Thomas Berger’s Who’s Teddy Villanova? as a Barthian post-modernist fiction

Thomas Berger’s Who’s Teddy Villanova? as a Barthian post-modernist fiction

(This is a paper I had presented at the Wednesday Circle of the Professors of Department of Languages and Liberal Arts, University of Magdeburg, Germany, during my stint in 1995-96. I have reworked and rewriten and modified the paper to make it more current. - Oct 2005

Originally presented at the Colloquium on Postmodernism in Literatures in Engish, Department of English, University of Madras, Sept 30 - 1 Oct 1992)

John Barth, in his essay entitled ‘The Literature of Replenishment: Post-modernist Fiction,’ writes:

“My ideal post-modernist author neither merely repudiates nor merely imitates either his twentieth-century Modernist parents or his nineteenth-century pre-modernist grandparents… (he) should hope to reach and delight, …beyond the circle of what (Thomas) Mann used to call the Early Christians: professional devotees of high art.”

Barth further writes, in specific reference to the post-modernist fiction: “The ideal post-modernist novel will somehow rise above the quarrel between realism and irrealism, formalism and “contentism,” pure and committed literature, coterie fiction and junk fiction. Alas for professors of literature, it may not need as much teaching as (James) Joyce’s or (Vladimir) Nabokov’s or (Thomas) Pynchon’s books, or some of my own.” [For the information of new, uninitiated readers, John Barth’s THE SOT-WEED FACTOR is one of the long-standing essentials of past-post-graduate studies!)

At the same time, Barth feels that this ideal work will not be off-handed or too light or frivolous, rather it will be delighting and call for further re-readings.

The writings of the contemporary American novelist, Thomas Berger, well qualify to meet the demands of Barth’s expectations. Berger’s writings have ranged from a mock-epic on the Frontier West and Custer’s Last Stand (Little Big Man), through a work set in the American 30s (The Feud) to Who Is Teddy Villanova? (WITV), a detective pot-boiler, and Nowhere, a novel, the events of which happen in a Utopian Land (deja-vu Samuel Butler’s Erewhon !). He has written (at the time of my seminar) fourteen works of fiction since 1958.

Of all these, his 1977 detective fiction written in the form of a pot-boiler novel, Who is Teddy Villanova? can be termed as a stand-offish attempt among his corpus. Of course, no two works of Berger are similar in context or genre; but his Reinhart Tetralogy deal with the same context, Little Big Man has a sequel and so on…; hence WITV is a very different attempt.

Almost all of his fictional works, much like the entire corpus of the post-modern fiction, have language as the theme, and irony and satire as the technique, even while trying to emphasise the spirit of cultural subversion and anarchy that this movement has come to be reckoned by the critics of literature. Where this particular work differs is in its generic approach. Instead of resorting to the standard and high-priestly approach towards writing (post-modernist and post-structuralist writing in particular), much like the writing of Philip Roth, Donald Barthelme or Thomas Pynchon, (not to mention the encryption-fiction writings of Umberto Eco, paperback Dan Brown and some of the Calvinos), Berger chooses the medium of what is called ‘the popular and kitsch novel’ better known as pot-boiler fiction.

Berger uses this medium to portray his concern for the individual in a world polluted with deception, cunning and disguised realities. According to Prof. Hassan,

“Power and Fraud rule that world, distorting appearances and realities, pressing man to the limits of his sanity, and pressing him on the guilt-ridden role of victim or aggressor. But threats also contain their own answer, and shields may be fashioned of weapons. Man’s response, therefore, is to adopt a stance of knowing craziness, resilient simplicity, or defensive defenselessness.”

Berger’s weapon to combat the cultural and social threat takes the form of language. His hero, Russel Wren, is a former teacher of English from State University New York, turned detective by the quirk of fate. He has “…literary pretensions and a style that Samuel Johnson might have developed had he been born 250 years later in New York…” Throughout the work, he juggles with the art of literary parataxis, as much as Berger interests himself for both verbal arrangement without connective as well as parataxis of ideas.

At the very beginning, this is how Wren introduces himself:

I was an unlicensed private investigator, but I possessed an unlicensed firearm… (pressed upon me once, and then forgotten, by a client who, suspecting his wife had taken a lover, had worked a ruse-suicide attempt that, owing to a hair-trigger had cost him an earlobe)… [A]gainst any arm more formidable than a pen-knife it would be outweaponed; and in New York, defending oneself against attack not only is in heinous violation of innumerable ordinances but might well provoke the frustrated assailant to bring a successful suit for damages.

