese interpretations of Western sensuality. Messily coiffured blond babe’s with puffy lips pout and strike provocative poses from canvases large enough to impress any lusty art aficionado. Tourism has affected Balinese painting styles as well as subject matter. But the sweet smiling bare breasted maiden carrying fruit on her head is a staple and has been selling well since the nineteen thirties when Bali emerged as a exotic place to visit.
Electricity reached Mawang just fifteen years ago. Telephone lines never made it to Banjar Apuh but everyone under fifty has a hand phone and thinks nothing of driving and speed dialing while passing a truck piled high with rattan wrapped pigs on their way to a profitable slaughter. It is impossible to be bored when driving in Bali. In fact it is crucial to everyone’s health and well being that drivers stay alert as sauntering old people, snoozing dogs, soup wagons selling bakso balls and noodles share the road with jeeps and motorcycles.
During harvest season it is common to come across large plastic turquoise tarps spread evenly with drying rice. If you have to drive over the rice then … please do so with care. No one admonishes the road hogs or suggests that they should spread their rice drying tarps someplace less obstreptous to village traffic. Only main roads devoted to speed are free of the brown kernel. Rice is life. Everyone knows this and everyone, even the new orange haired punk boys and the tattooed rebel painters slow down when they pass Ibu’s rice blanket. The local roosters peck at the bounty and no one raises a fuss. Sometimes an old man wrapped in a stained sarong doses on the grass beside the exposed rice, his watchful eyes lazy with the afternoon heat.
Afternoon siestas are normal in most Balinese rural villages. It is not uncommon to see groups of old men pile onto the village bale, curl up on the dusty straw mat and sleep together peacefully as children. No one uses pillows or cushions or covers of any kind.
Sleep is both a private and a collective activity.
Paul makes his way slowly over the banjar speed bump, we say hello to the bare breasted old woman in the brown sarong and old orange towel over her shoulder. Nenek is on her way to the river to scrub down before the grand- children return from school.
We stop by the warung where Kadek the saucy village warung proprietress is selling candies, soda pop, bottled water, four cucumbers and a single cabbage, the shelves s are stocked with krupuks and chips as well as several small rice concoctions wrapped in banana leaves. Hot coffee- black and sweet is available if the thermos isn’t empty
It is rumored that sexy Kadek recently had an affaire with our architect’s uncle. There are whispers of an abortion. But no one is pointing fingers; no one is avoiding her wooden hut resplendid with junk food and a few vegetables. Good and bad deeds get absorbed or stored for future scoldings. Kadek wears tight blue jeans and form fitting tee shirts. She watches and assess like a cat sizing up her opportunities. Her teen-age daughters take after her. They are lovely to look at and ripe for trouble. But no one will be too upset if one or the other is pregnant before she marries. Most brides are at least three months expectant when they marry.
Paul parks the car and we take out the blue and red plastic trash cans purchased specifically for the village square. “Hallo” smiles the old Nekek with the towel then turns quick as a ninja and swats the orange rag at a pair of barking dogs who run off. Paul shows the Village counsel leader the lids and the handy handles on the large containers. “This is for plastic,” I say. Plastic trash in the streams, rivers, ditches, roadsides and village area makes me crazy. We have decided to risk looking like interfering Americans and have helped instigate recycling in our tiny community.
Think Globally but work with your local banjar is our new motto.
Removing the trash barrels from the car has exposed our groceries and household items in the back of the jeep. Within minutes Kadek has wandered over to look into the bags noting our brand of laundry detergent and the back up mop refills and the cling wrap and the packages of light bulbs. She has no problem asking me how much I paid for the light bulbs and the towels as well.
Balinese have no issues with privacy. Or they don’t have it around the same things that westerners do, like money.
Money is of prime concern. Every body knows how much the local farmer sold his land for. Everyone also knows what we spent on our car and the cost of the extra electricity, which powers our swimming pool.
I watch Kadek paw over my tomatoes and watermelon “How much you pay?” She shouts holding up the plastic bag of potatoes.
“Twenty thousand rupiahs.”
“ Mahal!” she exclaims. “ You go to passar in Sukawati. Better price.”
She sees it as her civic duty to instruct Paul and me in the economics of grocery shopping. Only a fool would ignore her advice.
The price of everything and anything is of such interest to most Balinese villagers that at times it can seem perversely humorous. One day I was telling Made’ our neighbor about the program I saw on the BBC exposing the sale of children for the sex industry in India. “Is this true?” Made’ asks, bewildered by the information. I realize she has little awareness of the world outside her village. But in true Balinese fashion her curiosity gets the best of her and her practical nature takes over.
“ How much money they sell their children for?” She asks innocently.
Interviw with Charlotte Bacon-Turning the Page to Bali
Charlotte Bacon: Turning the page to Bali
By Uma Anyar
Writer Charlotte Bacon has recently moved to Bali with her husband Brad Choyt, the Director of the new Green School in Sibang Kaja, near Mambal. She will be participating in the fourth Ubud Writers and Readers Festival, October 14-19, 2008. Ms. Bacon has published three novels, Lost Geography, Split Estate, There is Room for You and a collection of short stories, A Private State, for which she received the PEN/ Hemmingway award.
Bacon taught Creative Writing at The University of New Hampshire but left mainstream academia to help create a more relevant and ecologically conscious form of education, which aims to serve the needs and talents of the “whole child.” Sustainability on every level is the goal of the school. The international program will “combine rigorous academic content taught through a holistic approach that aims to inspire and enhance all of a child’s capacities.” The Kul-Kul campus is buzzing with workers building bamboo houses and classrooms, landscaping and planting vegetable gardens on the 8-hectare site. The visionaries for the school, John and Cynthia Hardy, are also providing the funding. The school will open September 1st with 100 students, one of who is Charlotte’s son, Tom.
Charlotte Bacon is an intelligent, strong, highly ethical person, who wants a better world and is willing to embrace a challenging undertaking because she believes the Green School will make a difference. It was inspiring to talk with her about writing, education, motherhood and the future of publishing.
UA “Will you be teaching Creative Writing at the Green School?”
CB “No, I want to work behind the scenes, be in a supportive roll and assist where needed. I don’t want to talk about fiction anymore; I only want to make it. I’d rather have a life that helped me to think richly about my art rather than talk constantly about it. Right now I am passionate about the Green School and the potential of what is possible here in Bali. We will have twenty percent of all students on scholarship. Amazing things are possible here. I love writing but I have come to see it as almost ornamental. But that is not what the planet needs. I probably will not publish large size editions of my next book. The cost in trees is not worth it. Publishing will be changing. I wanted to plant bamboo to offset the paper in my last book. Do you know I would have to plant 250,000 seedlings to offset one book? One book! That is not sustainable. It isn’t even the paper and the oil to produce the book but the gas to ship it, the gas and energy to drive to the store or the library to get the book. That sort of thing has to counted.”
UA “What about the internet as a publishing venue?”
CB “Yes, I think we will be publishing artisanally, by which I mean publishing an edition of beautiful, well-crafted books that will go to the Library of Congress and to private collectors and other special venues. The rest will be on the Internet and it will be downloadable. Maybe paperbacks will hang on as they are less harmful to the environment, but hard cover books are dead. Look at what has happened to songs, to images. Everything is downloadable. That is what people want.”
UA “How will this change the nature of creative writing?”
CB “People no longer want long novels. They want it fast, succinct something to read on the cell phone. What I do is a dying art, an old craft. People still want fiction, story, but they want it easily codifiable. Simplistic. Fast. They don’t want the long, drawn out leisure of a finely developed character.”
UA “But this is a loss for the whole culture. Novels are invaluable! It is easier to find thoughtful, meaningful encounters with characters in books than it sometimes is with live people who are too busy to be present or aware.”
CB “Yes, a terrible loss. There is much that fiction writers have to say about how to live a life. Novels can aid in private healing. Books are vital; we need to relearn how to think more complexly. Reading is part of a vibrant life. To hold a book in your hands is important, but we are in a critical time and it is hard to find the proper balance between the planet’s needs and our own. I know what I do is an old art. It is destined for obsolescence. It is just like gold gilding and we are in critical times ecologically.”
UA “Charlotte, for me this future you are describing feels hallow and deprived of the things I hold most dear.”
CB “Yes, me too. I’m sorry to say all of this, but it is coming.”
UA “What made you become a writer?”
CB “I loved language, words. I think this is something you either have or you don’t, also writing helped me to sort out what I thought about things as I was growing up. Don De’Lillo once said ‘I write so that I find out what I am thinking.’ I feel that too. Language can be a springboard for meaning. I write ten pages for every one I keep. The writing process is looking for the underneath of meaning; recursion, returning in little steps until I have it. This sounds mystical but it isn’t. It’s a lot of hard, silent work. It’s sitting alone in a room and doing it. But now I have become monkish, simpler about writing. I do it when I can. I do as my kids are crawling over me. I do it while others are talking. I just do it. I am a mother and a wife, not only a writer.”
UA “ What do you like the most about writing?”
CB “Besides language, I love story and most of all that I can connect with people silently when I am not present. Storytelling, I like being part of something that has an ancient history.”
UA “What do you like the least?”
CB “Publishing, or rather, promoting. I don’t like selling. I don’t want to be in front of the work. I want it to speak for itself. But that is not how the market place works.”
UA “How will you be participating in the URWF?”
CB “I will be offering a workshop on writing and materials, reading from my book and participating in a panel discussion.”
UA “I think your readers will enjoy listening and learning from you and I’m sure you will attract some new readers who will like spending time with your silent voice on the still available, paper page.”
By Uma Anyar
Writer Charlotte Bacon has recently moved to Bali with her husband Brad Choyt, the Director of the new Green School in Sibang Kaja, near Mambal. She will be participating in the fourth Ubud Writers and Readers Festival, October 14-19, 2008. Ms. Bacon has published three novels, Lost Geography, Split Estate, There is Room for You and a collection of short stories, A Private State, for which she received the PEN/ Hemmingway award.
Bacon taught Creative Writing at The University of New Hampshire but left mainstream academia to help create a more relevant and ecologically conscious form of education, which aims to serve the needs and talents of the “whole child.” Sustainability on every level is the goal of the school. The international program will “combine rigorous academic content taught through a holistic approach that aims to inspire and enhance all of a child’s capacities.” The Kul-Kul campus is buzzing with workers building bamboo houses and classrooms, landscaping and planting vegetable gardens on the 8-hectare site. The visionaries for the school, John and Cynthia Hardy, are also providing the funding. The school will open September 1st with 100 students, one of who is Charlotte’s son, Tom.
Charlotte Bacon is an intelligent, strong, highly ethical person, who wants a better world and is willing to embrace a challenging undertaking because she believes the Green School will make a difference. It was inspiring to talk with her about writing, education, motherhood and the future of publishing.
UA “Will you be teaching Creative Writing at the Green School?”
CB “No, I want to work behind the scenes, be in a supportive roll and assist where needed. I don’t want to talk about fiction anymore; I only want to make it. I’d rather have a life that helped me to think richly about my art rather than talk constantly about it. Right now I am passionate about the Green School and the potential of what is possible here in Bali. We will have twenty percent of all students on scholarship. Amazing things are possible here. I love writing but I have come to see it as almost ornamental. But that is not what the planet needs. I probably will not publish large size editions of my next book. The cost in trees is not worth it. Publishing will be changing. I wanted to plant bamboo to offset the paper in my last book. Do you know I would have to plant 250,000 seedlings to offset one book? One book! That is not sustainable. It isn’t even the paper and the oil to produce the book but the gas to ship it, the gas and energy to drive to the store or the library to get the book. That sort of thing has to counted.”
UA “What about the internet as a publishing venue?”
CB “Yes, I think we will be publishing artisanally, by which I mean publishing an edition of beautiful, well-crafted books that will go to the Library of Congress and to private collectors and other special venues. The rest will be on the Internet and it will be downloadable. Maybe paperbacks will hang on as they are less harmful to the environment, but hard cover books are dead. Look at what has happened to songs, to images. Everything is downloadable. That is what people want.”
UA “How will this change the nature of creative writing?”
CB “People no longer want long novels. They want it fast, succinct something to read on the cell phone. What I do is a dying art, an old craft. People still want fiction, story, but they want it easily codifiable. Simplistic. Fast. They don’t want the long, drawn out leisure of a finely developed character.”
UA “But this is a loss for the whole culture. Novels are invaluable! It is easier to find thoughtful, meaningful encounters with characters in books than it sometimes is with live people who are too busy to be present or aware.”
CB “Yes, a terrible loss. There is much that fiction writers have to say about how to live a life. Novels can aid in private healing. Books are vital; we need to relearn how to think more complexly. Reading is part of a vibrant life. To hold a book in your hands is important, but we are in a critical time and it is hard to find the proper balance between the planet’s needs and our own. I know what I do is an old art. It is destined for obsolescence. It is just like gold gilding and we are in critical times ecologically.”
UA “Charlotte, for me this future you are describing feels hallow and deprived of the things I hold most dear.”
CB “Yes, me too. I’m sorry to say all of this, but it is coming.”
UA “What made you become a writer?”
CB “I loved language, words. I think this is something you either have or you don’t, also writing helped me to sort out what I thought about things as I was growing up. Don De’Lillo once said ‘I write so that I find out what I am thinking.’ I feel that too. Language can be a springboard for meaning. I write ten pages for every one I keep. The writing process is looking for the underneath of meaning; recursion, returning in little steps until I have it. This sounds mystical but it isn’t. It’s a lot of hard, silent work. It’s sitting alone in a room and doing it. But now I have become monkish, simpler about writing. I do it when I can. I do as my kids are crawling over me. I do it while others are talking. I just do it. I am a mother and a wife, not only a writer.”
UA “ What do you like the most about writing?”
CB “Besides language, I love story and most of all that I can connect with people silently when I am not present. Storytelling, I like being part of something that has an ancient history.”
UA “What do you like the least?”
CB “Publishing, or rather, promoting. I don’t like selling. I don’t want to be in front of the work. I want it to speak for itself. But that is not how the market place works.”
UA “How will you be participating in the URWF?”
CB “I will be offering a workshop on writing and materials, reading from my book and participating in a panel discussion.”
UA “I think your readers will enjoy listening and learning from you and I’m sure you will attract some new readers who will like spending time with your silent voice on the still available, paper page.”
Book Review: Bollywood Beauty by Shalini Akhil
The Bollywood Beauty
By Shalini Akhil
REVIEWED BY TAMARRA KAIDA
WE TRAVEL IN ORDER TO SEE OTHER PLACES AND TO MEET DIFFERENT KINDS OF PEOPLE. WE READ FOR SOME OF THE SAME REASONS. SOMETIMES IT IS AN EXCITING JOURNEY. SOMETIMES IT WOULD HAVE BEEN BETTER TO STAY HOME.
THE BOLLYWOOD BEAUTY IS SET IN FIJI AND AUSTRALIA AND IS A CONTEMPORARY COMING OF AGE STORY OF TWO INDIAN COUSINS, KESH AND RUPA, WHO ARE OF MARRIAGEABLE AGE AND EMBODY OPPOSING ATTITUDES ABOUT THEIR FATE AS WOMEN.
THE STORY BEGINS IN MELBOURNE WHERE THE MAIN CHARACTER, KESH, HAS HER OWN APARTMENT, HOLDS A PART TIME JOB IN A BAR AND IS AN ART MAJOR AT UNIVERSITY. SHE HAS MOVED OUT OF HER FAMILY’S HOME BUT HAS NOT ESCAPED HER MOTHER’S FAMILIAL CONTROL. RUPA ARRIVES IN AUSTRALIA FOR AN INTENSIVE SIX MONTH COMPUTER COURSE. KESH’S MOTHER ARRANGES FOR THE COUSINS TO LIVE TOGETHER. CONFLICT IS INEVITABLE. THE STORY EXPLORES HOW THEY AFFECT EACH OTHER’S WORLD VIEWS, WHERE THEY ARE ALIKE AS INDIANS IN A DOMINANT WESTERN CULTURE AND WHERE THEY ARE DIFFERENT FROM THEIR PARENTS’ GENERATION.
KESH IS THE MODERN REBEL WHO HAS GROWN UP IN AUSTRALIA AND WANTS TO BE CAPTAIN OF HER OWN DESTINY. RUPA IS THE BOLLYWOOD BEAUTY FROM A CONSERVATIVE INDIAN FAMILY WHO HAS BEEN RAISED IN FIJI. FAMILY TIES HAVE CAST THE GIRLS AS FRIENDS AND RIVALS SINCE CHILDHOOD. KESH WAS THE FREEDOM LOVING, ADVENTUROUS TOMBOY WHO, MUCH TO HER MOTHER’S DISMAY, RAN ABOUT IN THE BRIGHT SUN LIGHT AND ALLOWED HER SKIN TO DARKEN. RUPA WAS THE PROPER FEMININE GIRL WHO WAS OBEDIENT AND PLAYED INDOORS WITH TEA SETS.
YET, OPPOSITES ATTRACT AND THE GIRLS ARE BOUND TOGETHER BY LOVE, ENVY, AND THEIR INDIAN CULTURAL ROOTS. IN THE RICHEST PARTS OF THE BOOK, KESH AND RUPA STRUGGLE TO UNDERSTAND THEIR FEELINGS ABOUT THEIR OWN ‘INDIAN–NESS’. IF YOU GROW UP OUTSIDE OF A DOMINANT CULTURAL NORM IT IS INEVITABLE THAT YOU WILL PERCEIVE YOURSELF AS ‘OTHER’. IF YOU ADOPT THE VALUES AND TASTES OF THAT CULTURE YOU OFTEN DON’T FEEL COMFORTABLE IN YOUR BIRTH CULTURE. IT IS A CLASSIC IMMIGRANT IDENTITY ISSUE.
