My World My Writings

MY WORLD MY WRITING

(A paper read in the North Eastern and Southern Writers’ Meet of Sahitya Akademi, New Delhi, held recently ( 5-6 Mar 2011) at Trivandram).

Sibananda Kakoti

Distinguished guests and esteemed house, I feel honored to stand before you today to share with you my World and my Writing. I am a humble writer, born in a humble village of yet another humble town of Nagaon, Assam. I like to think of myself as that small turtle, just trying to swim in the vast sea of literature. And therefore, I stand before you today with all my humility, with nothing else, but the small World I carry with me and also with some of the glimpses of my little efforts of writing.. As the paper is “My World My Writings”, I may kindly be excused for being a little autobiographical.

My life started with the different hues of both urban and rural life. I was born in a remote village of Nagaon, Setali, but was brought up till the age of twelve in three different townships of Assam due to my father’s transfers from place to place. Memories from and of the first two places are very faint. I completed my primary level from Jorhat. But just a few months into my fourth standard in Jorhat Boys’ Higher Secondary School, our father was transferred to Nagaon. We came back to the place I was born in, to the place I very soon, learnt to call my home.

I often ask myself, in which World I live in, which World I carry with me ? Is it the fast growing modern World in which I apparently live in or is it the World that has now reduced to a global village or my small world of my village where I was born, passed my days of childhood, my adolescence , my youth and above all where my intricate sense and sensibilities developed ? I often think , perhaps, that was my asset created in my childhood days, in which I stand upright now, in whatever I have so far achieved. Whatever I am writing today is only an extension of the experiences I discovered and experimented with my World at my village.

Setali welcomed me with open arms. It was as if I had never left! Here I encountered a virgin village. I went wild with the joy and enthusiasm of adventure, at finding a place where I could run across huge green fields, dive into wide, blue ponds, run barefooted through the dust on the wide roads, chase cows and return later than sundown. It was in this virgin village that I encountered a village surrounded by indigenous performances of folk and traditional music, simplistic lives and so on.


The Vaishnavite tradition was strongly prevalent. I am still neither an agnostic nor a compartmentalized ritualistic believer. I was deeply emerged in the tradition around. I was a party to the Nam Prasang of the Namghar. I was involved in the Gayan Bayanas and the Bhaonas of the Sankranti. But to me, I remember, all the meanings were different. I was highly moved with the long chantings, the beautiful ragas and geetas of the principal Namati, the Singer. The conducted musical choral of the fellow people including me or the religious musical scores of the Taal- Khol, the Mridangs , the drams and others, the Gayan Bayan, the stylized acting and the story line of the performances made in the Ankia Bhounas, moved me a lot. I took more interest in the prose, lyrics and poetry those written and composed. Here I was spontaneously introduced to the greatest Vaisnavite Saint Assam has ever seen- Mahapurush Srimata Sankardeva and , Madhabdeva. Their prose, their poetry and their plays continued the world to me. Their use of word stating the profound truths of life in the most understandable manner opened another world to me altogether. I always tried to get the meaning, the apparent and the meaning within. My father, a Sanskrit Graduate of late forties, extended all his efforts to make my doors opened to a different world I could so far explored. Now, I realize, why Mahatma Gandhi had his tears with the play Raja Harichandra in his early childhood. Some straits of it can still be seen in my writing and this is an influence I am almost, proud to have.

But the youth was a little different. With my gradual growth I could perhaps able to afford to have a choice. During my last years of matriculation, I gradually leaned towards the progressive thoughts and ideas. My father too with his small library opened to me new doors of thoughts and ideas. It was the early seventies when the whole of India was experimenting with the left ideology. A thin stream of it flowed through the small roads of my village too. I stood by the side of the stream, a little confused but with dreams and imaginations. To me, the meaning of proletariats was not very well defined, but I too dreamt of liberty, the liberty of the masses from long years of poverty and deprival. I did not join in any active left political party , but I was fully charged and had started writing plays, specially for emancipation and the victory of good over evil, angels over devils and light over darkness. Most of my one-act-plays and a few radio plays were written during this time and more or less, around the same lines.