Any author of a detective novel would introduce its protagonist through hectic action of mind or body, in the process of establishing him a macho-type personality; but not Berger. His craft lies in subverting action into words and demystifying the world of survival. His is an approach of “complicated simplicity”, deriving his lineage from the American literary ancestors in Hawthorne, Faulkner and Melville.

At one juncture of the plot, having gone through some harrowing experiences of adventure and escapades a detective hero normally goes through (and is quintessentially let down if it does not happen!), Wren remarks irritated to Alice Ellish, his girl-friend’s room-mate: “Look! I’ve had an unfortunate day, an unconscious night, and an unprecedented morning…” (p.145). A little later, the following conversation ensues between him and his client-cum-alleged criminal Washburn:

“You won’t get a sou from me, you contemptible cur.” Despite his arch terminology, he appeared authentically grim; … I replied in kind, subtly trying to curry his favor by emulation of idiom.
“I am not the knave you take me for, Sir. The day is not more pure than the depths of my heart.”
But he was not mollified by the famous line, and it is a general pity that Racine, like Goethe, is notoriously banal when Englished. (p.152)

Philip Kuberski feels that there is more to the frontal word play than meets the eye, that the literary language is only an external manifestation of a serious of “signs and symbols of sexual and aggressive repression” that Berger loads upon his protagonist. However, this linguistic display makes Berger’s New York, a symbol by itself for any place of crime on earth. Berger achieves this by overturning or subverting an already perverted world of the contemporary metropolis - in this case New York - which has come to be identified more with ghettos, hoodlums, crimes, fraudulence, punk and coke culture and MTV, and the jetsam and flotsam of a fast-paced society, than with its arts, management and cultural schools and festivals. Berger writes with a black humor reminiscent of Faulkner and Melville and portrays a world that Tom Wolfe does with much more somber inflection in The Bonfire of Vanities. Though, the lack of high-seriousness in no way demeans or dissociates Berger’s work from the mainstream.

The work at hand, without moving out from the track of realism, of portraying what is truthfully, also has its innovative and experimental orientations. The book is replete with strange and weird syntax styles, arch constructions of the Jamesian and Macaulayan type, the essentially hardboiled jargons of detective fiction, the hundred percent commercial jingoisms of American television world, juxtaposing alongside the contemporary and post-modern self-reflexiveness. Consider the following contrasts. First, Wren’s conversation with his secretary Peggy Tumulty. “Fantasy has its uses, Peggy. In dreams begin responsibilities, according to your countryman Yeats” (p.239). Next, his ratiocination during his escape from the Police, with the aid of a Gay Assault Team, “… though I have nothing those professing to the persuasion of Marcel Proust, André Gide, and perhaps even the Great Will himself, I am not myself an invert, having, when it comes to intimacies, an absolute addiction to the other and not the same” (p.124). In short, Berger could have made his character simply state his loyalty towards heterosexuality, with lesser intellectual aspirations that the life of the lay readers treating the work as a regular pot-boiler journeyman fiction were made easy.

Consider further how Berger plays with language and the use of related images. At one point, Wren, the ex-English instructor states, “I could only manage my sweep of reason by assembling a broom straw by straw” (p.235), and a little earlier, when he accuses his girlfriend of cohorting with the villains, he says, “…[J]udging from the feathers of the rest of your flock, you are yourself of criminal plumage” (p.177).

Leonard Michaels finds much reflections of “contemporary literature” in Berger’s work – “hilarious and serious at once,” when he writes:

'Berger’s style, which is one of the great pleasures of the book, is something like S.J.Perelman’s – educated, complicated, graceful, silly, destructive in spirit, and brilliant – and it is also something like Mad Comics – densely, sensuously detailed, unpredictable, packed with gags. Beyond all this, it makes an impression of scholarship…'

For Thomas McClanahan, the work poses a different challenge. Desperate ‘to look through the language for a plot,’ he declares that “The pretentious overwriting becomes trying… when the descriptions do nothing to advance the story.” As far as he is concerned, “Wren’s descriptive rambling [is] a futile attempt to save a lackluster book.” McClanahan is over-reacting, since a conscious post-modern credo is to lose itself in the labyrinth of language and is not critiquing the work within the canons of post-modernism. If one accepts that WITV, like Berger’s other works, is an assay at deconstructing the banality of day today human experience and reconstruct the worldly chaos into a meaningful struggle. Berger does adhere to the idea of societal meliorism. He does not try to vindicate the brutality and violence present around us either. For Berger, existence is inevitable, to be gone through whether it is painful or coke-induced happiness. As Reinhart, the protagonist of the eponymous tetralogy declares: “I’m not here to bury life, but to recognize it…” (Reinhart in Love, p.132). And Berger’s approach is to recognize it through the greatest human invention of all – language. As he once described, he is “essentially a voyeur of copulating words.”