KESH IS BOTH AN AUSSIE AND A TRANSPLANT INDIAN WHO WEARS JEANS, HAS SHORT HAIR AND IS STRONG WILLED AND ANGRY. SHE DRINKS, SMOKES CIGARETTES AND OCCASIONALLY POT. SHE REFUSES TO CONFORM TO THE INDIAN CUSTOM OF ARRANGED MARRIAGES. KESHE’S FRIENDS ARE AN INTERESTING MIX OF WESTERN AND INDIANAN PALS AND CONFIDANTS THAT ENRICH THE STORY. AMONG THEM IS DAVE, A CHARMING WOMANIZER WHO FINDS THE NEWLY ARRIVED RUPA VERY ‘EXOTIC’. KESH SEES THROUGH THIS ROMANTIC ILLUSION AND HER SPIRITED ANALYSIS OF THE ‘EXOTIC OTHER’ MAKES FOR SMART POLITICAL DIALOG. KESH’S STREET SMARTS AND FAMILY LOYALTY CASTS HER INTO THE RELUCTANT ROLE AS PROTECTOR OF HER COUSIN’S VIRGINITY.
“LOVE, SHE TALKS ABOUT. LOVE. LOVE WILL COME. LOVE MARRIAGES NEVER LAST. FIRST MARRY, AND THEN LOVE. THIS IS THE WAY IT SHOULD BE DONE,” PRONOUNCES KESH’S MOTHER. THE STAGE IS SET FOR A BATTLE BETWEEN MOTHER AND DAUGHTER AS WELL AS TRADITIONAL VALUES VERSUS INDIVIDUAL CHOICE. THESE ARE THE LIVELIEST PARTS OF THE BOOK. RUPA TURNS OUT TO BE A BIT OF A WILD CARD AND FINDS A WAY TO HAVE HER CAKE AND EAT IT TOO. AFTER THAT, THE STORY FOLLOWS A PREDICTABLE PATH CULMINATING IN THE WEDDING OF RUPA TO A SUITABLE BOY.
SHALINI AKHIL DOES AN ADMIRABLE JOB OF WEAVING TRADITIONAL INDIAN DISHES, CLOTHING AND AGE OLD CULTURAL AND RELIGIOUS CUSTOMS INTO THE STORY PLOTLINE. BUT THIS READER WAS OFTEN FRUSTRATED BY THE LACK OF EXPLANATION OF CERTAIN CUSTOMS. WHAT ARE DUPATTAS, WHICH APPARENTLY CAN ALSO FUNCTION AS CURTAINS? WHAT IS A GRAGAH? I FOUND THE DESCRIPTION OF THE INDIAN PRE- WEDDING RITUALS INTRIGUING BUT INCOMPLETE. WHY IS THE BRIDE SMEARED WITH TURMERIC PASTE? WHY IS SHE NOT PERMITTED TO BATHE FOR ALMOST A WEEK AND ONLY ON THE MORNING OF HER WEDDING? WHY DOES KESH ALSO HAVE HER FACE SMEARED WITH TURMERIC?
WHAT DOES IT SYMBOLIZE?
THE BOLLYWOOD BEAUTY IS A BREEZY NOVEL THAT TOUCHES LIGHTLY ON INTERESTING ISSUES OF MULTI-CULTURALISM IN AUSTRALIA. UNFORTUNATELY, SHALINI AKHIL DIDN’T EXPLORE THEM DEEPLY OR SERIOUSLY. THE COMING OF AGE STORY BETWEEN THE TWO GIRLS IS SINCERE. BUT THE BOLLYWOOD ENDING, UNDERMINES THE BELIEVABILITY OF THE STORY. IF AKHIL INTENDED IT TO BE A PARODY OF THE INDIAN ROMANCE MOVIES, THEN IT REDUCES THE CONCERN FOR THE MAIN ISSUE OF ARRANGED MARRIAGES ON WHICH THE NOVEL IS CENTERED.
THIS IS A SHAME, AS THE POTENTIAL FOR A RICH AND COMPLEX BI-CULTURAL STORY RESIDES IN THE PAGES OF THIS DEBUT NOVEL. HOPEFULLY, AKHIL WILL BECOME A BRAVER WRITER WHO RISKS REACHING BELOW THE SURFACE OF HER UNIQUE MATERIAL. THE POTENTIAL IS THERE.
By Shalini Akhil
REVIEWED BY TAMARRA KAIDA
WE TRAVEL IN ORDER TO SEE OTHER PLACES AND TO MEET DIFFERENT KINDS OF PEOPLE. WE READ FOR SOME OF THE SAME REASONS. SOMETIMES IT IS AN EXCITING JOURNEY. SOMETIMES IT WOULD HAVE BEEN BETTER TO STAY HOME.
THE BOLLYWOOD BEAUTY IS SET IN FIJI AND AUSTRALIA AND IS A CONTEMPORARY COMING OF AGE STORY OF TWO INDIAN COUSINS, KESH AND RUPA, WHO ARE OF MARRIAGEABLE AGE AND EMBODY OPPOSING ATTITUDES ABOUT THEIR FATE AS WOMEN.
THE STORY BEGINS IN MELBOURNE WHERE THE MAIN CHARACTER, KESH, HAS HER OWN APARTMENT, HOLDS A PART TIME JOB IN A BAR AND IS AN ART MAJOR AT UNIVERSITY. SHE HAS MOVED OUT OF HER FAMILY’S HOME BUT HAS NOT ESCAPED HER MOTHER’S FAMILIAL CONTROL. RUPA ARRIVES IN AUSTRALIA FOR AN INTENSIVE SIX MONTH COMPUTER COURSE. KESH’S MOTHER ARRANGES FOR THE COUSINS TO LIVE TOGETHER. CONFLICT IS INEVITABLE. THE STORY EXPLORES HOW THEY AFFECT EACH OTHER’S WORLD VIEWS, WHERE THEY ARE ALIKE AS INDIANS IN A DOMINANT WESTERN CULTURE AND WHERE THEY ARE DIFFERENT FROM THEIR PARENTS’ GENERATION.
KESH IS THE MODERN REBEL WHO HAS GROWN UP IN AUSTRALIA AND WANTS TO BE CAPTAIN OF HER OWN DESTINY. RUPA IS THE BOLLYWOOD BEAUTY FROM A CONSERVATIVE INDIAN FAMILY WHO HAS BEEN RAISED IN FIJI. FAMILY TIES HAVE CAST THE GIRLS AS FRIENDS AND RIVALS SINCE CHILDHOOD. KESH WAS THE FREEDOM LOVING, ADVENTUROUS TOMBOY WHO, MUCH TO HER MOTHER’S DISMAY, RAN ABOUT IN THE BRIGHT SUN LIGHT AND ALLOWED HER SKIN TO DARKEN. RUPA WAS THE PROPER FEMININE GIRL WHO WAS OBEDIENT AND PLAYED INDOORS WITH TEA SETS.
YET, OPPOSITES ATTRACT AND THE GIRLS ARE BOUND TOGETHER BY LOVE, ENVY, AND THEIR INDIAN CULTURAL ROOTS. IN THE RICHEST PARTS OF THE BOOK, KESH AND RUPA STRUGGLE TO UNDERSTAND THEIR FEELINGS ABOUT THEIR OWN ‘INDIAN–NESS’. IF YOU GROW UP OUTSIDE OF A DOMINANT CULTURAL NORM IT IS INEVITABLE THAT YOU WILL PERCEIVE YOURSELF AS ‘OTHER’. IF YOU ADOPT THE VALUES AND TASTES OF THAT CULTURE YOU OFTEN DON’T FEEL COMFORTABLE IN YOUR BIRTH CULTURE. IT IS A CLASSIC IMMIGRANT IDENTITY ISSUE.
KESH IS BOTH AN AUSSIE AND A TRANSPLANT INDIAN WHO WEARS JEANS, HAS SHORT HAIR AND IS STRONG WILLED AND ANGRY. SHE DRINKS, SMOKES CIGARETTES AND OCCASIONALLY POT. SHE REFUSES TO CONFORM TO THE INDIAN CUSTOM OF ARRANGED MARRIAGES. KESHE’S FRIENDS ARE AN INTERESTING MIX OF WESTERN AND INDIANAN PALS AND CONFIDANTS THAT ENRICH THE STORY. AMONG THEM IS DAVE, A CHARMING WOMANIZER WHO FINDS THE NEWLY ARRIVED RUPA VERY ‘EXOTIC’. KESH SEES THROUGH THIS ROMANTIC ILLUSION AND HER SPIRITED ANALYSIS OF THE ‘EXOTIC OTHER’ MAKES FOR SMART POLITICAL DIALOG. KESH’S STREET SMARTS AND FAMILY LOYALTY CASTS HER INTO THE RELUCTANT ROLE AS PROTECTOR OF HER COUSIN’S VIRGINITY.
“LOVE, SHE TALKS ABOUT. LOVE. LOVE WILL COME. LOVE MARRIAGES NEVER LAST. FIRST MARRY, AND THEN LOVE. THIS IS THE WAY IT SHOULD BE DONE,” PRONOUNCES KESH’S MOTHER. THE STAGE IS SET FOR A BATTLE BETWEEN MOTHER AND DAUGHTER AS WELL AS TRADITIONAL VALUES VERSUS INDIVIDUAL CHOICE. THESE ARE THE LIVELIEST PARTS OF THE BOOK. RUPA TURNS OUT TO BE A BIT OF A WILD CARD AND FINDS A WAY TO HAVE HER CAKE AND EAT IT TOO. AFTER THAT, THE STORY FOLLOWS A PREDICTABLE PATH CULMINATING IN THE WEDDING OF RUPA TO A SUITABLE BOY.
SHALINI AKHIL DOES AN ADMIRABLE JOB OF WEAVING TRADITIONAL INDIAN DISHES, CLOTHING AND AGE OLD CULTURAL AND RELIGIOUS CUSTOMS INTO THE STORY PLOTLINE. BUT THIS READER WAS OFTEN FRUSTRATED BY THE LACK OF EXPLANATION OF CERTAIN CUSTOMS. WHAT ARE DUPATTAS, WHICH APPARENTLY CAN ALSO FUNCTION AS CURTAINS? WHAT IS A GRAGAH? I FOUND THE DESCRIPTION OF THE INDIAN PRE- WEDDING RITUALS INTRIGUING BUT INCOMPLETE. WHY IS THE BRIDE SMEARED WITH TURMERIC PASTE? WHY IS SHE NOT PERMITTED TO BATHE FOR ALMOST A WEEK AND ONLY ON THE MORNING OF HER WEDDING? WHY DOES KESH ALSO HAVE HER FACE SMEARED WITH TURMERIC?
WHAT DOES IT SYMBOLIZE?
THE BOLLYWOOD BEAUTY IS A BREEZY NOVEL THAT TOUCHES LIGHTLY ON INTERESTING ISSUES OF MULTI-CULTURALISM IN AUSTRALIA. UNFORTUNATELY, SHALINI AKHIL DIDN’T EXPLORE THEM DEEPLY OR SERIOUSLY. THE COMING OF AGE STORY BETWEEN THE TWO GIRLS IS SINCERE. BUT THE BOLLYWOOD ENDING, UNDERMINES THE BELIEVABILITY OF THE STORY. IF AKHIL INTENDED IT TO BE A PARODY OF THE INDIAN ROMANCE MOVIES, THEN IT REDUCES THE CONCERN FOR THE MAIN ISSUE OF ARRANGED MARRIAGES ON WHICH THE NOVEL IS CENTERED.
THIS IS A SHAME, AS THE POTENTIAL FOR A RICH AND COMPLEX BI-CULTURAL STORY RESIDES IN THE PAGES OF THIS DEBUT NOVEL. HOPEFULLY, AKHIL WILL BECOME A BRAVER WRITER WHO RISKS REACHING BELOW THE SURFACE OF HER UNIQUE MATERIAL. THE POTENTIAL IS THERE.
Book Review: Lost Geography by Charlotte Bacon
Lost Geography by Charlotte Bacon
Review by Uma Anyar
How much does place affect what we are as individuals? To what extent does geography help to mold a person’s character? How does changing where you live alter who you are?
Charlotte Bacon explores these concepts in Lost Geography, her debut novel set in rural Saskatchewan, Toronto, Paris, London, Istanbul and New York. Scotland is the kickoff location for this multi generational saga that spans over sixty years in the history of a family who’s names are not well known but whose lives are compelling because the writer makes us care about each and every member. The main characters are women but the husbands, Davis and Osmon, linger on in memory. Bacon writes about family love and life sensitively and unsentimentally.
The story starts with Margaret Evans a young nurse, and Davis Campbell a bookish fisherman who hates the stink of the sea.
Davis leaves Scotland to seek his fortune in Canada and to find a place inland away from, “The salty wool of wet sweaters, the blood on the gills. Billows of odors that made his gut slide and his eyes blur. It was everywhere. In pubs, his clothes, the hair of whey colored children.”
Davis made his way to Regina, a farming region of Saskatchewan, where the flu and a 104-degree fever placed him in the capable hands of pretty Nurse Evans. They discover a bond through their love of books. Davis’ convalescence becomes a form of courtship as Margaret reads him sonnets and Bleak House, just as his mother had done when he was a child. They marry and discover a sexual passion neither had expected or understood but it survives three children and hard times on the family farm. It is a simple but very poignant story of love and family life rooted in hard soil, animals, cold winters and broad flat landscape that takes more than it gives.
Ironically, it is the sexual desire that pulls Margaret and Davis away from their twentieth anniversary celebratory dinner at a restaurant and into their sturdy truck for privacy, in an effort to find a secluded spot to park and make love. This is an uncharacteristic and boldly daring act for this practical couple. Tragically and simply, the truck skids on bridge and plunges into the Wasakana River where they drown. This calamity is the first in a line of sad and painful losses that moves the family tale onward to a new piece of geography and onto a new family character and how she adapts and changes in her new location. The story moves in a matrilineal arc each section of the book devoted to a daughter and the city she lives in.
Toronto becomes home for Hilda, the strong and needy female in the Campbell clan. Interestingly it is the girl rather than either of the brothers who moves on, alone, to make her fortune or at least try to survive on her own terms in a large cosmopolitan city in the 1950’s. Bacon presents us with a strong female character that raises her daughter while working for a travel agency. Hilda finds love after a precipitous one-night stand that leaves her pregnant. She marries a good man who dies unexpectedly of a heart attack. Hilda’s daughter Danielle loves her mother but also yearns to get away from her.
Danielle moves to Paris because of a job at an antiques auction house. Danielle has the grit, beauty and sensuality of her mother and grandmother. Eventually, she marries Osmon, an English-Turkish rug dealer and this is where the book becomes more intricate and complex. Bacon takes us into Osmon’s London childhood where we encounter a patriarchal brute of a father, a mother whose Turkish accent betrays her English life style and focuses on the problems of not fitting in.
I found the London/Paris section of the book most absorbing. Bacon’s elegant, sensitive writing is especially persuasive describing the horrible brutality that sometimes is part of family life. She explores the convoluted ways parents try to fit into their new country and the ways their children are affected.
Despite the title of the book, geography plays a secondary role to the personal and devastating loss and grief that death forces on a family. Proving that the powerful places on earth are in the human heart.
The book closes in New York City where Sophie and Sasha, the teenage children of Danielle and Osmon Harris break through their father’s all consuming grief of the loss of Danielle to cancer and prevent his suicide. The descriptions of Osmon’s depression and isolation, his efforts to live for his children are among the more powerful and convincing I have ever read. It is impossible to not care about the human struggle to go on when there seems to be no reason to.
Sometimes the wrong thing to do is actually the right thing. Sophie throws her father’s precious Persian rugs out the window of the New York store. “The Carpets didn’t fly. They didn’t catch the wind, they didn’t soar… They fell with a purpose, the way a hawk falls on prey.”
Through Sasha and Sophie’s bizarre act of love for their father Osmon, we come to understand that it is emotional geography, which spreads itself out like a magic carpet beneath our feet that helps us endure life’s tragedies.
Review by Uma Anyar
How much does place affect what we are as individuals? To what extent does geography help to mold a person’s character? How does changing where you live alter who you are?
Charlotte Bacon explores these concepts in Lost Geography, her debut novel set in rural Saskatchewan, Toronto, Paris, London, Istanbul and New York. Scotland is the kickoff location for this multi generational saga that spans over sixty years in the history of a family who’s names are not well known but whose lives are compelling because the writer makes us care about each and every member. The main characters are women but the husbands, Davis and Osmon, linger on in memory. Bacon writes about family love and life sensitively and unsentimentally.
The story starts with Margaret Evans a young nurse, and Davis Campbell a bookish fisherman who hates the stink of the sea.
Davis leaves Scotland to seek his fortune in Canada and to find a place inland away from, “The salty wool of wet sweaters, the blood on the gills. Billows of odors that made his gut slide and his eyes blur. It was everywhere. In pubs, his clothes, the hair of whey colored children.”
Davis made his way to Regina, a farming region of Saskatchewan, where the flu and a 104-degree fever placed him in the capable hands of pretty Nurse Evans. They discover a bond through their love of books. Davis’ convalescence becomes a form of courtship as Margaret reads him sonnets and Bleak House, just as his mother had done when he was a child. They marry and discover a sexual passion neither had expected or understood but it survives three children and hard times on the family farm. It is a simple but very poignant story of love and family life rooted in hard soil, animals, cold winters and broad flat landscape that takes more than it gives.
Ironically, it is the sexual desire that pulls Margaret and Davis away from their twentieth anniversary celebratory dinner at a restaurant and into their sturdy truck for privacy, in an effort to find a secluded spot to park and make love. This is an uncharacteristic and boldly daring act for this practical couple. Tragically and simply, the truck skids on bridge and plunges into the Wasakana River where they drown. This calamity is the first in a line of sad and painful losses that moves the family tale onward to a new piece of geography and onto a new family character and how she adapts and changes in her new location. The story moves in a matrilineal arc each section of the book devoted to a daughter and the city she lives in.
Toronto becomes home for Hilda, the strong and needy female in the Campbell clan. Interestingly it is the girl rather than either of the brothers who moves on, alone, to make her fortune or at least try to survive on her own terms in a large cosmopolitan city in the 1950’s. Bacon presents us with a strong female character that raises her daughter while working for a travel agency. Hilda finds love after a precipitous one-night stand that leaves her pregnant. She marries a good man who dies unexpectedly of a heart attack. Hilda’s daughter Danielle loves her mother but also yearns to get away from her.