My village helped, readied, watered and nurtured my creativity and thought. I was perhaps a passive observant of the World around.

I was in the IXth standard then. All the youngsters of the village were busy preparing the welcome gate of the pandal for a marriage to happen the next day. Being one of the juniors, I was busy helping the seniors with one little job or the other. A candid comment of one of the seniors engaged in the work struck me and stayed stuck in my mind. He was one of those who were pasting newspapers with different colours, including black, for the gate of the pandal. While doing so, he suddenly looked at the sun, smiled and simply invited all of us to join him in covering the sun in black and make the world dark forever! That summer vacation, I wrote my first one act play ‘Kendra Bihin Britta’ (a circle without a centre) where the first scene of the play had some frustrated youngsters coloring the news papers black to cover up the sun in the sky.

The eighties saw my entry into professional life. For a little period of time in Telephone Exchange then in a Bank, the State Bank of India, from where I still sustain. The material world, with all its strings of career, sustenance, love and existence didn’t deter me. In fact, I feel the eighties was my most formative year, time when I learnt of the flip side of the coin. I most probably hibernated during this period, an animated suspension, a gestation period for the birth of the story teller in me. My first short story, Amrityu Amrit was published in the first year of the nineties.

Even while my village, my parents and my immediate world influenced me, the politics of my state was never far behind. The late seventies and the eighties, when the Assam Movement reached its peak, the rise of regional parties, the discovery of a student force and their collective consciousness in the state saw rapid and major changes of political and social scenarios, which culminated in the birth and rise of ultras. The youth leadership emerged as a major force, and as the ultras became more proactive and incessant with their demands, a suffocating atmosphere prevailed throughout the society. Constant fear, tribulations and stories of atrocities shook the people. My world, very often streaked with blood. Death, killing and tears jarred me not just as a human being, but also as a voice of the people.

It takes a huge effort for the chicken to kick its shell. I too came out of my shell. The political was no longer alien, it was personal. The plight of my people became my plight. There was no other way for me to share it but through my writing. It was in such a situation of fear, with such a frame of mind that I wrote my first short story, Amrityu Amrit, ( Nectur unto Death ), where the protagonist, an absconding militant, returns home disillusioned and tries to mingle with his people, while his sick father and only younger brother face and negotiate their own series of crisis and disillusionments. Critics have referred to this story to be the ‘forecast of an author’. My second story, Sahabosthan, ( Co-existence) portrays the suffocation that my people felt during these years in a society rid with fear. Sahabosthan has the protagonist counting his moments of life and happiness amidst all the engulfing uncertainty, but only till the time he can avoid the bullet that has his name on it.

Youth is a time when everything old is passé. But then, as one grows old, we look more and more towards the past. Everything seems golden and purer than what is today. Just as I crossed my forties, I found myself going back.. My writing too mirrored this and I started a series of short sorties called Barania Alibat, a sequel, (The Silver Roll of Bridle Path’ or ‘Particoloured Path’ as translated by Prof Pradip Acharjee) wherein I recreated the world I grew up in with the stories around the life of little Parama, from the time he came with his father and family to his village and found himself wildly in love with it to the time he leaves it for higher education. The stories have that central setting but are all unique in their own. It started with Parama who had woken up to a whole new world of green when he had opened his sleepy, dazed eyes after the days journey from the town to his village for the first time as a kid. The last story of the sequel has the lament of this same Parama, years later, leaving his village for the town, in a suburban bus, only to be awakened by the harsh, rough and mechanical sounds in his entry to the township. The green was another world, one that got lost in oblivion.

Therefore friends, I still feel deeply , I perhaps live in two Worlds, a World lost in present day global village, and another, a mechanical World, where I still am in quest, if I see my own World again. And here is a petty writer, me, trying my hand to explore both of my Worlds, the World within and the World I live in.

I fear I might not succeed in my life, but when the time comes, I would know, that I tried.