To conclude, if the novel is written in an “arch, allusive and rhetorically exhibitionistic style: loquacious, periphrastic, euphuistic”, and does not take itself seriously… therein lies the raison d’etre of this detective parody. It is at once a worthy inheritor of the title “a truly post-modern novel”, whose primary aim is to use the last resort of human sanity – language - to construct a mouse-trap out of conceit, as Friedrich Dürrenmatt described the essential function of comedy, and draw its unsuspecting reader to a lethal dose of literary voyeurism even while delighting and entertaining them; it is also a worthy successor to the children of its creator’s forbear – Hammett, Chandler and Macdonald. And if that does not suffice to authenticate the work’s place in the halls of literary fame, consider the sweep of its touch – Jean Racine, Goethe, Ruskin, Proust and Elias Canetti at one end and, Mad Comics and Charlie Chaplin at the other end.

- To be Annotated with Bibliographical Sources

The Play in NAGA-MANDALA

The Play in NAGA-MANDALA

the bitter-sweet headache of identifying the protagonist

Presented as a Paper at a Symposium on Indian Literature in English held at the Department of English, University of Madras, Madras on 11th March, 1994.

Lionel Abel, in his book Metatheater: A New View of Dramatic Form, writes that [it is] “the necessary form for dramatizing characters who, having full self-consciousness, cannot but participate in their own dramatization” [fall into the canon of meta-characters]. Citing this, Joesph Federico says that the heroes of the metatheater have “the consciousness of a dramatist as well as that of a character...” This implies that it leads to a conscious role-playing by the character that cannot participate, and also cannot but participate. Is this ambiguity or ambivalence? That is the question of the day.

When the idea of finding what actually Naga-Mandala is all about came, I was confounded, like so many scholars who still break their heads about the chicken or the egg question regarding Paradise Lost: ‘Who is the hero?’ My trouble was, is there a hero in Naga-Mandala at all? Is the story-teller in the play the hero? After all, the meta-play is about his predicament. Or is it either of the two - Naga and Appanna - in the story told? Or is the story-teller without the play - Girish Karnad, the author - himself? The second question was easily solved - neither Naga nor Appanna could be the hero since, if we went by the normal norms of tragedy, Naga does not have any fatal flaw. First and foremost, Naga-Mandala is not a tragedy; second, Naga is only an instrument. Appanna is too unrounded a character and again a sort of an instrument to explore Rani’s drama that his character lacks any weightage. Then, he cannot be a hero. If we can take the story within the story, or the play within the play more seriously than the Man’s story, then Rani stands to qualify as the protagonist. However, since the story of Rani is only a story told by ‘the Story’ to the Man on grounds of mutual help, it really does not qualify for any further discussion. What can be noticed already are the various layers to the play that makes this Chinese box a fascinating conundrum.

The story of Naga-Mandala is more a story of ‘the Man’ and ‘the Story.’ Of the two, the dominant role is that of ‘the Man’ since the crux of the argument is about his predicament and his imminent death, if he does not keep himself awake at least for one full night. It is obvious, the situation, as the Man says and I quote:

I may be dead within the next few hours. I am not talking of ‘acting dead.’ Actually dead. I might die right in front of your eyes. A mendicant told me: ‘You must keep awake at least one whole night this month... If not, you will die...’ [...] I asked the mendicant what I had done to deserve the fate. And he said: ‘You have written plays. You have staged them. You have caused so many good people... to fall asleep...’ (N-M, pg 1 - 2)

It is a matter of life and death for him, whereas, for ‘the Story’ it is not so crucial. Of course, a story lives only when it is retold. That is the quintessence of oral tradition and that is one of the drive-home points in the play. But then, if ‘the Story’ could not narrate the story that it possesses that particular day, it could be done some other day. For ‘the Man’ though, as he says, ‘Tonight is the only chance.’ Without the Man, the Story-teller, the playwright, the story could not be passed on. Hence we can safely conclude that the play is about the Man.