Danielle moves to Paris because of a job at an antiques auction house. Danielle has the grit, beauty and sensuality of her mother and grandmother. Eventually, she marries Osmon, an English-Turkish rug dealer and this is where the book becomes more intricate and complex. Bacon takes us into Osmon’s London childhood where we encounter a patriarchal brute of a father, a mother whose Turkish accent betrays her English life style and focuses on the problems of not fitting in.
I found the London/Paris section of the book most absorbing. Bacon’s elegant, sensitive writing is especially persuasive describing the horrible brutality that sometimes is part of family life. She explores the convoluted ways parents try to fit into their new country and the ways their children are affected.
Despite the title of the book, geography plays a secondary role to the personal and devastating loss and grief that death forces on a family. Proving that the powerful places on earth are in the human heart.
The book closes in New York City where Sophie and Sasha, the teenage children of Danielle and Osmon Harris break through their father’s all consuming grief of the loss of Danielle to cancer and prevent his suicide. The descriptions of Osmon’s depression and isolation, his efforts to live for his children are among the more powerful and convincing I have ever read. It is impossible to not care about the human struggle to go on when there seems to be no reason to.
Sometimes the wrong thing to do is actually the right thing. Sophie throws her father’s precious Persian rugs out the window of the New York store. “The Carpets didn’t fly. They didn’t catch the wind, they didn’t soar… They fell with a purpose, the way a hawk falls on prey.”
Through Sasha and Sophie’s bizarre act of love for their father Osmon, we come to understand that it is emotional geography, which spreads itself out like a magic carpet beneath our feet that helps us endure life’s tragedies.
Book Review: Everyman's Rules For Scientific Living by Carrie Tiffany
Everyman’s Rules For Scientific Living
By Carrie Tiffany
Review by Uma Anyar
Science can be a form of faith. And, just like religion, it can let you down if all you have is a list of rules.
“Everyman’s Rules for Scientific Living
By Robert L. Pettergree, Agrostologist
1. Contribute to society for the achievement of mutual benefits
2. The only true foundation is a fact.
3. Keep up -to –date.
4. Avoid mawkish consideration of History and Religion.
5. Keep the mind Flexible through the development and testing of new hypotheses.
6. Cultivate the company of wiser men- men who are sticklers not shirkers.
7. Disseminate. The labors and achievements of men of science must become the permanent possession of many.
8. Bring science into the home.
Published in the Victorian Department of Agricultural Journal, May 1934.”
In 1934 Robert Pettergree put his faith in agro-science and moved to Wycheproof, a dusty farming town in the Mallee region of Victoria, Australia. He had charts, a slide rule, production notebooks, agricultural department pamphlets, a night school education and, most importantly, a need to prove himself in the world. He was a modern man armed with science.
Robert Pettergree’s thirst for success was predicated on a childhood filled with hunger and neediness. His mother, Lillian, a poor prostitute, loved him and shared her hand full of dirt with her hungry son.
“She takes the tonic spoon and sits on the back step digging at the soil… and says ‘Brown –It tastes brown.’ They share. They always share.”
She gave birth to two other babies who died of Spina Bifida, Latin for split spine. Poor diet with a lack of oranges seemed to be the cause. Robert pursued science and learning as if it were salvation. Ironically, Robert developed a taste for dirt and could tell when a pinch of soil was from one farming county or another. He was never wrong and the astonished farmers enjoyed placed bets on the ‘Soil Taster’s’ remarkable skill.
Carrie Tiffany’s debut novel has a rich story line, believable characters and is informative about 1930’s Australian farm life and the vicissitudes of growing wheat in the Mallee. It is powerful in the way Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath depicted the dust bowl calamity to Americans.
The story is about a marriage and a man’s mission to improve nature through science. It is told in a clean, spare style. Indeed, the most beguiling aspect of the book is Robert’s wife’s observant, non self-pitying voice. As the main character, Jean leads us into a time and a place that on the surface may not sound like exciting reading material but is surprisingly gripping. This is a remarkably beautiful book, well researched, literary in the best sense and very wise. Carrie Tiffany is dealing with more than the flat facts of farming in poor soil; she is exploring human nature, desire, belief and faith from both a female and male point of view. Yet, this book is not a feminist polemic. It is art because the writer makes us care not only about the characters on her pages but also about the place itself. This is a novel in which the land and the historical era are not mere atmospheric background but actual presences.
“Mallee mornings don’t flicker. There are no hazy beginnings, no half-light of hesitation where day meets night. The Mallee sun snaps over the horizon with a sure and sudden glow of electric light. Long sharp rays of yellow reach across the flat horizon like tentacles. I have seen this before. On a packet of Mildura raisins. Raisins, Full of Goodness from the sun. Eat More Raisins Everyday in Every Way. The picture on the packet shows children frolicking in a paddock of golden wheat wearing neat shorts and knitted jumpers; the sun’s rays touch them like ribbons from a maypole.”
Jean Finnegan, a woman with her own ideas, is the surprising survivor of her husband’s failed scientific farming experiment and her own miscarriage. She knows how to go on, how to bend into the land rather than conquer it. In the end it is she who bonds with the hard land in a passionate and permanent way. It is Robert Pettergree’s tragic tunnel vision and cold determination that make him blind to Nature and to his devoted wife. In spite of Jean’s strong character I find myself haunted by Robert who shifts his idealism from science to patriotism and goes off to war rather than accept the failure of his vision. His belief that science and technology could tame Nature was one of the hallmarks of Modernism. That kind of hubris has brought us to a time when global warming is making us seriously question those tenets and consider new ways of working within Nature’s paradigm.
By Carrie Tiffany
Review by Uma Anyar
Science can be a form of faith. And, just like religion, it can let you down if all you have is a list of rules.
“Everyman’s Rules for Scientific Living
By Robert L. Pettergree, Agrostologist
1. Contribute to society for the achievement of mutual benefits
2. The only true foundation is a fact.
3. Keep up -to –date.
4. Avoid mawkish consideration of History and Religion.
5. Keep the mind Flexible through the development and testing of new hypotheses.
6. Cultivate the company of wiser men- men who are sticklers not shirkers.
7. Disseminate. The labors and achievements of men of science must become the permanent possession of many.
8. Bring science into the home.
Published in the Victorian Department of Agricultural Journal, May 1934.”
In 1934 Robert Pettergree put his faith in agro-science and moved to Wycheproof, a dusty farming town in the Mallee region of Victoria, Australia. He had charts, a slide rule, production notebooks, agricultural department pamphlets, a night school education and, most importantly, a need to prove himself in the world. He was a modern man armed with science.
Robert Pettergree’s thirst for success was predicated on a childhood filled with hunger and neediness. His mother, Lillian, a poor prostitute, loved him and shared her hand full of dirt with her hungry son.
“She takes the tonic spoon and sits on the back step digging at the soil… and says ‘Brown –It tastes brown.’ They share. They always share.”
She gave birth to two other babies who died of Spina Bifida, Latin for split spine. Poor diet with a lack of oranges seemed to be the cause. Robert pursued science and learning as if it were salvation. Ironically, Robert developed a taste for dirt and could tell when a pinch of soil was from one farming county or another. He was never wrong and the astonished farmers enjoyed placed bets on the ‘Soil Taster’s’ remarkable skill.
Carrie Tiffany’s debut novel has a rich story line, believable characters and is informative about 1930’s Australian farm life and the vicissitudes of growing wheat in the Mallee. It is powerful in the way Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath depicted the dust bowl calamity to Americans.
The story is about a marriage and a man’s mission to improve nature through science. It is told in a clean, spare style. Indeed, the most beguiling aspect of the book is Robert’s wife’s observant, non self-pitying voice. As the main character, Jean leads us into a time and a place that on the surface may not sound like exciting reading material but is surprisingly gripping. This is a remarkably beautiful book, well researched, literary in the best sense and very wise. Carrie Tiffany is dealing with more than the flat facts of farming in poor soil; she is exploring human nature, desire, belief and faith from both a female and male point of view. Yet, this book is not a feminist polemic. It is art because the writer makes us care not only about the characters on her pages but also about the place itself. This is a novel in which the land and the historical era are not mere atmospheric background but actual presences.
“Mallee mornings don’t flicker. There are no hazy beginnings, no half-light of hesitation where day meets night. The Mallee sun snaps over the horizon with a sure and sudden glow of electric light. Long sharp rays of yellow reach across the flat horizon like tentacles. I have seen this before. On a packet of Mildura raisins. Raisins, Full of Goodness from the sun. Eat More Raisins Everyday in Every Way. The picture on the packet shows children frolicking in a paddock of golden wheat wearing neat shorts and knitted jumpers; the sun’s rays touch them like ribbons from a maypole.”
Jean Finnegan, a woman with her own ideas, is the surprising survivor of her husband’s failed scientific farming experiment and her own miscarriage. She knows how to go on, how to bend into the land rather than conquer it. In the end it is she who bonds with the hard land in a passionate and permanent way. It is Robert Pettergree’s tragic tunnel vision and cold determination that make him blind to Nature and to his devoted wife. In spite of Jean’s strong character I find myself haunted by Robert who shifts his idealism from science to patriotism and goes off to war rather than accept the failure of his vision. His belief that science and technology could tame Nature was one of the hallmarks of Modernism. That kind of hubris has brought us to a time when global warming is making us seriously question those tenets and consider new ways of working within Nature’s paradigm.
Book Review: Reasons for Reading-The Giniralla Conspiracy by Nihal de Silva
Reasons for Reading
By Tamarra Kaida
Writers have long complained about the loneliness of writing. “All you have is a blank page and your brain”. Conversely, readers can evade loneliness, boredom, by reading what a writer has written.
Reading a book is an intimate act. Surprisingly, it can be done in the most public of places. Train stations, cramped airplane seats, and doctors’ waiting rooms encourage reading more than libraries, which tend to make one sleepy. The best public reading is in cafes where lattes and cappuccinos add to the pleasure. It can also be done in the privacy of your own bed or even someone else’s bed. Husbands and boyfriends don’t mind if you slip into your “good book” and journey into another realm while your body lies by their side. A friend told me about the time the love scene she was reading was so much better then her own sexual experience that she got up and left the boyfriend, but took his book. It was a tattered copy of Lady Chatterley’s Lover.
It takes more time to read a book then it does to look at a painting or listen to most music. Even movies, which engage both our sight and sound senses, are limited to about two hours. Books can keep you involved for weeks, even months. It took my husband and I four months to read War and Peace aloud. It was quality time and a shared pleasure.
Fiction never lies.
There is something about reading a novel that requests the reader to suspend judgment of the author in ways one doesn’t do with essays or theoretical writing.
Fiction is about characters and plot and a good tale. But there is something else… and that is the author’s voice. It is not difficult to sense what kind of human being is writing the story one is reading. Recently, I read The Giniralla Conspiracy, by Nihal de Silva, a Sri Lankan writer who won the Gratian Prize in 2003 for his first book, The Road From Elephant Pass. De Silva was scheduled to speak at the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival in October, but tragically he won’t be attending, he was killed when his bus ran over a land mine in northern Sri Lanka.
Sometimes, books are better company then people.
I was in the middle of The Giniralla Conspiracy when I received the bad news via email.
The book was about revolutionaries who recruit young idealistic college students into their radical political organization, which aims to change the corrupt establishment. Sujatha Mallika, a brave village girl with a traumatic childhood is attracted to the radicals’ worthy cause but deplores the violent methods used by the party to control their own members. Sujatha discovers a secret plan that promises to destroy the government and kill many innocent people. She and her friends work at preventing the forthcoming catastrophe. The love stories interweave with the plot in a graceful and realistic manner. It is a tale about the complexity of revolutionary actions and raises the issue of weather malevolent means justify noble aims.
What struck me about The Giniralla Conspiracy is how different his heroine and his hero were from Western contemporary counterparts. Mithra, the hero, is a victim of childhood polio who is gentle, sweet and the target of much abuse during initiation rag at Jaypura University. He endures the sadistic bullying inflicted on him by the older students without bitterness or rancor. He is not especially hip or cool but he possesses emotional savy and depth of spirit. He is a very likable and memorable character. There were no big gun fights, no hot sex scenes. Instead the reader was given believable characters in a thriller plot set in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Even de Silva’s bad guy surprised this reader with his moral integrity. The best part of the reading experience was de Silva’s voice holding his fictional world together with a gentle humanity that exceeds the actual plot. I was looking forward to meeting him at the Festival to see if he actually was all that I sensed him to be on the page.
Paradoxically, the terrorism and violence he deplored and wrote about killed him. Land mines are deadly planted bulbs, which burst into bloom indiscriminately.
His books remain. His voice lives on.
By Tamarra Kaida
Writers have long complained about the loneliness of writing. “All you have is a blank page and your brain”. Conversely, readers can evade loneliness, boredom, by reading what a writer has written.
Reading a book is an intimate act. Surprisingly, it can be done in the most public of places. Train stations, cramped airplane seats, and doctors’ waiting rooms encourage reading more than libraries, which tend to make one sleepy. The best public reading is in cafes where lattes and cappuccinos add to the pleasure. It can also be done in the privacy of your own bed or even someone else’s bed. Husbands and boyfriends don’t mind if you slip into your “good book” and journey into another realm while your body lies by their side. A friend told me about the time the love scene she was reading was so much better then her own sexual experience that she got up and left the boyfriend, but took his book. It was a tattered copy of Lady Chatterley’s Lover.
It takes more time to read a book then it does to look at a painting or listen to most music. Even movies, which engage both our sight and sound senses, are limited to about two hours. Books can keep you involved for weeks, even months. It took my husband and I four months to read War and Peace aloud. It was quality time and a shared pleasure.
Fiction never lies.
There is something about reading a novel that requests the reader to suspend judgment of the author in ways one doesn’t do with essays or theoretical writing.
Fiction is about characters and plot and a good tale. But there is something else… and that is the author’s voice. It is not difficult to sense what kind of human being is writing the story one is reading. Recently, I read The Giniralla Conspiracy, by Nihal de Silva, a Sri Lankan writer who won the Gratian Prize in 2003 for his first book, The Road From Elephant Pass. De Silva was scheduled to speak at the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival in October, but tragically he won’t be attending, he was killed when his bus ran over a land mine in northern Sri Lanka.
Sometimes, books are better company then people.
I was in the middle of The Giniralla Conspiracy when I received the bad news via email.
The book was about revolutionaries who recruit young idealistic college students into their radical political organization, which aims to change the corrupt establishment. Sujatha Mallika, a brave village girl with a traumatic childhood is attracted to the radicals’ worthy cause but deplores the violent methods used by the party to control their own members. Sujatha discovers a secret plan that promises to destroy the government and kill many innocent people. She and her friends work at preventing the forthcoming catastrophe. The love stories interweave with the plot in a graceful and realistic manner. It is a tale about the complexity of revolutionary actions and raises the issue of weather malevolent means justify noble aims.
What struck me about The Giniralla Conspiracy is how different his heroine and his hero were from Western contemporary counterparts. Mithra, the hero, is a victim of childhood polio who is gentle, sweet and the target of much abuse during initiation rag at Jaypura University. He endures the sadistic bullying inflicted on him by the older students without bitterness or rancor. He is not especially hip or cool but he possesses emotional savy and depth of spirit. He is a very likable and memorable character. There were no big gun fights, no hot sex scenes. Instead the reader was given believable characters in a thriller plot set in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Even de Silva’s bad guy surprised this reader with his moral integrity. The best part of the reading experience was de Silva’s voice holding his fictional world together with a gentle humanity that exceeds the actual plot. I was looking forward to meeting him at the Festival to see if he actually was all that I sensed him to be on the page.
Paradoxically, the terrorism and violence he deplored and wrote about killed him. Land mines are deadly planted bulbs, which burst into bloom indiscriminately.
His books remain. His voice lives on.
Book Review: On Reading Orhan Pamuk in Bali
On Reading Orhan Pamuk in Bali
By Uma Anyar
I have not been able to read more then a page of Orhan Pamuk’s writing without yearning for a pen or pencil, a scrap of paper. Words speak themselves inside my head. Not the customary voice that I associate with the everyday me but a more observant consciousness that resides deeper in my psyche. This awareness attends to the neglected beauty of the curtains fluttering away from my open windows; noting the way the sheer fabric lifts and falls like large white wings without a body.
This voice, which comes into being while my eyes scan Pamuk’s words on a page, is an off- spring of the writer himself. This kind of reading is the most intimate of acts. It engenders creative energy. It focuses the mind into gentle receptivity. The reader enters the writer’s heart and mind like a willing lover ready to follow a train of thought where ever it may lead. And then, if the reader is also a writer, to speak through silent words strung together in sentences and paragraphs some particular truth one does not know is there until it reveals itself on the page.
This is beauty of another kind. It is formed of trust and inner hushes, the lightest whispers inside the soul, it is the foundation of something sacred which every writer tries to reach by reading the words of another.
Pamuk honors Dostoyevsky, Nabakov by presenting them to me and other readers elsewhere on the planet holding a copy of Other Colours, Essays and A Story in their hands, as a close friend might do when he wants you to ‘get’ what he ‘gets’ about them. And, because Pamuk is such an insightful reader/writer who has provoked new thoughts about old books, I will get a copy of The Brothers Karamazov and Lolita when I go to Ubud later today. I want to understand how beauty and cruelty are displayed in Nabakov’s characters and re-visit the tortured Karamozovs. Russian writers are not a happy lot but they take us into the depths of the human soul better then anyone else.
One book incites reading another.
After four hours of browsing through Borders Bookstore in Singapore, I was still unsatisfied with my book selections. I could not put my fingers on what I wanted because I did not know what I was looking for. There were just too many books bearing an overwhelming sense of sameness and formulaic promises to reveal The Secret of financial and spiritual success. There are just too many paths, too many truths; all clamoring for attention, each with a price on it’s freshly published face. So many voices yet not one spoke to me.
It was in a Changi Airport bookshop on the way back to Bali that a hefty paperback bearing a picture of a lone young man in a white shirt sitting at a table and drawing caught my eye. The descriptive line, below the image,“ Writings on Life, Art, Books, and Cities” captured my interest. Now, here is a mind worth meeting I thought. I was happy the cover said nothing about the writer’s 2006 Nobel Prize. The prominent proclamation of awards or accolades smells of promotion and affects the quality of the initial meeting between writer and reader.