Thank you all for your kind patience.

*****

Email: kakotis@gmail.com
Blog: kakotis.blogspot.com















Sahitya Akademi
cordially invites you to

North-East & Southern Writers’ Meet

on
5-6 March 2011
at

Vyloppil Sanskriti Bhavan
Trivandrum


PROGRAMME

Saturday, 5 March 2011

Inaugural Session: 11.00 a.m. - 1.00 p.m.


Welcome : A. Krishna Murthy
Secretary, Sahitya Akademi

Introductory Remarks : M. Thomas Mathew
Eminent Malayalam Scholar

Presidential Address : Temsula Ao
Eminent Writer from North East

Inauguration : O.N.V. Kurup
Eminent Malayalam Writer

Poetry Readings Dhanada Devi (Assamese)
Pratibha Nandakumar (Kannada)
K. Jayakumar (Malayalam)
Jogeswar Waikhwa (Manipuri)
R.L. Thanmawia (Mizo)
Ravi Subramanian (Tamil)
K. Shiva Reddy (Telugu)

Vote of thanks : K.S. Rao
Deputy Secretary, Sahitya Akademi


TEA: 10.30 – 11.00 a.m.

LUNCH : 1.00 p.m. – 2.00 p.m.

Short Story Readings : 2.00 p.m. - 3.30 p.m.

Chair : Lakshmi Nandan Bora (Assamese)

Readings Janil Kumar Brahma (Bodo )
T.N. Prakash (Malayalam)
Ponneelan (Tamil)
Gudipati (Telugu)


TEA: 3.30 p.m. – 4.00 p.m.

Poetry Readings : 4.00 p.m. – 5.30 p.m.

Chair : Sugatha Kumari (Malayalam)

Poetry Readings Premananda Muchharary (Bodo)
Sri Pragati Chakma (Chakma)
Chintamani Kodlekere (Kannada)
Anitha Thampi (Malayalam)
Ilampirai (Tamil)
Sangaveni Ravindra (Telugu)


5.30 p.m. – 6.30 p.m.

Loka : The Many Voices

Presentation of Bihu Songs & Dances from Assam

Sunday, 6 March 2011

My World, My Writing : 10.00 – 11.30 a.m.

Chair : Kethu Vishwanatha Reddy (Telugu)

Presentations Sibananda Kakoti (Assamese)
Mukund Rao (English)
A. Sethumadhavan (Malayalam)
Nabakumar Nongmeikapam (Manipuri)

TEA : 11.30 a.m. – 12.00 noon
Literary Trends : 12.00 noon – 1.30 p.m.

Chair : Sirpi Balasubramaniam (Tamil)

Papers Sreedevi K. Nair (Malayalam)
Rajjit Dev Goswami (North-East)
S. Nagamalleswara Rao (Telugu)

LUNCH : 1.30 p.m.– 2.30 p.m.
Poets’ Meet : 2.30 p.m. – 4.30 p.m.

Chair : Mamang Dai (North East)

Readers Pranjit Bora (Assamese)
Kamal Bonghcer (Bongcher)
Arif Raza (Kannada)
Pradip Mura Singh (Kokborak)
Anwar (Malayalam)
D. Vinaychandran (Malayalam)
S.D. Dhakal (Nepali)
H.G. Rasool (Tamil)
K.S. Ramana (Telugu)

4.30 p.m. – 5.30 p.m.

Loka : The Many Voices

Manipuri Marshal Arts & Mridanga Dance

__________________

RSVP : (011) 23386626

Visit our Website at : http://www.sahitya-akademi.gov.in

_______________________________________________________________________

SAHITYA AKADEMI BOOK EXHIBITION
5-6 MARCH 2011 10.00 a.m. to 6.00 p.m.
20% DISCOUNT ON ALL PUBLICATIONS
SUBSCRIBE TO SAHITYA AKADEMI JOURNALS
_________________________________________________________________________

In Association with Vyloppil Sanskriti Bhavan, Trivandrum

_________________________________________________________________________