At this stage of my analysis, a new ambiguity arose, a new temptation to question: Can Karnad qualify as the protagonist of the play? Even as Shakespeare used to play with the modal ‘Will’ in his plays and poems in multifarious ways to imply to him in a playful conceit, is Karnad playing with the idea of the story-teller, playwright? The reasons are not far to seek. The Karnad of the Haya-Vadana who wrote in 1972 that ‘... there is our large-hearted audience. It may be that they fall asleep during a play sometimes,’ and the Karnad of Naga-Mandala who writes in 1988 that ‘[I] have caused so many good people... to fall asleep, twisted in miserable chairs...’ are two vastly different playwrights. That is the journey. That is his curve. The Bhagavata of 1972 has evolved into the Man, the Story-teller of 1988.

The very English diction, despite the Indianness of his folk-tale rendition, albeit verbal than oral, of Haya-Vadana has metamorphosed into the quintessential oral more than verbal folk-tale rendition. He has in the sixteen in-between years found the oral idiom and has also effectively fused it into the Western experimental play-within-a-play theatrical tradition. This is not to negate the fact that the objective Prologue rendered by the Stage Manager is a Natya-Sashtra tradition and hence the play-within-a-play is nothing new to the Indian milieu. In fact, Karnad largely approaches the Scheherazade paradigm of keeping the audience awake with a story that travel within and within which there is further story, which again can be mirrored in the Kathasarithsagara and others of similar plumage. To stress this, come to think of it, most oral traditions have the Chinese Box in them. From Mahabharata to Homer’s twin epics, The Aeneid to the Chinese myth of The Monkey King. Such is the scope of inference in Karnad’s work, in general and Naga-Mandala, in specific. 

In Naga-Mandala, not only that, the oral mode is untopographised. Not only is it given a cross-generical treatment, also does the story-telling cross the parochial Kannada limits from where he gets his base story (via A.K. Ramajunan’s collection: A Flowering Tree and other Folk Tales, OUP), and reaches out for a oneness of national cultural flavour. This is achieved not just through what Karnad describes the folk-theatre style in the following words: ‘...although it seems to uphold traditional values, it also has the means of questioning the values... (allowing) for a “complex seeing”.’ It is achieved through the simplicity and disarming way in which he names the characters. The relative word for ‘The Fair One,’ ‘ The Dark One,’ ‘Rani’ (meaning Queen) or ‘Kurudavva’ (meaning ‘The Blind One’) exists in all Indian languages. This ubiquity has evolved with Karnad’s evolution itself through the last 16 years. Also to be mentioned as Karnad’s greatest triumph, to use the words of our honoured Chairperson for the day, Dr. Raju, is ‘the story and the flames. They are invested with recognisable personalities.’

Despite these reasons, there are also certain pitfalls in calling Karnad the protagonist of the play. The first reason, in a slightly amusing way, is to be found in the following lines uttered by the Man: ‘I swear by this absent God... I shall have nothing more to do with themes, plots or stories. I abjure all story-telling, all play-acting.’ (NM, pg 2) If these words are taken literally as those of Karnad in the garb of the Man, it is contradictory in that in order to survive that night, he proceeds as a narrator to relate a tale and he says: ‘I suppose I have no choice... I have no choice. Bear with me, please. As you can see, it is a matter of life and death for me.’ (NM, pg 5) 

The second and more serious reason is the fact that he acknowledges in the Preface that he has only weaved two oral tales that he heard from A.K. Ramanujan. Here again, he is just an instrument or a catalyst bringing together two existing elements to evolve a third element. So, going back to our original argument, it is obvious that the final remaining candidate is the Man; but then, uncertain clouds mar this supposition when we acknowledge a fact. ‘The play’ has been so carefully crafted that ‘the Man’ does not really get to his Act of leading this play till the end. The moment he explains, although apologetically, why the play is being done, he ceases to hold our attention. The Story takes over. The Man becomes a mere audience: an audience beyond the real audience. How then can he be the protagonist?

Naga-Mandala is more about this audience, an audience-within-an-audience than about a play-within-a-play. At the same instance, the narrator, the playwright and the leading character all become audience to the unfolding spectacle. This, in fact, could be the very crux of Post-modern western theatre whose preoccupation has come more to be identified on a generic front - the focus on the form. The very form of the theatre is an attempt to confront the hostile world by turning inward. It results in two things: one is, it results, as can be seen in the contemporary German plays by Peter Handke, in ‘total autistic withdrawal into an imaginary role;’ two is, it results in a ‘capitulation to a social mask. In either case, the true self succumbs to an artificial existence.’ The self-conscious narrator or the confronting playwright becomes an actor.