I danced the hesitation waltz of commitment by wandering away from the book, fingering other paperbacks, ruffling through magazines but I returned to Pamuk. I wanted to meet him on the page and in my bed with tea and thought, in the sweetest silent intimacy.
Today is Saraswati Day, here in Bali. The unseen spiritual world intertwines with daily reality by the constant attention my Balinese friends and neighbors pay to gods and demons through offerings and ceremonies. As I type these words, Ibu Mangku, the local holy man’s wife, is lighting incense and placing a selection of woven offering trays containing flowers, candies, and special mosses on my bookshelf. Ibu Mangku sees to the spiritual needs of the house. She is a serene gray haired woman who goes about her spiritual duties with devotion and simplicity. She doesn’t hang around to chat or gossip. In fact, Ibu Mangku is not quite in this world anymore. She places leaf baskets near the intricately carved statue of the four-armed Goddess, Sarasawti. Incense smoke rises over my lap top screen. In the past lontar leaf books would have been blessed, today the computer is also honored. The Balinese are masters of balance and practicality and have managed to maintain their unique blend of Hindu, Buddhist and animist beliefs despite years of colonial rule and the onslaught of Western tourism. I hold off typing and join Ibu in silent prayers. Holy water sprinkled from a used coke-a-cola bottle ends the brief ritual.
Wayan, our young housekeeper enters my studio and teasingly reprimands me for reading and writing on Saraswati day. “Not good to do that today Mum, no reading, no writing today.” she pronounces playfully.
“That just doesn’t make sense. It should be the opposite. Everyone should be doing nothing but reading and writing today. What better way to honor the goddess of learning, arts and music,” I state, certain of the logic of my argument.
“ No, not like that Mum. Today like birthday for Saraswati. Everybody rest now.” She sees my disappointed face and adds with a smile, “ But OK for you to write, you not Balinese.” I ponder the other side of this
‘to write or not to write’ dilemma while gazing at the terraced rice fields outside my window and choose Balinese sacred tradition over personal preference by clicking on ‘word quit.’
Saraswati smiles.
By Uma Anyar
I have not been able to read more then a page of Orhan Pamuk’s writing without yearning for a pen or pencil, a scrap of paper. Words speak themselves inside my head. Not the customary voice that I associate with the everyday me but a more observant consciousness that resides deeper in my psyche. This awareness attends to the neglected beauty of the curtains fluttering away from my open windows; noting the way the sheer fabric lifts and falls like large white wings without a body.
This voice, which comes into being while my eyes scan Pamuk’s words on a page, is an off- spring of the writer himself. This kind of reading is the most intimate of acts. It engenders creative energy. It focuses the mind into gentle receptivity. The reader enters the writer’s heart and mind like a willing lover ready to follow a train of thought where ever it may lead. And then, if the reader is also a writer, to speak through silent words strung together in sentences and paragraphs some particular truth one does not know is there until it reveals itself on the page.
This is beauty of another kind. It is formed of trust and inner hushes, the lightest whispers inside the soul, it is the foundation of something sacred which every writer tries to reach by reading the words of another.
Pamuk honors Dostoyevsky, Nabakov by presenting them to me and other readers elsewhere on the planet holding a copy of Other Colours, Essays and A Story in their hands, as a close friend might do when he wants you to ‘get’ what he ‘gets’ about them. And, because Pamuk is such an insightful reader/writer who has provoked new thoughts about old books, I will get a copy of The Brothers Karamazov and Lolita when I go to Ubud later today. I want to understand how beauty and cruelty are displayed in Nabakov’s characters and re-visit the tortured Karamozovs. Russian writers are not a happy lot but they take us into the depths of the human soul better then anyone else.
One book incites reading another.
After four hours of browsing through Borders Bookstore in Singapore, I was still unsatisfied with my book selections. I could not put my fingers on what I wanted because I did not know what I was looking for. There were just too many books bearing an overwhelming sense of sameness and formulaic promises to reveal The Secret of financial and spiritual success. There are just too many paths, too many truths; all clamoring for attention, each with a price on it’s freshly published face. So many voices yet not one spoke to me.
It was in a Changi Airport bookshop on the way back to Bali that a hefty paperback bearing a picture of a lone young man in a white shirt sitting at a table and drawing caught my eye. The descriptive line, below the image,“ Writings on Life, Art, Books, and Cities” captured my interest. Now, here is a mind worth meeting I thought. I was happy the cover said nothing about the writer’s 2006 Nobel Prize. The prominent proclamation of awards or accolades smells of promotion and affects the quality of the initial meeting between writer and reader.
I danced the hesitation waltz of commitment by wandering away from the book, fingering other paperbacks, ruffling through magazines but I returned to Pamuk. I wanted to meet him on the page and in my bed with tea and thought, in the sweetest silent intimacy.
Today is Saraswati Day, here in Bali. The unseen spiritual world intertwines with daily reality by the constant attention my Balinese friends and neighbors pay to gods and demons through offerings and ceremonies. As I type these words, Ibu Mangku, the local holy man’s wife, is lighting incense and placing a selection of woven offering trays containing flowers, candies, and special mosses on my bookshelf. Ibu Mangku sees to the spiritual needs of the house. She is a serene gray haired woman who goes about her spiritual duties with devotion and simplicity. She doesn’t hang around to chat or gossip. In fact, Ibu Mangku is not quite in this world anymore. She places leaf baskets near the intricately carved statue of the four-armed Goddess, Sarasawti. Incense smoke rises over my lap top screen. In the past lontar leaf books would have been blessed, today the computer is also honored. The Balinese are masters of balance and practicality and have managed to maintain their unique blend of Hindu, Buddhist and animist beliefs despite years of colonial rule and the onslaught of Western tourism. I hold off typing and join Ibu in silent prayers. Holy water sprinkled from a used coke-a-cola bottle ends the brief ritual.
Wayan, our young housekeeper enters my studio and teasingly reprimands me for reading and writing on Saraswati day. “Not good to do that today Mum, no reading, no writing today.” she pronounces playfully.
“That just doesn’t make sense. It should be the opposite. Everyone should be doing nothing but reading and writing today. What better way to honor the goddess of learning, arts and music,” I state, certain of the logic of my argument.
“ No, not like that Mum. Today like birthday for Saraswati. Everybody rest now.” She sees my disappointed face and adds with a smile, “ But OK for you to write, you not Balinese.” I ponder the other side of this
‘to write or not to write’ dilemma while gazing at the terraced rice fields outside my window and choose Balinese sacred tradition over personal preference by clicking on ‘word quit.’
Saraswati smiles.
Book Review: The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid
The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid
Book Review - Uma Anyar
Ironically, the American dream of success, recognition and status has been achieved by Mohsin Hamid, the Pakistani author of The Reluctant Fundamentalist, a novel about a Princeton educated Muslim man who rejects becoming Americanized and returns to Lahore to tell his story to an anonymous American dinner companion who may or may not be a CIA agent.
Hamid the writer, like his hero Chandez, graduated from Princeton and worked for a New York business consulting company at an enviable salary. He currently lives in London and this book has been short listed for the Man Booker Prize. Chandez, the character, walked away from success, the writer Hamid did not. The book is written in a confessional style that elicits trust and draws on the author’s experience; to what degree, is left for the reader to wonder.
Chandez captures our attention more firmly than his mysterious American. Despite all that is implied by Chandez’s assumptions as to who he might be, we have to admire the guy for sitting through a long hot Lahore afternoon and evening listening to Chandez unload his life story without uttering a single peep himself. Writers are in control as long as they remain in the framework of fiction where anything is possible- even a silent, all ears listener.
The strength of this novel is the narrator’s compelling voice, which is calm, polite, and at times solicitous. The reader is his true target and Hamid had no trouble capturing my sympathetic ear.
The plot of a bright, hardworking, striving young man who either wants to rise in social status, like Fitzgerald’s J. Gatsby, or like Chandez, to reclaim what his family had lost, is familiar to most readers. This outsider falls in love with a patrician Princeton coed, Erica, who hails from a wealthy upper east side New York family. Their relationship is doomed by her nostalgic love for her childhood boyfriend Chris, who died of cancer. Changez has unconsciously been playing the part of an assimilated American so long that he encourages Erica to sleep with him and pretend that she is making love to Chris. The love story seems contrived until one realizes it is an allegory for America herself. Can America get over its nostalgia for its past and embrace change and true acceptance of the “Other”?
As Erica succumbs to depression and is committed to a mental institution, Changez, while on a corporate business trip to Manila where he watched the events of 9/11 on a hotel TV, discovers his true self.
“I stared as one — and then the other — of the twin towers of New York’s World Trade Center collapsed. And then I smiled. Yes, despicable as it may sound, my initial reaction was to be remarkably pleased.”
His secret, hidden anger reveals itself to him through his unexpected smile. From then on he can no longer play the game. He goes on working but the psychological erosion continues and finally he walks out on an important job, which his mentor has granted him as a sign of support and esteem. Instead of working on the appraisal of a publishing house in Valparaiso, Chile, Chandez spends his days at Pablo Neruda’s house. The final veil is pulled from Chandez’s eyes by one of the publishers who compares him to the Janissaries, early Christians, who were captured in their youth by the Ottomans and trained to fight against their own people. Chandez’s curt departure, “I’m done,” is both cinematic smart-ass and realistically believable, since there is never much to say when an irrevocable decision has been reached in the depth of one’s soul.
Chandez returns to Lahore and becomes a university lecturer in economics who may be helping student led anti American protests. We are brought back to the question of who the mysterious American might be. Paranoia and the depressing sense of mistrust of anyone “Other”- be it Pakistani Muslim or American Christian, does not bode well for a peaceful world. Who is the reluctant fundamentalist, the polite but angry narrator, or the silent suspicious looking American with the possible gun in his suit jacket?
“…You should not imagine that we Pakistanis are all potential terrorists, just as we should not imagine that you Americans are all undercover assassins.”
Mohsin Hamid’s short compelling novel pulls you in for a leisurely meal of juicy shiskababs at a sidewalk cafe, carries you along for 184 pages of confessions and introspection and then leaves you sitting alone at a table where fears and a sense of dismay for a peaceful mutual future lie beside the bread crumbs and dirty plates.
Book Review - Uma Anyar
Ironically, the American dream of success, recognition and status has been achieved by Mohsin Hamid, the Pakistani author of The Reluctant Fundamentalist, a novel about a Princeton educated Muslim man who rejects becoming Americanized and returns to Lahore to tell his story to an anonymous American dinner companion who may or may not be a CIA agent.
Hamid the writer, like his hero Chandez, graduated from Princeton and worked for a New York business consulting company at an enviable salary. He currently lives in London and this book has been short listed for the Man Booker Prize. Chandez, the character, walked away from success, the writer Hamid did not. The book is written in a confessional style that elicits trust and draws on the author’s experience; to what degree, is left for the reader to wonder.
Chandez captures our attention more firmly than his mysterious American. Despite all that is implied by Chandez’s assumptions as to who he might be, we have to admire the guy for sitting through a long hot Lahore afternoon and evening listening to Chandez unload his life story without uttering a single peep himself. Writers are in control as long as they remain in the framework of fiction where anything is possible- even a silent, all ears listener.
The strength of this novel is the narrator’s compelling voice, which is calm, polite, and at times solicitous. The reader is his true target and Hamid had no trouble capturing my sympathetic ear.
The plot of a bright, hardworking, striving young man who either wants to rise in social status, like Fitzgerald’s J. Gatsby, or like Chandez, to reclaim what his family had lost, is familiar to most readers. This outsider falls in love with a patrician Princeton coed, Erica, who hails from a wealthy upper east side New York family. Their relationship is doomed by her nostalgic love for her childhood boyfriend Chris, who died of cancer. Changez has unconsciously been playing the part of an assimilated American so long that he encourages Erica to sleep with him and pretend that she is making love to Chris. The love story seems contrived until one realizes it is an allegory for America herself. Can America get over its nostalgia for its past and embrace change and true acceptance of the “Other”?
As Erica succumbs to depression and is committed to a mental institution, Changez, while on a corporate business trip to Manila where he watched the events of 9/11 on a hotel TV, discovers his true self.
“I stared as one — and then the other — of the twin towers of New York’s World Trade Center collapsed. And then I smiled. Yes, despicable as it may sound, my initial reaction was to be remarkably pleased.”
His secret, hidden anger reveals itself to him through his unexpected smile. From then on he can no longer play the game. He goes on working but the psychological erosion continues and finally he walks out on an important job, which his mentor has granted him as a sign of support and esteem. Instead of working on the appraisal of a publishing house in Valparaiso, Chile, Chandez spends his days at Pablo Neruda’s house. The final veil is pulled from Chandez’s eyes by one of the publishers who compares him to the Janissaries, early Christians, who were captured in their youth by the Ottomans and trained to fight against their own people. Chandez’s curt departure, “I’m done,” is both cinematic smart-ass and realistically believable, since there is never much to say when an irrevocable decision has been reached in the depth of one’s soul.
Chandez returns to Lahore and becomes a university lecturer in economics who may be helping student led anti American protests. We are brought back to the question of who the mysterious American might be. Paranoia and the depressing sense of mistrust of anyone “Other”- be it Pakistani Muslim or American Christian, does not bode well for a peaceful world. Who is the reluctant fundamentalist, the polite but angry narrator, or the silent suspicious looking American with the possible gun in his suit jacket?
“…You should not imagine that we Pakistanis are all potential terrorists, just as we should not imagine that you Americans are all undercover assassins.”
Mohsin Hamid’s short compelling novel pulls you in for a leisurely meal of juicy shiskababs at a sidewalk cafe, carries you along for 184 pages of confessions and introspection and then leaves you sitting alone at a table where fears and a sense of dismay for a peaceful mutual future lie beside the bread crumbs and dirty plates.
Book Review: The Good Women Of China by Xinran
The Good Women of China - Hidden Voices: By Xinran Translated by Esther Tyldesley
Review by Tamarra Kaida
“The world is not made up of atoms but rather of stories” Muriel Ruykiser
In the prologue to Hidden Voices, Xinran recounts an incident that illustrates the power of true-life stories.
One evening in November 1999 when Xinran was on her way home from teaching an evening class at London University, a mugger hit her on the head, pushed her to the ground and shouted, “ give me your bag!” Although Xinran was in physical danger, she did not release her handbag. Luckily, passers- by came to her rescue and she did not loose her purse or get beaten further. Later, when questioned by the police as to why she risked her life fighting to keep her bag. She explained her manuscript was in the bag. “And is a book worth your life?” asked the policeman. “No, of course not, but this book is my life.”
It was my testimony to the lives of Chinese women, the result of many years’ work as a journalist. I knew I could have tried to recreate it. However, I wasn’t sure that I could put myself through the extremes of feeling provoked by writing the book again… In fighting for that bag I was defending my feelings and the feelings of Chinese women. The book was the result of so many things which, once lost, could never be found again. When you walk into your memories, you are opening a door to the past; the road within has many branches, the route is different every time
In the late 1980’s Xinran worked for a radio station in Nanjing, China as a presenter of a talk show called Words on the Night Breeze. “During the program I discussed various aspects of daily life and used my own experiences to win the listeners’ trust and suggest ways of approaching life’s difficulties.” At this time in China, this type of advice on life show was a new thing. Communist officials heavily regulated it and getting a listener call-in segment with live discussions was risky business. Because of Xinran’s humane presentation style and her compassionate personality listeners wrote in and asked her help in various injustices to women. Xinran the trained journalist became a women’s issues champion.
One of the first letters to reach her contained a chicken feather and a letter. According to Chinese tradition, a chicken feather is an urgent distress signal. The letter was from a young boy, a follower of Xinran’s radio show who was appealing for help on the behalf of a powerless girl. The letter explained that an old man in his village had bought a young girl who had been kidnapped from a distant village and sold to the old man who wanted male heirs before he died. This was not an uncommon practice in outlying villages at that time. The man kept the girl a prisoner, chained at the waist and attached to a wall. Her skin was rubbed raw and blood was seeping through her clothes. “I think he will kill her. Please save her. What ever you do, don’t mention this on the radio. If the villegers find out they will drive my family away.”
This was the first of a series of life threatening stories that would find their way to Xinran’s desk. The book contains fifteen absorbing and sometimes heart wrenching stories about women’s lives in China during the Cultural Revolution and up to 1999.
The Mothers Who Endured an Earthquake tells the story of women survivors of The Tangshan earth quake of 1976 who lost their own children in the disaster but later started an home for orphans from that catastrophe. Each personal story of suffering broke my heart and deepened it with compassion. Xinran asks what does it mean to be a mother and to watch your beloved child suffer for 14 days trapped under a fallen building before fially dying?
In What do Chinese Women Want Xinran addresses three questions posed to her by a Chinese university student who was also an ‘ escort girl’ or ‘personal secretary.’
“What philosophy do women have?”
“What is happiness for a woman?”
“And what makes a good woman?”
The questions themselves pose queries for me and all Western women raised and educated in relative freedom and democracy, but still aware of the long road that must be trodden before all women achieve full equality. ‘The personal is political’ was the motto that turned my ideas about politics in a feminist direction. Xinran asks, “What is a woman’s life worth in China?” When the police consider it a bureaucratic hassle to investigate a peasant girl chained to a wall by a dirty old man. What is a daughter’s life worth when her own mother says she must submit to the sexual abuse by her own father?
Her only recourse is to become so physically ill that she must remain in a hospital where she can escape her father’s advances. The Girl Who Kept a Fly as a Pet is a story of a young girl’s poignant resourcefulness in the face of this dire situation.
This is a book of true stories, stories that cry out to be witnessed. They will remind you that compassion requires courage. They will make you ask questions about the nature of ignorance, e, and love in a new way.
Review by Tamarra Kaida
“The world is not made up of atoms but rather of stories” Muriel Ruykiser
In the prologue to Hidden Voices, Xinran recounts an incident that illustrates the power of true-life stories.
One evening in November 1999 when Xinran was on her way home from teaching an evening class at London University, a mugger hit her on the head, pushed her to the ground and shouted, “ give me your bag!” Although Xinran was in physical danger, she did not release her handbag. Luckily, passers- by came to her rescue and she did not loose her purse or get beaten further. Later, when questioned by the police as to why she risked her life fighting to keep her bag. She explained her manuscript was in the bag. “And is a book worth your life?” asked the policeman. “No, of course not, but this book is my life.”
It was my testimony to the lives of Chinese women, the result of many years’ work as a journalist. I knew I could have tried to recreate it. However, I wasn’t sure that I could put myself through the extremes of feeling provoked by writing the book again… In fighting for that bag I was defending my feelings and the feelings of Chinese women. The book was the result of so many things which, once lost, could never be found again. When you walk into your memories, you are opening a door to the past; the road within has many branches, the route is different every time
In the late 1980’s Xinran worked for a radio station in Nanjing, China as a presenter of a talk show called Words on the Night Breeze. “During the program I discussed various aspects of daily life and used my own experiences to win the listeners’ trust and suggest ways of approaching life’s difficulties.” At this time in China, this type of advice on life show was a new thing. Communist officials heavily regulated it and getting a listener call-in segment with live discussions was risky business. Because of Xinran’s humane presentation style and her compassionate personality listeners wrote in and asked her help in various injustices to women. Xinran the trained journalist became a women’s issues champion.
One of the first letters to reach her contained a chicken feather and a letter. According to Chinese tradition, a chicken feather is an urgent distress signal. The letter was from a young boy, a follower of Xinran’s radio show who was appealing for help on the behalf of a powerless girl. The letter explained that an old man in his village had bought a young girl who had been kidnapped from a distant village and sold to the old man who wanted male heirs before he died. This was not an uncommon practice in outlying villages at that time. The man kept the girl a prisoner, chained at the waist and attached to a wall. Her skin was rubbed raw and blood was seeping through her clothes. “I think he will kill her. Please save her. What ever you do, don’t mention this on the radio. If the villegers find out they will drive my family away.”
This was the first of a series of life threatening stories that would find their way to Xinran’s desk. The book contains fifteen absorbing and sometimes heart wrenching stories about women’s lives in China during the Cultural Revolution and up to 1999.
The Mothers Who Endured an Earthquake tells the story of women survivors of The Tangshan earth quake of 1976 who lost their own children in the disaster but later started an home for orphans from that catastrophe. Each personal story of suffering broke my heart and deepened it with compassion. Xinran asks what does it mean to be a mother and to watch your beloved child suffer for 14 days trapped under a fallen building before fially dying?
In What do Chinese Women Want Xinran addresses three questions posed to her by a Chinese university student who was also an ‘ escort girl’ or ‘personal secretary.’
“What philosophy do women have?”
“What is happiness for a woman?”
“And what makes a good woman?”
The questions themselves pose queries for me and all Western women raised and educated in relative freedom and democracy, but still aware of the long road that must be trodden before all women achieve full equality. ‘The personal is political’ was the motto that turned my ideas about politics in a feminist direction. Xinran asks, “What is a woman’s life worth in China?” When the police consider it a bureaucratic hassle to investigate a peasant girl chained to a wall by a dirty old man. What is a daughter’s life worth when her own mother says she must submit to the sexual abuse by her own father?
Her only recourse is to become so physically ill that she must remain in a hospital where she can escape her father’s advances. The Girl Who Kept a Fly as a Pet is a story of a young girl’s poignant resourcefulness in the face of this dire situation.
This is a book of true stories, stories that cry out to be witnessed. They will remind you that compassion requires courage. They will make you ask questions about the nature of ignorance, e, and love in a new way.
Book Review: The Follow by Linda Spalding
The Follow by Linda Spalding
Review by Tamarra Kaida
Orangutans may not be with us much longer if illegal logging continues to erode their natural habitat in the Indonesian islands of Kalimantan and Sumatra.
Writer Linda Spalding makes several trips to Borneo in search of not only understanding orangutans but also of the ecological and political systems that surround and affect this endangered specie. She conducts a " follow” on world-renowned primatologist, Birute’Galdikas. “A follow” is a term used by rain forest researchers to describe a form of benign stalking and observation of an individual oraungutan. Linda’s “ follow” starts out with the intention of getting to know and interview Birute’, a women she admires for dedicating her life to the preservation of oragutans. She is one of Louis Leakey’s protégées. Like Jane Goodall and Dian Fossey, (Birute’),“ followed” a primate for days, even weeks, learning what she ate, where she slept, how she raised her children, what mark her life in the forest made”. Louis Leakey found women particularly adept at this kind of research, observation in situ. The traditional domestic qualities of nurturance, patience, attention to detail, apparently became scientific attributes in the jungle. Woman’s place was no longer just in the home. Or did we have to broaden our notion of home?
Connecting with the formidable Dr. Galdikas proves to be difficult. Linda’s “follow” turns into a search, for understanding the genesis of nurturance itself, of cross special interdependence and a personal journey replete with greedy gold miners, politically protected illegal loggers and a profound friendship with Riska, a Dayak woman guide.
The Follow, a deeply feminine book, tracks previously male territory – difficult and primitive terrain, jungle heat, unsavory characters and a buddy friendship that survives cultural differences. The heart of Spalding’s book is her personal quest for answers to the big questions of why we are all here and how we animals can live together on our small and fragile planet. Linda is not afraid to examine the pluses and minuses Birute’s actions. Perhaps trying to rehabituate former captive pet orangutans back into the rainforest is not a productive act of nurturance but rather of misguided love, which can endanger the remaining wild orangutans with contagious diseases. Another concern is that many of the former “pets” have lost their ability to survive in their natural environment. Are we helping or hindering the preservation of orangutans? The correct scientific approach is under fierce debate.
Linda began her “follow” because she was questioning our connection to nature. “ We seem to be wandering outside of it, but how can that be? Aren’t we made of the same coils of DNA as everything living? Aren’t our closest relatives the great apes? Now only orangutans still live in trees whence we came, wandering like nomads through the canopy, without permanent nests, the way we must have wandered once .Was it settlement that cut us off from nature? Are we human because we left paradise?”
What makes us want to save a species?
“ The story of the ark is a fable for our time, the dream of all people who have similar stories everywhere. Stories of saving may even be part of our biological inheritance. While we sleep, the brain cells that hold our maps are working, communicating with each other about our hopes of survival, carving ever more complex maps in our brains, carving frightening and protective thoughts as one who carves a dragon and lets loose its spirit.”
Spalding’s “ Follow” of Galdikas and the endangered orangutans takes her far from her home in Toronto to the Borneo rainforest, but ultimately it brings her home to herself. Through her writing we also track the predominant issue of species survival in an ever more interdependent global village.
Review by Tamarra Kaida
Orangutans may not be with us much longer if illegal logging continues to erode their natural habitat in the Indonesian islands of Kalimantan and Sumatra.
Writer Linda Spalding makes several trips to Borneo in search of not only understanding orangutans but also of the ecological and political systems that surround and affect this endangered specie. She conducts a " follow” on world-renowned primatologist, Birute’Galdikas. “A follow” is a term used by rain forest researchers to describe a form of benign stalking and observation of an individual oraungutan. Linda’s “ follow” starts out with the intention of getting to know and interview Birute’, a women she admires for dedicating her life to the preservation of oragutans. She is one of Louis Leakey’s protégées. Like Jane Goodall and Dian Fossey, (Birute’),“ followed” a primate for days, even weeks, learning what she ate, where she slept, how she raised her children, what mark her life in the forest made”. Louis Leakey found women particularly adept at this kind of research, observation in situ. The traditional domestic qualities of nurturance, patience, attention to detail, apparently became scientific attributes in the jungle. Woman’s place was no longer just in the home. Or did we have to broaden our notion of home?
Connecting with the formidable Dr. Galdikas proves to be difficult. Linda’s “follow” turns into a search, for understanding the genesis of nurturance itself, of cross special interdependence and a personal journey replete with greedy gold miners, politically protected illegal loggers and a profound friendship with Riska, a Dayak woman guide.
The Follow, a deeply feminine book, tracks previously male territory – difficult and primitive terrain, jungle heat, unsavory characters and a buddy friendship that survives cultural differences. The heart of Spalding’s book is her personal quest for answers to the big questions of why we are all here and how we animals can live together on our small and fragile planet. Linda is not afraid to examine the pluses and minuses Birute’s actions. Perhaps trying to rehabituate former captive pet orangutans back into the rainforest is not a productive act of nurturance but rather of misguided love, which can endanger the remaining wild orangutans with contagious diseases. Another concern is that many of the former “pets” have lost their ability to survive in their natural environment. Are we helping or hindering the preservation of orangutans? The correct scientific approach is under fierce debate.
Linda began her “follow” because she was questioning our connection to nature. “ We seem to be wandering outside of it, but how can that be? Aren’t we made of the same coils of DNA as everything living? Aren’t our closest relatives the great apes? Now only orangutans still live in trees whence we came, wandering like nomads through the canopy, without permanent nests, the way we must have wandered once .Was it settlement that cut us off from nature? Are we human because we left paradise?”
What makes us want to save a species?
“ The story of the ark is a fable for our time, the dream of all people who have similar stories everywhere. Stories of saving may even be part of our biological inheritance. While we sleep, the brain cells that hold our maps are working, communicating with each other about our hopes of survival, carving ever more complex maps in our brains, carving frightening and protective thoughts as one who carves a dragon and lets loose its spirit.”
Spalding’s “ Follow” of Galdikas and the endangered orangutans takes her far from her home in Toronto to the Borneo rainforest, but ultimately it brings her home to herself. Through her writing we also track the predominant issue of species survival in an ever more interdependent global village.
Interview with Richard Lewis - The Flame Tree
The Flame Tree -by Richard Lewis
Interview by Tamarra Kaida
Tamarra: The Flame Tree is set in Java and addresses religious/political conflicts between Muslims and Christians as experienced by the main character Isaac, who is the 12-year-old son of American Baptist Missionary doctors. Your biographical notes state that you are the son of Christian missionary parents and you grew up in Indonesia. What aspects of the book are based on your personal experiences of Muslim /Christian tensions?
Richard: Well, my parents were missionaries in Bali that is a Hindu island but I went to an American boarding school in Java. When I was a child the same age as my character Isaac there were no religious tensions per se, the tensions were political. It was when Suharto was in power and the communists were trying to take control.. When Suharto fell from power I had the thought “ what if a young Christian kid gets caught up in the political upheaval. I didn’t start out to deal with religious tensions. I didn’t per se want to write about Muslim /Christian issues I just wanted to tell a good story about a kid who gets caught up in the events of the day. And what I put in regarding religious tensions came from the time I went to university in the states and realized that Americans knew very little about Islam. I started writing this novel in 1998. I don’t know if that answers your question.
Tamarra: What personal experiences of growing up in Indonesia find there way into the novel?
Richard: Well, it would have been my boarding school experiences going to an American school in the middle of a Muslin community. And when you left the grounds of the school you went out and played with your Muslim friends. My personal experiences did not have religious tensions. I put that in later as a writer. It was part of my fictive world. I personally had no personal experience of Muslim/ Christian issues when I was a child. That would have come later in life as an adult.
Tamarra: this is your first novel and Simon and Shuster’s “Young Adult” editor picked it up. It is a powerful book and hardly what I remember reading as a teenager. Did you write for a teen or adult audience?
Richard: You picked up on something important. I wrote the book as an adult novel and my agent sent it off to 15 editors and they sent it back with compliments. It was just after 9/11 and they all felt uncomfortable with it. Then one day my agent was having lunch with an editorial director and mentioned my novel and the editor read it loved it and said we would love to buy it. But cut out the sub plots and focus only on the 12-year-old boy.
And that’s what I did I had to cut other issues that focused on Isaac’s sister and abortion issues. I cut a lot from the first draft. But what remained after I focused on Issac. I did not write down for a young adult audience that’s why it still reads very much like an adult novel. In fact I have gotten most of my feed back from adult readers.
Tamarra: But since the book will be marketed to a young Adult readership. What do you hope teenagers will get out of the book?
Richard: First of all, I hope they will get an appreciation of a different culture. And a realization that people around the world share the same concerns for life, which for example, an American kid might think that a Muslim kid in Indonesia is a totally alien being but he isn’t. Actually the humanity they share is far greater then the differences. But when a kid reads a novel I want him to read a good story. I want to write a good story.
Tamarra: oh they will get that. It is a very compelling story.
Richard: Second of all, everybody shares a common humanity even if there are differences in turns of religion. And third, I hope they will get an understanding of Islam as a religion. I hope they realize that people who practice another belief are not that different than I am or they are. That’s what I hope.
Tamarra: Both Muslims and Christians can be criticized for their proselytizing fervor. In The Flame Tree you concentrate on the Muslim conversion rituals. How have Muslims and Christians responded to this book?
Richard: You know, I was really nervous when the book came out. I thought that my community, the Christian community would be dead set against it. But for the most part they have been very supportive. As far as Muslims, I haven’t had any Muslims actually sit down and give it a good reading. I think that they only read a short way and decide the book could be about Muslim bashing which I never intended I use a stereotype and turn it around on it’s head. I think that if Muslims read the entire book they will be pleasantly surprised.
Tamara: What do your parents think of the book?
Richard: My father passed away before I even had a first draft five years ago. My mother read it and thinks it is a powerful story. She tells all her friends about it. My family has read it and they all love it.
Tamarra: So they are supportive but you have not received much feed back from Muslims?
Richard: I have received no feedback from Muslims. That may change when the book is marketed here in Indonesia. There will be a book launch in Jakarta on April 7th. So this interview is quite timely.
Tamarra: Most Western readers are fairly ignorant about the Islamic Faith. As one of those readers, I especially liked reading The Flame Tree because I felt I was learning about Islam as well as following a suspenseful story. The circumcision scene is well written and disturbing. There are undercurrents of castration anxiety. Have you ever witnessed a Muslim circumsion ceremony? Why did you choose to include it in the abduction scenes rather then just leave it a kidnapping?
Richard: Well that is a tough one. Let’s look at it from the perspective of a fiction writer who is trying to orchestrate events in the novel using craft techniques. I needed something that would be very compelling. And to me it seemed the way to go. You know, to build up the constant threat, the ongoing threat, of what is going to happen to this boy? I couldn’t just settle for a normal kidnapping. The boy would just be released. No that would be very anti climactic.
Have I ever witnessed a circumcision? Yes, I have. It is really a very joyous holiday. Very celebratory in the novel I turn that on it’s head. I never intended to write a shocking scene. It just grew out of the story organically. Things just got worse and worse for the main character. And it does show the bad side of fanaticisms that can occur on both sides in Christianity and Islam. That’s probably my best answer. But, I want to add that I talked to people and researched extensively about Islam and Muslim beliefs .I contrasted Christianity and Islam but I also show how very similar they are. If you sat in a Mosque and listen to a sermon and understood what was being said you would swear you were sitting in a church. It is quite remarkable. IT is the same thing in terms of the Bible and the Koran. What the (Inman?) and the preacher will preach is really very similar. I try to show this in the book. Through the dialogs between Isaac and his Islamic teacher.
Tamarra: Yes, I thought that was an excellent approach as Isaacs asks the questions most thoughtful kids would ask and Mr. Suherman is a wise and patient idealist/ teacher a complex character that I would have found intimidating and compelling if I met him in real life.
Richard: I tried to show good and bad characters that were Christians and Muslims. I tried to show that the bad side of Islam does not stem from Islam but rather from the dark side of human nature. I tried to show life as it is and there are bad people on both sides of the fence. As a writer I wrote to the reality of how things are in the world. A careful reader will see this and understand that many bad things are being done in the name of religion. As a writer I want to tell a compelling story with believable characters and present issues that are important today.
Tamarra: What do you think is stronger in you the Christian or the writer?
Richard: Oh, that is a good question! You know, I think a good writer is someone who not only uses writing to explore a worldview but also his own worldview and his attitudes towards it. I am a practicing Christian, go to church and all that but that does not mean that it is an uncritical belief. I use my writing as a way to explore my faith.
Tamarra: What did you get from writing this book in terms of your own faith?
Richard: The Flame Tree? (Long pause while thinking) I think in my heart of hearts I wanted to make things, as they should be. …Where people dialog with each other rather then shout at each other. I wanted to show Muslims as people of Faith, an equal amount of faith as many Christians do. They are trying to find a way to live a good life, trying to find a moral way, trying to be good people. . They are searching for a way to live life.
Tamarra: For me, forgiveness and compassion are the books moral lessons rather than a particular Faith being proved right or wrong. Did you deliberately take a humanist position rather then a religious one? Or do they over lap for you?
Richard: Oh, I think they defiantly overlap. You know forgiveness is probably one of the most important lessons we can learn from the Bible. But I definitely did not want to write a religious novel. I wanted to show Christianity warts and all. . The same is true with Islam. I tried to show that as well.
Tamarra: What part of the book was easiest to write and what parts caused personal problems and growth?
Richard: Well, I had no problem writing the novel the first draft was one thousand four hundred pages. I just wrote and wrote. It was the second draft where I had to write the sermon in the mosque. I had to get in the clerics head to writ it from a Muslim perspective and that I did by talking to Muslims and running the words by them. It was a difficult scene to write from a technical and a moral stand. I wanted to be true to what Islam really believes and teaches.
Tamarra: Who were these Muslims?
Richard: People in The States, which I contacted by Internet and I ran scenes by them. They were a great help.
Tamarra: You have been in Ache doing relief work for Tsunami victims. In what ways is this affecting the writer side of your nature?
Richard: You know I was holed up in my office and my world was shrinking down to the world of the imagination and when this tragedy happened I really wanted to help and in an odd way it helped Richard Lewis the person more then Richard the writer. It reconnected me. I am glad I got up the gumption to go because many Balinese friends thought it would be dangerous to go that the people in Ache are fanatics. They will kill you as soon as look at you!
Nothing could be further from the truth they were the most gracious, hospitable people I ever met. Even in the midst of a disaster, very generous, outgoing and giving of them.
And from the writers side of it, Simon and Shuster have put me under contract to write a book based on events in the Tsunami so that is what I am working on right now.