In the case of Naga-Mandala, by the time the tale of Rani begins, the Man, a playwright by profession, is condemned to be an audience - moves from one mask to another. Overcome by an impotence, faced with extinction, he accepts to face the same treatment he has been meting out to so many in the audience. It is not just a tactic he is adopting, it is his fate. It is an end in itself and a means to survival.

We might, so, be tempted to ask, in what way is it new, if this play has features like other western plays? The difference is, whereas in most other plays the narrator turned actor-cum-audience’s presence is felt continually, in this play, the moment the play-within-the-play begins, till the Story that narrates Rani’s story says: ‘Rani lived happily ever after...,’ we forget the Man’s existence. Also, it is at this point that Karnad’s main card is played. The Man does not want to give up. The dawn is round the corner. If he can be awake till sunlight, he will live. The story-teller in him does not give up. On two counts. One is the fact that it is an opportunity to live, which is actually peripheral to our consideration. The other is, it is his natural proclivity. At the point the Story ends the story, he says: ‘No one will accept this ending.... Too many loose ends.’ (NM, pp 40-41) He knows he has survived the worst. He can get back to business. He goes about tying the ends. The story-teller in him does not allow loose-ends to the narration. He tries ending after ending, in a bid to hand out impartial treatment to others in the tale - Appanna and Naga. Surely, Karnad’s coup-de-theatre! Karnad does not make the commitment for an overall happy ending come from the Man/Playwright. He makes one of the Flames question the Man. ‘Why can’t things end happily for a change?’ The Flames are also subverted into role-playing here. They sound as though they are a section of the audience asking for a satisfactory ending. This shows traces of the play approaching the Brechtian Epic Theatre.

This in fact, is one other element of the oral tradition, because, at the end of it all, it is difficult to imagine the play as a piece written work. The work, couched naturally in intense Indian images and felt words, does not come through as a read-piece. If the words are not to be felt, as they come from a teller’s mouth, then the work fails. Thus, this has to succeed. After all, as he maintains, Karnad has fused two oral folk tales to his convenience. If the Man / Playwright’s presence is not there, if the Story’s presence in physical terms is absent, the play cannot exist, because the whole edifice on which the work is built is the oral mode. However, the paradox lies here. The tellers are there only to give life feel to the story.

From such a point of view, the problem simplifies. The work depends on the narrator only in as much as it needs a person to say it. On this basis, the narrator is himself a connecting link between the word and the audience, the sound and the audience. Then, neither is the Man in Naga-Mandala the protagonist. For we have too many narrators, too many action-furtherers: the playwright Karnad who combines two folk-tales into one, the Man in the main plot whose personal story he unfolds, the Flames which animatedly gossip the stories of their respective households, the Story’s sad story, the story of Rani as told by the Story, Kurudavva who gives a magic root to Rani in an attempt to make Appanna enamoured by Rani, Kappanna who carries around Kurudavva (playing an indirect action-furtherer) and the story that Rani herself narrates in her story. So what / who then is the true protagonist? Here, it is not what is told or by whom it is told that is important, but how. It needs to be told, to be acted, to be sung; in short, to be vocalised.

The actual protagonist in this work then is the oral tradition, the act of vocalising itself; and it stems from the soil of culture. Everything else is comprised and subsumed in this generic form. It was there at the beginning of civilisation and at the beginning of a culture. It has been existing in its transmission from generation through generation, individual to individual. It has found, from time to time the need to equip itself in order to live, to be retold. And in this work of Karnad, the Indian oral, folk tradition has found a very potential existence, having been combined with the needs of an essentially western-oriented style of theatre. Although Karnad states that “it also owes much to hte Western playwrights as Bertold Brecht and Jean Anouilh who delved into classical stories... and retold them in a Western context,” this work has to be acknowledged as a new contribution to Indian Drama in English, since it transcends both the Western theatrical form and the Indian folk-theatre’s narrative style even while fusing both approaches.

I would conclude by saying that Naga-Mandala needs to be baptised as to its genre, for it is to Indian Drama in English what Midnight’s Children is to contemporary Indian Fiction in English.

- S. Krishna Kumar, Research Scholar

Dept of English, University of Madras

11 March, 1994

The Mark of Cain - PART II

If you want to go back to Part I, Click Here...

Part II...