Tamarra: What kind of relief work were you doing there?
Richard: Oh, I was working with an NGO. Helping distribute a product that helped purify water. It’s a powder that you put in the water, which cleans it after the muck settles to the bottom. And then it chlorinates it and you have drinking water in thirty minutes. And I just talked to people and listened to their stories. Then I worked on rebuilding homes. The scale of the disaster is unbelievable. . You can’t really understand from the news.
It was interesting to see that they did not blame God. Through out my time there I did not see one Muslim whose faith had been shaken. They did not say” why me”? They did not embrace a rationalist position that says a disaster of this magnitude makes one question the existence of God all together. There was none of that. They did not doubt God.
Tamarra: How about you?
Richard: Me personally?
Tamara: Well, you know, you as a Christian?
Richard: Yes, you do stop and think of these questions because it would be silly to say you don’t because these are hard questions I can’t sit here and answer why. Or say it is God’s will or God’s punishment. No. A lot of it is just that the earth is a dangerous place. I think it is because we our selves are responsible. Look we are overpopulating, over polluting over using natural resources. We live in danger zones. We don’t do enough to protect our own people. We need early warning systems. This is mankind’s own fault. I’m not giving a glib answer. It’s just that there is more to this then just saying, “How can god allow this"? We have to ask, “How could we allow this to happen too”? We have to take responsibility.
Tamarra: Identity is an important psychological issue emerging in our current Global culture. Do you consider yourself an American or an Indonesian or a hybrid of both?
Richard: Hybrid. Yea, Actually I found out while doing research for this book that there is what is called “Third culture kids”. They are children who like me are from one culture but grew up in another culture. There are studies done about these kids. Not necessarily children of missionaries but also children of business people who grow up in a third culture. Yea, I sort of feel in between. I’m not really American and I’m not Indonesian either.
Tamarra: How does this manifest in your life? What are the blessings of this situation?
Richard: The blessings are that you are equally at home in two cultures. Your worldview is bigger, more encompassing and able to tolerate a lot more ambiguity then someone who grew up in one particular culture. I saw this in college. Some of my mid western friends had a very narrow-minded world view which I had a very hard time relating to. That position which says that what I know is the best way, the only way, it isn’t even conscious on their part. So, I would say there are defiantly more blessings about growing up in an internationalist culture.
Let me get a little political. This is what I see as a problem in America. It is so inward looking, so insular. It causes a lot of the problems that arise in the states. Not being able to see outside ones narrow perspective.
Tamarra: That seems to be the current situation, It disturbs me deeply since America was such an welcoming country in the early There is a long and important conversation here, Richard, and I would like to have it later. But we are running out of time and I want our readers to know how to get your book and can I direct them to your web site?
Richard: Well they can get the book from Amazon.com of course. But it will be available at bookstores in Jakarta and other places in Indonesia. My web site is.
Tamarra: Thank you for your time and I think you deserve great success with this book. I found it a great reading experience and I learned a lot about Islam. I am also grateful to have had the opportunity to talk with you. You have dispelled a Christian missionary stereotype that I wasn’t aware I had and you did it by being real. I think this is another reason you are a good writer. Thank you.
Interview by Tamarra Kaida
Tamarra: The Flame Tree is set in Java and addresses religious/political conflicts between Muslims and Christians as experienced by the main character Isaac, who is the 12-year-old son of American Baptist Missionary doctors. Your biographical notes state that you are the son of Christian missionary parents and you grew up in Indonesia. What aspects of the book are based on your personal experiences of Muslim /Christian tensions?
Richard: Well, my parents were missionaries in Bali that is a Hindu island but I went to an American boarding school in Java. When I was a child the same age as my character Isaac there were no religious tensions per se, the tensions were political. It was when Suharto was in power and the communists were trying to take control.. When Suharto fell from power I had the thought “ what if a young Christian kid gets caught up in the political upheaval. I didn’t start out to deal with religious tensions. I didn’t per se want to write about Muslim /Christian issues I just wanted to tell a good story about a kid who gets caught up in the events of the day. And what I put in regarding religious tensions came from the time I went to university in the states and realized that Americans knew very little about Islam. I started writing this novel in 1998. I don’t know if that answers your question.
Tamarra: What personal experiences of growing up in Indonesia find there way into the novel?
Richard: Well, it would have been my boarding school experiences going to an American school in the middle of a Muslin community. And when you left the grounds of the school you went out and played with your Muslim friends. My personal experiences did not have religious tensions. I put that in later as a writer. It was part of my fictive world. I personally had no personal experience of Muslim/ Christian issues when I was a child. That would have come later in life as an adult.
Tamarra: this is your first novel and Simon and Shuster’s “Young Adult” editor picked it up. It is a powerful book and hardly what I remember reading as a teenager. Did you write for a teen or adult audience?
Richard: You picked up on something important. I wrote the book as an adult novel and my agent sent it off to 15 editors and they sent it back with compliments. It was just after 9/11 and they all felt uncomfortable with it. Then one day my agent was having lunch with an editorial director and mentioned my novel and the editor read it loved it and said we would love to buy it. But cut out the sub plots and focus only on the 12-year-old boy.
And that’s what I did I had to cut other issues that focused on Isaac’s sister and abortion issues. I cut a lot from the first draft. But what remained after I focused on Issac. I did not write down for a young adult audience that’s why it still reads very much like an adult novel. In fact I have gotten most of my feed back from adult readers.
Tamarra: But since the book will be marketed to a young Adult readership. What do you hope teenagers will get out of the book?
Richard: First of all, I hope they will get an appreciation of a different culture. And a realization that people around the world share the same concerns for life, which for example, an American kid might think that a Muslim kid in Indonesia is a totally alien being but he isn’t. Actually the humanity they share is far greater then the differences. But when a kid reads a novel I want him to read a good story. I want to write a good story.
Tamarra: oh they will get that. It is a very compelling story.
Richard: Second of all, everybody shares a common humanity even if there are differences in turns of religion. And third, I hope they will get an understanding of Islam as a religion. I hope they realize that people who practice another belief are not that different than I am or they are. That’s what I hope.
Tamarra: Both Muslims and Christians can be criticized for their proselytizing fervor. In The Flame Tree you concentrate on the Muslim conversion rituals. How have Muslims and Christians responded to this book?
Richard: You know, I was really nervous when the book came out. I thought that my community, the Christian community would be dead set against it. But for the most part they have been very supportive. As far as Muslims, I haven’t had any Muslims actually sit down and give it a good reading. I think that they only read a short way and decide the book could be about Muslim bashing which I never intended I use a stereotype and turn it around on it’s head. I think that if Muslims read the entire book they will be pleasantly surprised.
Tamara: What do your parents think of the book?
Richard: My father passed away before I even had a first draft five years ago. My mother read it and thinks it is a powerful story. She tells all her friends about it. My family has read it and they all love it.
Tamarra: So they are supportive but you have not received much feed back from Muslims?
Richard: I have received no feedback from Muslims. That may change when the book is marketed here in Indonesia. There will be a book launch in Jakarta on April 7th. So this interview is quite timely.
Tamarra: Most Western readers are fairly ignorant about the Islamic Faith. As one of those readers, I especially liked reading The Flame Tree because I felt I was learning about Islam as well as following a suspenseful story. The circumcision scene is well written and disturbing. There are undercurrents of castration anxiety. Have you ever witnessed a Muslim circumsion ceremony? Why did you choose to include it in the abduction scenes rather then just leave it a kidnapping?
Richard: Well that is a tough one. Let’s look at it from the perspective of a fiction writer who is trying to orchestrate events in the novel using craft techniques. I needed something that would be very compelling. And to me it seemed the way to go. You know, to build up the constant threat, the ongoing threat, of what is going to happen to this boy? I couldn’t just settle for a normal kidnapping. The boy would just be released. No that would be very anti climactic.
Have I ever witnessed a circumcision? Yes, I have. It is really a very joyous holiday. Very celebratory in the novel I turn that on it’s head. I never intended to write a shocking scene. It just grew out of the story organically. Things just got worse and worse for the main character. And it does show the bad side of fanaticisms that can occur on both sides in Christianity and Islam. That’s probably my best answer. But, I want to add that I talked to people and researched extensively about Islam and Muslim beliefs .I contrasted Christianity and Islam but I also show how very similar they are. If you sat in a Mosque and listen to a sermon and understood what was being said you would swear you were sitting in a church. It is quite remarkable. IT is the same thing in terms of the Bible and the Koran. What the (Inman?) and the preacher will preach is really very similar. I try to show this in the book. Through the dialogs between Isaac and his Islamic teacher.
Tamarra: Yes, I thought that was an excellent approach as Isaacs asks the questions most thoughtful kids would ask and Mr. Suherman is a wise and patient idealist/ teacher a complex character that I would have found intimidating and compelling if I met him in real life.
Richard: I tried to show good and bad characters that were Christians and Muslims. I tried to show that the bad side of Islam does not stem from Islam but rather from the dark side of human nature. I tried to show life as it is and there are bad people on both sides of the fence. As a writer I wrote to the reality of how things are in the world. A careful reader will see this and understand that many bad things are being done in the name of religion. As a writer I want to tell a compelling story with believable characters and present issues that are important today.
Tamarra: What do you think is stronger in you the Christian or the writer?
Richard: Oh, that is a good question! You know, I think a good writer is someone who not only uses writing to explore a worldview but also his own worldview and his attitudes towards it. I am a practicing Christian, go to church and all that but that does not mean that it is an uncritical belief. I use my writing as a way to explore my faith.
Tamarra: What did you get from writing this book in terms of your own faith?
Richard: The Flame Tree? (Long pause while thinking) I think in my heart of hearts I wanted to make things, as they should be. …Where people dialog with each other rather then shout at each other. I wanted to show Muslims as people of Faith, an equal amount of faith as many Christians do. They are trying to find a way to live a good life, trying to find a moral way, trying to be good people. . They are searching for a way to live life.
Tamarra: For me, forgiveness and compassion are the books moral lessons rather than a particular Faith being proved right or wrong. Did you deliberately take a humanist position rather then a religious one? Or do they over lap for you?
Richard: Oh, I think they defiantly overlap. You know forgiveness is probably one of the most important lessons we can learn from the Bible. But I definitely did not want to write a religious novel. I wanted to show Christianity warts and all. . The same is true with Islam. I tried to show that as well.
Tamarra: What part of the book was easiest to write and what parts caused personal problems and growth?
Richard: Well, I had no problem writing the novel the first draft was one thousand four hundred pages. I just wrote and wrote. It was the second draft where I had to write the sermon in the mosque. I had to get in the clerics head to writ it from a Muslim perspective and that I did by talking to Muslims and running the words by them. It was a difficult scene to write from a technical and a moral stand. I wanted to be true to what Islam really believes and teaches.
Tamarra: Who were these Muslims?
Richard: People in The States, which I contacted by Internet and I ran scenes by them. They were a great help.
Tamarra: You have been in Ache doing relief work for Tsunami victims. In what ways is this affecting the writer side of your nature?
Richard: You know I was holed up in my office and my world was shrinking down to the world of the imagination and when this tragedy happened I really wanted to help and in an odd way it helped Richard Lewis the person more then Richard the writer. It reconnected me. I am glad I got up the gumption to go because many Balinese friends thought it would be dangerous to go that the people in Ache are fanatics. They will kill you as soon as look at you!
Nothing could be further from the truth they were the most gracious, hospitable people I ever met. Even in the midst of a disaster, very generous, outgoing and giving of them.
And from the writers side of it, Simon and Shuster have put me under contract to write a book based on events in the Tsunami so that is what I am working on right now.
Tamarra: What kind of relief work were you doing there?
Richard: Oh, I was working with an NGO. Helping distribute a product that helped purify water. It’s a powder that you put in the water, which cleans it after the muck settles to the bottom. And then it chlorinates it and you have drinking water in thirty minutes. And I just talked to people and listened to their stories. Then I worked on rebuilding homes. The scale of the disaster is unbelievable. . You can’t really understand from the news.
It was interesting to see that they did not blame God. Through out my time there I did not see one Muslim whose faith had been shaken. They did not say” why me”? They did not embrace a rationalist position that says a disaster of this magnitude makes one question the existence of God all together. There was none of that. They did not doubt God.
Tamarra: How about you?
Richard: Me personally?
Tamara: Well, you know, you as a Christian?
Richard: Yes, you do stop and think of these questions because it would be silly to say you don’t because these are hard questions I can’t sit here and answer why. Or say it is God’s will or God’s punishment. No. A lot of it is just that the earth is a dangerous place. I think it is because we our selves are responsible. Look we are overpopulating, over polluting over using natural resources. We live in danger zones. We don’t do enough to protect our own people. We need early warning systems. This is mankind’s own fault. I’m not giving a glib answer. It’s just that there is more to this then just saying, “How can god allow this"? We have to ask, “How could we allow this to happen too”? We have to take responsibility.
Tamarra: Identity is an important psychological issue emerging in our current Global culture. Do you consider yourself an American or an Indonesian or a hybrid of both?
Richard: Hybrid. Yea, Actually I found out while doing research for this book that there is what is called “Third culture kids”. They are children who like me are from one culture but grew up in another culture. There are studies done about these kids. Not necessarily children of missionaries but also children of business people who grow up in a third culture. Yea, I sort of feel in between. I’m not really American and I’m not Indonesian either.
Tamarra: How does this manifest in your life? What are the blessings of this situation?
Richard: The blessings are that you are equally at home in two cultures. Your worldview is bigger, more encompassing and able to tolerate a lot more ambiguity then someone who grew up in one particular culture. I saw this in college. Some of my mid western friends had a very narrow-minded world view which I had a very hard time relating to. That position which says that what I know is the best way, the only way, it isn’t even conscious on their part. So, I would say there are defiantly more blessings about growing up in an internationalist culture.
Let me get a little political. This is what I see as a problem in America. It is so inward looking, so insular. It causes a lot of the problems that arise in the states. Not being able to see outside ones narrow perspective.
Tamarra: That seems to be the current situation, It disturbs me deeply since America was such an welcoming country in the early There is a long and important conversation here, Richard, and I would like to have it later. But we are running out of time and I want our readers to know how to get your book and can I direct them to your web site?
Richard: Well they can get the book from Amazon.com of course. But it will be available at bookstores in Jakarta and other places in Indonesia. My web site is
Tamarra: Thank you for your time and I think you deserve great success with this book. I found it a great reading experience and I learned a lot about Islam. I am also grateful to have had the opportunity to talk with you. You have dispelled a Christian missionary stereotype that I wasn’t aware I had and you did it by being real. I think this is another reason you are a good writer. Thank you.
Interview with Deborah Carlyon - Mama Kuma
“Mama Kuma: One Woman, Two Cultures” by Deborah Carlyon
Mama Kuma is a biography which tells the story of a Chimbu woman from the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea. Kuma was born in the 1930s in the village of Gunkwa, the daughter of a warrior chief. When the villagers feared the ‘White Man,’ Kuma’s curiosity drew her to them, to one in particular…
Interview by Tamarra Kaida
Tamarra Kaida: What made you want to write “Mama Kuma?”
Deborah Carlyon: I had many reasons. Initially the desire to write Kuma's life story was born out of a deep love for her, because I grew up living near her and like everyone else from her tribe, I came to know and see her as a respected leader. I also came to appreciate that no one else from her village would be able to write it because she came from an oral culture and most of her relatives did not know how to read or write. And finally, I felt I had to write her story (herstory) because I wished to balance a perception of history; the white male colonial (his story) with that of a black woman's perception.
TK: I am not surprised that “Mama Kuma: One Woman, Two Cultures” has won an emerging writers award in Queensland Australia in 2001. How and when did you get the idea to write about your grandmother, Kuma Kelage as a heroine of two cultures?
DC: In 1988 when Australia celebrated the bicentennial year. I was in year 12, (in Australia) and I was made aware of the shadow side of Australian history through reading My Place by Sally Morgan. I began interviewing Mama Kuma that year as a result.
TK: How have Kuma's relatives and friends responded to your book?
DC: The elders (mostly illiterate) treasured the photos and cried openly, and the young listened with keen wide eyes. The women appreciated something of my achievement; however, were more concerned that I had not yet had a child.
TK: As a bi-cultural woman yourself, what are the most important things you possess from each side of your family?
DC: My inner life is New Guinean - from Chimbu. My outer life is Australian. I have always said that I feel and respond emotionally like a New Guinean woman, yet I think and live like an Australian. The place where these two different parts of me meet is poetry and so writing or reading poetry is when I feel at peace or harmony with who I am. The most important thing that I possess from Papua New Guinea is my heart - it remains collective and knows how to measure the warmth or coldness of ideas that are so important in the west. The most important thing I possess from Australia is my freedom as an individual.
TK: What do you hope readers get from reading “Mama Kuma?”
DC: I hope that readers are able to appreciate the importance of cultural diversity in providing people with different perceptions to living, seeing, and thinking. A real appreciation of cultural diversity leaves people with the understanding that there is plurality of norms, of truths.
TK: You have recently given birth to new baby? What do you hope for her future?
DC: I wish for my child to know her Papua New Guinean background and to be at least bi-lingual. Travel has been important to my husband and me, so I wish for her to travel and experience the world through her own meetings and dreamings.
TK: Thank you for doing this interview. How can readers get copies of “Mama Kuma; One Woman, Two Cultures?”
DC: Readers can order copies of “Mama Kuma” from The University of Queensland Press by emailing the sales manager, Rosemary Chay on rosiec@uqp.uq
Mama Kuma is a biography which tells the story of a Chimbu woman from the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea. Kuma was born in the 1930s in the village of Gunkwa, the daughter of a warrior chief. When the villagers feared the ‘White Man,’ Kuma’s curiosity drew her to them, to one in particular…
Interview by Tamarra Kaida
Tamarra Kaida: What made you want to write “Mama Kuma?”
Deborah Carlyon: I had many reasons. Initially the desire to write Kuma's life story was born out of a deep love for her, because I grew up living near her and like everyone else from her tribe, I came to know and see her as a respected leader. I also came to appreciate that no one else from her village would be able to write it because she came from an oral culture and most of her relatives did not know how to read or write. And finally, I felt I had to write her story (herstory) because I wished to balance a perception of history; the white male colonial (his story) with that of a black woman's perception.
TK: I am not surprised that “Mama Kuma: One Woman, Two Cultures” has won an emerging writers award in Queensland Australia in 2001. How and when did you get the idea to write about your grandmother, Kuma Kelage as a heroine of two cultures?
DC: In 1988 when Australia celebrated the bicentennial year. I was in year 12, (in Australia) and I was made aware of the shadow side of Australian history through reading My Place by Sally Morgan. I began interviewing Mama Kuma that year as a result.
TK: How have Kuma's relatives and friends responded to your book?
DC: The elders (mostly illiterate) treasured the photos and cried openly, and the young listened with keen wide eyes. The women appreciated something of my achievement; however, were more concerned that I had not yet had a child.
TK: As a bi-cultural woman yourself, what are the most important things you possess from each side of your family?
DC: My inner life is New Guinean - from Chimbu. My outer life is Australian. I have always said that I feel and respond emotionally like a New Guinean woman, yet I think and live like an Australian. The place where these two different parts of me meet is poetry and so writing or reading poetry is when I feel at peace or harmony with who I am. The most important thing that I possess from Papua New Guinea is my heart - it remains collective and knows how to measure the warmth or coldness of ideas that are so important in the west. The most important thing I possess from Australia is my freedom as an individual.
TK: What do you hope readers get from reading “Mama Kuma?”
DC: I hope that readers are able to appreciate the importance of cultural diversity in providing people with different perceptions to living, seeing, and thinking. A real appreciation of cultural diversity leaves people with the understanding that there is plurality of norms, of truths.
TK: You have recently given birth to new baby? What do you hope for her future?
DC: I wish for my child to know her Papua New Guinean background and to be at least bi-lingual. Travel has been important to my husband and me, so I wish for her to travel and experience the world through her own meetings and dreamings.
TK: Thank you for doing this interview. How can readers get copies of “Mama Kuma; One Woman, Two Cultures?”
DC: Readers can order copies of “Mama Kuma” from The University of Queensland Press by emailing the sales manager, Rosemary Chay on rosiec@uqp.uq
Interview with Jennifer Claire - Tolstoy's Wife
Playwright/ Actress Jennifer Claire talks about her Play -Tolstoy’s Wife
Interview by Tamarra Kaida
TK: In January I had the great pleasure of seeing you perform your extraordinary play, Tolstoy’s Wife, at the Amandari. For me it was especially interesting as it was The Tolstoy Foundation that helped bring me to New York from a White Russian refugee camp in Austria where I was born after WWII.
I have also read Sonya’s diaries and thought her story would make a good play. Imagine how surprised and delighted I was to find a play about Countess Sonya Tolstoy in Bali.
How did you become interested in Sonya Tolstoy and what made you want to write a play about her life?
JC: Many tears ago, on an ocean liner traveling from Vancouver to Australia, I found, in the ship’s library, an English translation of Sonya’s first diary, which she wrote during the early days of her marriage at the age of 18. The idea of a play lay in my mind, coming to the fore again, when thirty years later, I discovered and read her later diaries, written in her fifties- a whole life and 13 children later. I thought, now I will try and do it. I will try to write about this woman’s life. It took a year and many rewrites. It was when I really understood the role Vladimir Geigoryevich Chertkov, Tolstoy’s fanatic disciple, played in Sonya’s life, that I realized I had an antagonist. And, then I knew I had a play!
TK: But what actually captured your imagination about Sonya, as a person?
JC: Oh so much, her passion, her acute sensitivity, femininity, her boundless sense of giving. She loved to be needed. I am a little in awe of her.
TK: You are an actor and a playwright. Which career came first and what else have you written?
JC: I’ve always been an actress since my first professional job in English Repertory Company, at the age of 17. A lot of my life has been spent in theaters, where I have played in over 200 productions, plus film and TV. I started to write around the time I first came to Bali in 1974. Bali gave me a certain peace and balance, after the hectic life of the theatre. Thinking and dreaming became possible. I fell in love with this beautiful island, as have many people. In Bali, I really began to write. I have written all my plays here including The Butterflies of Kalimantan and Siestas in a Pink Hotel. I see my two talents as equal. One feeds the other. Although, I have to say, writing is by far the more difficult.
TK: What other one person plays or monolog performances have inspired you?
JC: I didn’t model my work on anything specifically. The only rule I set for myself, was to write with as much immediacy as possible, I took great leaps of tenses, still the theatre allows that, and I have to say that I was greatly helped by having had the experience of performing Lillian, by William Luce. I learnt from a great director. The play opened the Spoleto Festival in Melbourne. On opening night I was terrified and so lonely. A one-woman play in a thousand-seat auditorium! No other actors to work with. But once I hit the stage everything came good. I learnt big lessons that gave me the confidence to do Sonya.
TK: Have you ever felt possessed by Sonya’s ghost?
JC: To be an actress is at times to be possessed. A lot of my life has been taken up with the business of thinking and feeling myself into another persona. It’s the life of an actress, there were times I could feel Sonya take over, she became quite a tyrant.
TK: You have performed the play in New York, London, Singapore, Melbourne, Bali and Java. Where was your most responsive audience?
JC: In New York, before my showcase performance. I had a ten-day rehearsal period with William Pomeranze, one of New York's great directors. He was inspiring and after the show I got a huge reception and was asked back to do their Women’s Center Stage season at the Bleeker Street Theater. All audiences are different. It is up to me to get them involved.
TK: Have you performed the play in Russia? Is anyone translating it into Russian?
JC: I cannot speak Russian, my love affair with all things Russian came first from performing all of Chekhov’s plays and some of Gorky’s. I have never been to Russia, maybe one day. No, no one is translating the play into Russian.
TK: Are you working on something new?
JC: No, not at the moment. I always have ideas. But I am not yet finished with Sonya.
Interview by Tamarra Kaida
TK: In January I had the great pleasure of seeing you perform your extraordinary play, Tolstoy’s Wife, at the Amandari. For me it was especially interesting as it was The Tolstoy Foundation that helped bring me to New York from a White Russian refugee camp in Austria where I was born after WWII.
I have also read Sonya’s diaries and thought her story would make a good play. Imagine how surprised and delighted I was to find a play about Countess Sonya Tolstoy in Bali.
How did you become interested in Sonya Tolstoy and what made you want to write a play about her life?
JC: Many tears ago, on an ocean liner traveling from Vancouver to Australia, I found, in the ship’s library, an English translation of Sonya’s first diary, which she wrote during the early days of her marriage at the age of 18. The idea of a play lay in my mind, coming to the fore again, when thirty years later, I discovered and read her later diaries, written in her fifties- a whole life and 13 children later. I thought, now I will try and do it. I will try to write about this woman’s life. It took a year and many rewrites. It was when I really understood the role Vladimir Geigoryevich Chertkov, Tolstoy’s fanatic disciple, played in Sonya’s life, that I realized I had an antagonist. And, then I knew I had a play!
TK: But what actually captured your imagination about Sonya, as a person?
JC: Oh so much, her passion, her acute sensitivity, femininity, her boundless sense of giving. She loved to be needed. I am a little in awe of her.
TK: You are an actor and a playwright. Which career came first and what else have you written?
JC: I’ve always been an actress since my first professional job in English Repertory Company, at the age of 17. A lot of my life has been spent in theaters, where I have played in over 200 productions, plus film and TV. I started to write around the time I first came to Bali in 1974. Bali gave me a certain peace and balance, after the hectic life of the theatre. Thinking and dreaming became possible. I fell in love with this beautiful island, as have many people. In Bali, I really began to write. I have written all my plays here including The Butterflies of Kalimantan and Siestas in a Pink Hotel. I see my two talents as equal. One feeds the other. Although, I have to say, writing is by far the more difficult.
TK: What other one person plays or monolog performances have inspired you?
JC: I didn’t model my work on anything specifically. The only rule I set for myself, was to write with as much immediacy as possible, I took great leaps of tenses, still the theatre allows that, and I have to say that I was greatly helped by having had the experience of performing Lillian, by William Luce. I learnt from a great director. The play opened the Spoleto Festival in Melbourne. On opening night I was terrified and so lonely. A one-woman play in a thousand-seat auditorium! No other actors to work with. But once I hit the stage everything came good. I learnt big lessons that gave me the confidence to do Sonya.
TK: Have you ever felt possessed by Sonya’s ghost?
JC: To be an actress is at times to be possessed. A lot of my life has been taken up with the business of thinking and feeling myself into another persona. It’s the life of an actress, there were times I could feel Sonya take over, she became quite a tyrant.
TK: You have performed the play in New York, London, Singapore, Melbourne, Bali and Java. Where was your most responsive audience?
JC: In New York, before my showcase performance. I had a ten-day rehearsal period with William Pomeranze, one of New York's great directors. He was inspiring and after the show I got a huge reception and was asked back to do their Women’s Center Stage season at the Bleeker Street Theater. All audiences are different. It is up to me to get them involved.
TK: Have you performed the play in Russia? Is anyone translating it into Russian?
JC: I cannot speak Russian, my love affair with all things Russian came first from performing all of Chekhov’s plays and some of Gorky’s. I have never been to Russia, maybe one day. No, no one is translating the play into Russian.
TK: Are you working on something new?
JC: No, not at the moment. I always have ideas. But I am not yet finished with Sonya.
Interview with Janet De Neefe - Fragrant Rice
Fragrant Rice -By Janet De Neefe
Interview by Tamarra Kaida
(Interview takes place at Casa Luna Restaurant starting with plates of Turkish bread and guacamole and chilled Chardonnay)
TK- You are a talented painter, successful restaurateur and cooking teacher. What factors brought you to write your memoir, Fragrant Rice.
JDN -I had wanted to write a cookbook about Balinese cooking. Then when I was teaching my cooking classes I talked about cooking, my life in Bali and about raising my children here as Balinese. People would say “Oh, but you must include the stories about your life.” People were intrigued with what life was like for a westerner in Bali. So, my cookbook developed into a memoir.
TK- So your students inspired you to become a writer.
JDN- Oh absolutely!
TK- Food is the element that sifts through your book and your life in Bali. To what do you attribute this passion for cooking and food?
JDN- I think you are born with your passions, especially if you have an artistic bent. I was born with a passion for food. It has always been an important part of my life. When I was young I was always experimenting with pastries and god knows what else. When I was about twelve I was always making up cookbooks, cutting and pasting recipes
together. I drove my mother nuts. When I came to Bali with my parents, I was fifteen and discovered peanut sauce and curry. I just loved it. I was comfortable with Bali and right away I felt I could live here at the drop of a hat. When I came back in 1984. I still had that thought of writing a Balinese cookbook. I knew I wanted to do that.
TK. So you have a lot of different passions. Where does painting fit in?
JDF Actually, it was my primary passion and I wanted to pursue a career in art. I never studied cooking in school as I thought no one needs to teach me that. So yes, I have many passions.
TK- When you are not cooking Indonesian, what kind of food do you like to make?
JDN- I cook a lot of food. When I am in Australia I cook a lot. I don’t have time to cook here, as I am director of cooking in the restaurants. but when I am in Australia I cook everything under the sun. I do lots of Mediteranian dishes. I make Risotto and I make casseroles. I just love it. I love experimenting with curries and sauces. I like cooking for my Mom and Dad. Usually they cook for themselves. But they are getting old so I like doing the best I can for them.
TK: So is cooking is a way of showing love?
JDN-Oh, totally, absolutely.
TK -What do cooking and writing have in common for you?
JDN- They are both creative. When I get on a roll with writing, I love it so much! I am painting in my mind. And I am mixing and sifting and it is like cooking. Combining words is like mixing ingredients. In the end you have some thing that is… well your own. Writing is so personal. It is a very intimate relationship you have with your mind, your pen and a piece of paper. It is very personal. And then you publish it and suddenly BAM! Everybody knows about it. I never really thought about that and why would you want to publish that? … But yes, cooking and writing… I love writing about cooking. It is a passion.
TK- In your memoir you write about falling in love with your Balinese husband, Ketut, and about living with your in-laws in a Balinese compound in Ubud. You tell about your four children. What were the easiest and the hardest issues to write about?
JDN- The easiest are the joyful incidences. The ceremonies, the weddings, those everyday sorts of occurrences. The hardest was revealing more about my relationship with Ketut. Not that I went into it that much. It was no longer just about me but the family. I wanted to be respectful of their feelings. The most sensitive thing was writing about the bomb. But that was different. It was a sad kind of thing. The last sections I wrote were about Ketut.
TK- So, you wrote it in sections, not straight through.
JDN – Stories about Bali and stories about the kids I wrote years ago. I went over sections. I rewrote and fine-tuned previous writings. I decided to write more personally when it felt important to answer all those questions people asked about my life with Ketut. So I wrote about how we met and all that. I figured if I was asked those questions again I could just say. Please read the book.
TK- Did Ketut agree to that?
JDF- No of course not ! (Some laughter) He felt all that had nothing to do with the book. Then one day we had a good friend visit us and we were talking about writing about me meeting Ketut and our friend said, “What do you mean that has nothing to do with the book, Ketut, you are the book. She wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for you.” Ketut thought about it and just nodded his head. He didn’t say anything but from then on I knew I could write about it.
TK- Has he read the book?
JDN- No he already knows what’s in it and he only reads books about religion anyway. My son Krishna saw the book on the kitchen table and said hey, there’s my picture. How did that get in there? And suddenly I realized that I had sort of exposed the kids to public platform and I had never really thought about. I hadn’t asked them, they were young and wouldn’t have understood but I had to wonder what had I done?
TK. Well, you have to be a risk taker to get things started.
JDN- Yes, I am impetuous. It is the same with the Festival. If I get an idea, I just do it and deal with the repercussions later. I have to say “ maaf, maaf” (sorry) to a lot of people later. I do what I do with the kindest, sincerest intentions, but I don’t always think it all through beforehand.
TK. What do you think is the most important aspect of Fragrant Rice?
JDN- Oh, the stories. I see my self as a person who stratles two cultures. I want visitors to understand Balinese culture better. I guess I’m an interpreter. I saw it in the cooking classes. I realized my job was to inform people and help them to understand the richness and beauty of Balinese culture. The book is an extension of that realization.
TK- In what ways did publishing your book “’Fragrant Rice” affect you starting and directing The Ubud Writers and Readers festival?
JDN- Well, even before” the Bomb” I was thinking of how there was no active tourist body/ office that actively promoted Bali. We are on our own. India has a huge promotion agency. I felt Ubud, in particular, needed a stronger identity. When people think of Bali they think of Kuta.They think of beaches, braids, and bars. No one thinks of Ubud. So I started to think of how the culture and arts could be brought up front. After “the Bomb”
we were all talking about how there are no festivals in Ubud. Byron Bay in Australia has a festival almost every week. I love Ubud and the people and I want to promote it. When I published the book I started to think about starting a writer’s festival in Ubud. I knew I would be invited to other writers festivals and I thought why not one in Ubud? Ubud needs something that works with its character. It needed something for the thinking person. I talked to my friend Heather and we decided to do it. There it is. I just jumped in off the deep end.
TK- I’m glad you did. One of the reasons I volunteered to work on it is that it is an idea whose time has come. The mix of Indonesian, Western/ Asian/ writers, poets is already unique and valuable. It is time for Ubud to benefit from its bicultural creative, intellectual persona and come into the twenty first century as a positive image of Indonesia. We need a new image of Ubud. One that goes beyond the 1930’s, Walter Spies and all that creative ferment. There are exciting people from both East and West here and it feels like the time for a renaissance is possible despite the bomb and the economy. Something new needs to be born. Maybe we need to revisit the Phoenix bird. The symbol is powerful and appropriate.
JDN- Yes, Ubud is home to writers and artists. As we know Writers Festivals create a huge audience and bring in all sorts of creative people. I wondered, how could I make a lasting effect on this community, where I could eventually step back and let the locals reap the rewards? And also as a mother with children, how could I benefit their lives and effect the education process etc. It was one of those things where you try and work on many levels at once. That is why we have a children’s education program and why we have special Indonesian panels and discussions events. We are working from an inclusive multi- cultural model.
TK – What do you hope will develop from the Ubud Writers Festival?
JDN- All sorts of things. I think this could become one of the most important events in Southeast Asia. Ubud is a showcase for Balinese culture. We have dance, art, performance, and music. It is important to not underestimate these things. And most important we have the hospitality of the local community. We have rooms donated, food donated. Help of all kinds you don’t always get that in other festivals. There is great potential here.
TK –So you feel supported by the local community?
JDN-Totally, I mean a new idea always has people on the edge who are unsure of what is happening. Perhaps I did things the wrong way. Because as I said I’m impetuous and I have jumped in off the deep end, but eventually the Festival will have such wide reaching benefits that people can’t refuse that. I apologize if I made mistakes and I am sure I made many. But nothing ventured nothing gained. All I can do is try and follow my vision
TK- What is your hope for the future of the festival?
JDN- Eventually, I want to be able to step back from it. I want it to be under the umbrella of the Saraswati Foundation.
TK- What are some of your other dreams for events in Ubud?
JDN- Eventually, I want to see more arts and literary events happening in Bali so that we can bring in writers from all over the world who may be on there way elsewhere but would come to Bali for a workshop or reading. I would also like to bring the food element back in and have special events with food writers and famous chefs.
TK- So, food remains the center of your creative vision.
JDN. Munch, munch, munch. Yes, I guess it does
(The interview concludes with mango tarts and hot frothing cappuccino.)
Interview by Tamarra Kaida
(Interview takes place at Casa Luna Restaurant starting with plates of Turkish bread and guacamole and chilled Chardonnay)
TK- You are a talented painter, successful restaurateur and cooking teacher. What factors brought you to write your memoir, Fragrant Rice.
JDN -I had wanted to write a cookbook about Balinese cooking. Then when I was teaching my cooking classes I talked about cooking, my life in Bali and about raising my children here as Balinese. People would say “Oh, but you must include the stories about your life.” People were intrigued with what life was like for a westerner in Bali. So, my cookbook developed into a memoir.
TK- So your students inspired you to become a writer.
JDN- Oh absolutely!
TK- Food is the element that sifts through your book and your life in Bali. To what do you attribute this passion for cooking and food?
JDN- I think you are born with your passions, especially if you have an artistic bent. I was born with a passion for food. It has always been an important part of my life. When I was young I was always experimenting with pastries and god knows what else. When I was about twelve I was always making up cookbooks, cutting and pasting recipes
together. I drove my mother nuts. When I came to Bali with my parents, I was fifteen and discovered peanut sauce and curry. I just loved it. I was comfortable with Bali and right away I felt I could live here at the drop of a hat. When I came back in 1984. I still had that thought of writing a Balinese cookbook. I knew I wanted to do that.
TK. So you have a lot of different passions. Where does painting fit in?
JDF Actually, it was my primary passion and I wanted to pursue a career in art. I never studied cooking in school as I thought no one needs to teach me that. So yes, I have many passions.
TK- When you are not cooking Indonesian, what kind of food do you like to make?
JDN- I cook a lot of food. When I am in Australia I cook a lot. I don’t have time to cook here, as I am director of cooking in the restaurants. but when I am in Australia I cook everything under the sun. I do lots of Mediteranian dishes. I make Risotto and I make casseroles. I just love it. I love experimenting with curries and sauces. I like cooking for my Mom and Dad. Usually they cook for themselves. But they are getting old so I like doing the best I can for them.
TK: So is cooking is a way of showing love?
JDN-Oh, totally, absolutely.
TK -What do cooking and writing have in common for you?
JDN- They are both creative. When I get on a roll with writing, I love it so much! I am painting in my mind. And I am mixing and sifting and it is like cooking. Combining words is like mixing ingredients. In the end you have some thing that is… well your own. Writing is so personal. It is a very intimate relationship you have with your mind, your pen and a piece of paper. It is very personal. And then you publish it and suddenly BAM! Everybody knows about it. I never really thought about that and why would you want to publish that? … But yes, cooking and writing… I love writing about cooking. It is a passion.
TK- In your memoir you write about falling in love with your Balinese husband, Ketut, and about living with your in-laws in a Balinese compound in Ubud. You tell about your four children. What were the easiest and the hardest issues to write about?
JDN- The easiest are the joyful incidences. The ceremonies, the weddings, those everyday sorts of occurrences. The hardest was revealing more about my relationship with Ketut. Not that I went into it that much. It was no longer just about me but the family. I wanted to be respectful of their feelings. The most sensitive thing was writing about the bomb. But that was different. It was a sad kind of thing. The last sections I wrote were about Ketut.
TK- So, you wrote it in sections, not straight through.
JDN – Stories about Bali and stories about the kids I wrote years ago. I went over sections. I rewrote and fine-tuned previous writings. I decided to write more personally when it felt important to answer all those questions people asked about my life with Ketut. So I wrote about how we met and all that. I figured if I was asked those questions again I could just say. Please read the book.
TK- Did Ketut agree to that?
JDF- No of course not ! (Some laughter) He felt all that had nothing to do with the book. Then one day we had a good friend visit us and we were talking about writing about me meeting Ketut and our friend said, “What do you mean that has nothing to do with the book, Ketut, you are the book. She wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for you.” Ketut thought about it and just nodded his head. He didn’t say anything but from then on I knew I could write about it.
TK- Has he read the book?
JDN- No he already knows what’s in it and he only reads books about religion anyway. My son Krishna saw the book on the kitchen table and said hey, there’s my picture. How did that get in there? And suddenly I realized that I had sort of exposed the kids to public platform and I had never really thought about. I hadn’t asked them, they were young and wouldn’t have understood but I had to wonder what had I done?
TK. Well, you have to be a risk taker to get things started.
JDN- Yes, I am impetuous. It is the same with the Festival. If I get an idea, I just do it and deal with the repercussions later. I have to say “ maaf, maaf” (sorry) to a lot of people later. I do what I do with the kindest, sincerest intentions, but I don’t always think it all through beforehand.
TK. What do you think is the most important aspect of Fragrant Rice?
JDN- Oh, the stories. I see my self as a person who stratles two cultures. I want visitors to understand Balinese culture better. I guess I’m an interpreter. I saw it in the cooking classes. I realized my job was to inform people and help them to understand the richness and beauty of Balinese culture. The book is an extension of that realization.
TK- In what ways did publishing your book “’Fragrant Rice” affect you starting and directing The Ubud Writers and Readers festival?
JDN- Well, even before” the Bomb” I was thinking of how there was no active tourist body/ office that actively promoted Bali. We are on our own. India has a huge promotion agency. I felt Ubud, in particular, needed a stronger identity. When people think of Bali they think of Kuta.They think of beaches, braids, and bars. No one thinks of Ubud. So I started to think of how the culture and arts could be brought up front. After “the Bomb”
we were all talking about how there are no festivals in Ubud. Byron Bay in Australia has a festival almost every week. I love Ubud and the people and I want to promote it. When I published the book I started to think about starting a writer’s festival in Ubud. I knew I would be invited to other writers festivals and I thought why not one in Ubud? Ubud needs something that works with its character. It needed something for the thinking person. I talked to my friend Heather and we decided to do it. There it is. I just jumped in off the deep end.
TK- I’m glad you did. One of the reasons I volunteered to work on it is that it is an idea whose time has come. The mix of Indonesian, Western/ Asian/ writers, poets is already unique and valuable. It is time for Ubud to benefit from its bicultural creative, intellectual persona and come into the twenty first century as a positive image of Indonesia. We need a new image of Ubud. One that goes beyond the 1930’s, Walter Spies and all that creative ferment. There are exciting people from both East and West here and it feels like the time for a renaissance is possible despite the bomb and the economy. Something new needs to be born. Maybe we need to revisit the Phoenix bird. The symbol is powerful and appropriate.
JDN- Yes, Ubud is home to writers and artists. As we know Writers Festivals create a huge audience and bring in all sorts of creative people. I wondered, how could I make a lasting effect on this community, where I could eventually step back and let the locals reap the rewards? And also as a mother with children, how could I benefit their lives and effect the education process etc. It was one of those things where you try and work on many levels at once. That is why we have a children’s education program and why we have special Indonesian panels and discussions events. We are working from an inclusive multi- cultural model.
TK – What do you hope will develop from the Ubud Writers Festival?
JDN- All sorts of things. I think this could become one of the most important events in Southeast Asia. Ubud is a showcase for Balinese culture. We have dance, art, performance, and music. It is important to not underestimate these things. And most important we have the hospitality of the local community. We have rooms donated, food donated. Help of all kinds you don’t always get that in other festivals. There is great potential here.
TK –So you feel supported by the local community?
JDN-Totally, I mean a new idea always has people on the edge who are unsure of what is happening. Perhaps I did things the wrong way. Because as I said I’m impetuous and I have jumped in off the deep end, but eventually the Festival will have such wide reaching benefits that people can’t refuse that. I apologize if I made mistakes and I am sure I made many. But nothing ventured nothing gained. All I can do is try and follow my vision
TK- What is your hope for the future of the festival?
JDN- Eventually, I want to be able to step back from it. I want it to be under the umbrella of the Saraswati Foundation.
TK- What are some of your other dreams for events in Ubud?
JDN- Eventually, I want to see more arts and literary events happening in Bali so that we can bring in writers from all over the world who may be on there way elsewhere but would come to Bali for a workshop or reading. I would also like to bring the food element back in and have special events with food writers and famous chefs.
TK- So, food remains the center of your creative vision.
JDN. Munch, munch, munch. Yes, I guess it does
(The interview concludes with mango tarts and hot frothing cappuccino.)
Interview with Jan Cornall - Take Me To Paradise
Jan Cornall is multi talented woman with limitless energy and enthusiasms for life, art, teaching, performing and Bali. Jan is a Sidney based performance artist, a film scriptwriter, (Talk), poet, playwright, (Escape From A Better Place) and jazz singer. She has conducted at least 6 writing workshops in the Ubud area over the last four years. At the recent Ubud Writers and Readers Festival, she launched her first novella (Take Me To Paradise) along with a collaborative music/poetry CD- Jan Cornall Sings Sarengenge. Jan is also, a mother of two grown children and an inspirational teacher whose student’s return time after time for nurturing infusions of Jan’s advice and support.
TK: No one can accuse you of laziness or allowing boredom to creep into your life. What is the source of your many creative interests and how do they integrate?
JC: Everything is a source. I am creatively on all the time everything I see taste touch is a fodder. I try to teach this to my students and I try to be a role model to show how fantastic it is to wake up in the morning and be one creative, I try and integrate it all. Life and art interweave rather then become compartmentalized. I wake up meditate take a walk and bring my notebook ideas come and I write them down. It’s a sort on ongoing meditation centered on the writing. Also, I have a background in theater and I write for a theater audience. I like the performance element to be part of my writing.
Take Me to Paradise is set in Ubud and tells the story of a western woman in mid life who awakes one Monday morning and takes a spontaneous holiday in Bali instead of going to her job. What made you want to write this book?
JC: Escape is one of my themes. I did a one-woman play called Woman on the Run and another play Escape to A Better Place. When I was young mother with small children I wondered what would happen if I just walked out the door for a few days. Maybe this is a hold over theme from those days. At the time of writing the book I was in a dull sameness sort of place and I wrote about my character, Marilyn just leaving the house and getting on a plane going to Bali, a place she had wanted to visit but never got around to it. It seemed like a good idea. I never did this myself in real life, but maybe I did it through the writing process.
TK: This is a tender cross-cultural love story. How much of the book is based on actual events and how much is fictional?
JC: All my work is memoir based. But it is fictionized because that gives the story an extra edge. Even fiction writers who claim to write pure fiction are writing from some emotional essence, some core interest. It may not be real life exactly, but it is about issues they need to work through. In my case some of it is true, some isn’t and some characters are a combinations of people. Some of the events are made up for better narrative flow.
TK: I can easily recommend Take me to Paradise to many of my women friend in Bali and in The United States. There is an open friendly inclusive quality to the narrator’s voice. Marilyn is a modern divorced woman of today who lets us into her thoughts, her foibles, her dreams and her needy desires. There are several internal monologs that spoke directly to me. Did you have a female audience in mind when you were writing the book?
JC: Not necessarily, those monologs I had to write to give voice to those feelings. I had to write this book so that I can go on to write other books and articles I have in mind. I had to tell the story of my divorce in the book to go beyond it. So my character Marilyn arrives in Bali with all this emotional baggage and Bali helps her to heal. It helps her to go on, to leave the divorce behind. So writing this book is step in my own integration and a way to come back into life fully. But it is not a direct correlation of events or characters. Many women respond to my work and some men don’t get it but I write to just write.
TK: Have you given copies to Indonesian readers? Is the book perceived differently by Balinese /Indonesian readers?
JC: I have. But I have not had a response yet. We are planning to translate the book into Bahasa Indonesian. I look forward to that and getting responses.
TK: You have set the story between Bali’s 2002 and 2004 terror bombings. Was this intentional and symbolic?
JC: I first came to Bali in 2004 and loved Bali and then 4 months later the bombing in Kuta happened and it had a huge impact on me because here was a place I wanted to come back to very much to run my writers retreats in Bali and I had to wait a year as no one was ready to return to Bali at that time. I knew I had to put both bombings in the book to writ about in a way that showed I was not going to be scared away from a place I loved.
TK: Do you see your book as part of an emerging travel-writing genre in which Western women seek renewal in the spiritual values of less technological societies? I recently read Elizabeth Gilbert’s memoir - Eat, Pray, Love. The last section is set in Ubud where the writer becomes involved with real Balinese locals who are clearly identifiable. She goes into detailed descriptions of her love affair with a local expat. Is the kiss and tell book the newest wave of travel story/fiction? What societal factors do you think are contributing to a growing readership for this type of story?
JC: There has always been this genre. Take Karen Blixen's Out of Africa for example. Lately there is a genre of book about women who go to France or Italy and have an affaire or renovate a house. I never thought about this genre when I was writing the book. Western women are on a search. I think a lot of women are on a genuine spiritual search and places like Bali are part of that search. I think there is something to look at in this phenomenon. I want to write about it.
TK: What are your personal hopes for Take Me To Paradise? Do you hope it will become a film?
JC: If somebody wanted to make it into a movie I think I would be interested. Someone is interested in doing a theater piece out of it, with music, sound effects this why I have started video taping places and scenes. I would do a reading/ performance with music. I am interested in doing theatrical versions of it.
TK: Do you plan to do another book set in Bali? What are your future projects?
JC. I am still interested in Marilyn and I am very connected to Bali so I want to see what immerges. Yes, there may be a part Two. A deeper exploration
TK: Tell us about your CD which you also launched at the Festival?
JC: The CD is collaboration with Sitock Sarengenge, who is an Indonesian Poet and we met at the first Ubud Writers and Readers Festival. We were interested in working together. I was going to write in response to his amazing poems but that wasn’t working and one night I started singing the poems and then I wrote some music and we expanded the collaboration to include--------- who is a pianist.
TK: Where can we purchase the book and the CD?
JC: Ary’s Book Shop, Rendevous Duex, Ubud Music and Genesa book Shop in Ubud and down on the coast -Gra Media in Discovery Plaza.
TK: No one can accuse you of laziness or allowing boredom to creep into your life. What is the source of your many creative interests and how do they integrate?
JC: Everything is a source. I am creatively on all the time everything I see taste touch is a fodder. I try to teach this to my students and I try to be a role model to show how fantastic it is to wake up in the morning and be one creative, I try and integrate it all. Life and art interweave rather then become compartmentalized. I wake up meditate take a walk and bring my notebook ideas come and I write them down. It’s a sort on ongoing meditation centered on the writing. Also, I have a background in theater and I write for a theater audience. I like the performance element to be part of my writing.
Take Me to Paradise is set in Ubud and tells the story of a western woman in mid life who awakes one Monday morning and takes a spontaneous holiday in Bali instead of going to her job. What made you want to write this book?
JC: Escape is one of my themes. I did a one-woman play called Woman on the Run and another play Escape to A Better Place. When I was young mother with small children I wondered what would happen if I just walked out the door for a few days. Maybe this is a hold over theme from those days. At the time of writing the book I was in a dull sameness sort of place and I wrote about my character, Marilyn just leaving the house and getting on a plane going to Bali, a place she had wanted to visit but never got around to it. It seemed like a good idea. I never did this myself in real life, but maybe I did it through the writing process.
TK: This is a tender cross-cultural love story. How much of the book is based on actual events and how much is fictional?
JC: All my work is memoir based. But it is fictionized because that gives the story an extra edge. Even fiction writers who claim to write pure fiction are writing from some emotional essence, some core interest. It may not be real life exactly, but it is about issues they need to work through. In my case some of it is true, some isn’t and some characters are a combinations of people. Some of the events are made up for better narrative flow.
TK: I can easily recommend Take me to Paradise to many of my women friend in Bali and in The United States. There is an open friendly inclusive quality to the narrator’s voice. Marilyn is a modern divorced woman of today who lets us into her thoughts, her foibles, her dreams and her needy desires. There are several internal monologs that spoke directly to me. Did you have a female audience in mind when you were writing the book?
JC: Not necessarily, those monologs I had to write to give voice to those feelings. I had to write this book so that I can go on to write other books and articles I have in mind. I had to tell the story of my divorce in the book to go beyond it. So my character Marilyn arrives in Bali with all this emotional baggage and Bali helps her to heal. It helps her to go on, to leave the divorce behind. So writing this book is step in my own integration and a way to come back into life fully. But it is not a direct correlation of events or characters. Many women respond to my work and some men don’t get it but I write to just write.
TK: Have you given copies to Indonesian readers? Is the book perceived differently by Balinese /Indonesian readers?
JC: I have. But I have not had a response yet. We are planning to translate the book into Bahasa Indonesian. I look forward to that and getting responses.
TK: You have set the story between Bali’s 2002 and 2004 terror bombings. Was this intentional and symbolic?
JC: I first came to Bali in 2004 and loved Bali and then 4 months later the bombing in Kuta happened and it had a huge impact on me because here was a place I wanted to come back to very much to run my writers retreats in Bali and I had to wait a year as no one was ready to return to Bali at that time. I knew I had to put both bombings in the book to writ about in a way that showed I was not going to be scared away from a place I loved.
TK: Do you see your book as part of an emerging travel-writing genre in which Western women seek renewal in the spiritual values of less technological societies? I recently read Elizabeth Gilbert’s memoir - Eat, Pray, Love. The last section is set in Ubud where the writer becomes involved with real Balinese locals who are clearly identifiable. She goes into detailed descriptions of her love affair with a local expat. Is the kiss and tell book the newest wave of travel story/fiction? What societal factors do you think are contributing to a growing readership for this type of story?
JC: There has always been this genre. Take Karen Blixen's Out of Africa for example. Lately there is a genre of book about women who go to France or Italy and have an affaire or renovate a house. I never thought about this genre when I was writing the book. Western women are on a search. I think a lot of women are on a genuine spiritual search and places like Bali are part of that search. I think there is something to look at in this phenomenon. I want to write about it.
TK: What are your personal hopes for Take Me To Paradise? Do you hope it will become a film?
JC: If somebody wanted to make it into a movie I think I would be interested. Someone is interested in doing a theater piece out of it, with music, sound effects this why I have started video taping places and scenes. I would do a reading/ performance with music. I am interested in doing theatrical versions of it.
TK: Do you plan to do another book set in Bali? What are your future projects?
JC. I am still interested in Marilyn and I am very connected to Bali so I want to see what immerges. Yes, there may be a part Two. A deeper exploration
TK: Tell us about your CD which you also launched at the Festival?
JC: The CD is collaboration with Sitock Sarengenge, who is an Indonesian Poet and we met at the first Ubud Writers and Readers Festival. We were interested in working together. I was going to write in response to his amazing poems but that wasn’t working and one night I started singing the poems and then I wrote some music and we expanded the collaboration to include--------- who is a pianist.
TK: Where can we purchase the book and the CD?
JC: Ary’s Book Shop, Rendevous Duex, Ubud Music and Genesa book Shop in Ubud and down on the coast -Gra Media in Discovery Plaza.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)