Eve was outside for some little reason. May be she was combing her hair for the dinner-do. May be she was looking for some flowers to add to her hair for the super-supper. Whatever... she was out.

In the glowing orange dusk of the setting sun, at the rim of the horizon, silhouetted by the aura, there was an energetic creature, walking towards home, with a stick in hand, curly locks blazing like gold. Around his neck, a nice little lamb. Mmmeh! Mmmeh! The homecoming bleat of the sheep.

'Adam, CAIN... Abel!!!'  She squealed breathlessly, unable to contain her excitement. Son comes home... as the sun went slowly down. Cain looked on. First at Adam, then at Abel and then... at the flat top of the rock in the distance. The offer remained untouched.

'Cain! You've been untruthful!' He heard a voice. Only he heart id. He was worried. The Voice could have been God's!

Meanwhile, laughter ringing around him drew his attention back to his family.

That night there was laughter and more laughter. That night there was bonfire. The fire crackled. As they all ate and chewed the juicy meat, a new fire started burning. Cain did not like all the attention Abel was getting. Cain remembered the grains untouched by God. Cain remembered the fat sheep that God accepted. Cain gazed at Abel. He was starting to feel jealous of Abel.

The next morning the sun rose. It was going to be another hot day, a very hard day for Cain. Abel? Oh, he was on a holiday. An idea struck Cain. 'Abel! Would you like to come with me to the fields today?'

They set out together. While they were there, when Abel was not aware, Cain took a big stone and hit him from the back, on his head. Abel looked up surprised. A few seconds. Then his head lolled down, he slumped. Abel died. He lay there in a pool of blood.

Cain realised what had happened, realised what he had done: murder. He had committed Fratricide. He had killed his own brother. 'Oh, my God! My God! What have I done? In my jealousy, I have killed my own brother!'  He moaned. He tried to quickly dig a big hole and bury the body so that nobody would ever know. But... GOD KNOWS! He always knows. He watches us all. He must have watched this. The sun suddenly grew hotter, there was suddenly a heavy wind. It started as a thing wisp of rolling sand under Cain's feet... grew in noise and beat heavily. A little sandstorm brew. Sand swirled and Cain was tossed from side to side. Cain was pushed forward and backward. As he fought to control himself, sand got into his eyes, his hair, his face. He fought to wipe them away. As he touched his forehead, he felt something strange. He fought his way to the little stream and caught a quick glimpse of himself in the rippling water. It was a very small pool. Still, he could see himself. There!

There on his forehead was a mark. A starry mark. 'This will remind you of your shameful act, Cain! Your brother's murderer. In a way, it will also protect you. People who see you will know you to leave you alone!' He heard that invisible voice. 'Oh, God! Oh, God! What shall I do now?'Cain knelt on the ground and lifted his face and eyes upwards to heaven.

'Flee you must! From now on, you will be a wandering soul. You are no man. You acted in a moment of madness and jealousy. You shall become homeless. A wandering nomad!' The voice hissed in his ears icily. And then there was chaos and swirling dust and storm. When it eventually cleared later... Cain was left in the middle of nowhere, in a sandy desert. Thus his descendents too became homeless, wandering nomads.

* * * * * 

Author's Note: If you liked what you read, please do leave comments. Else, too, leave feedback. Thanks.

The Mark of Cain - PART I

The story below is nothing new. It is from the Bible. But, as a story teller, I had to regale a group of tweens and I thought I should make it imaginative and visual without really pushing in the didactic angle to it. Feel free to use it to entertain kids as a story telling, but please do give me the courtesy through a simple acknowledgement.

CAIN AND ABEL

THE MARK OF CAIN

(Anger and After!)

We all know that a star is a five-pointed celestial object. It twinkles. It shines. It can be seen brightly at night, in the backdrop of a clear sky. It is also most commonly used to identify direction by sailors at sea. Our teachers use them to reward us at school for excellence. Now, do you know who gave the first ever star and who first received the very first star in this world? Nooooo!

Have you heard of the Mark of Cain? Nooooo again? Ok... some say the Mark of Cain was not really a physical mark at all. Some others say it was not given on the body, but as accompaniment, to identify. Whatever it is, Cain received it and we can be sure of it. Considering it was given by God, we can be sure it ought to be a STAR... because... God is soooo kind he wouldn't give anything bad. Even just as a mark of identification. For protection. I see you are all getting primed up and curious. So, here goes!

The Story of the first human being that received The First Ever Star! Only, he did not have it pinned on his shirt sleeve. He did not have it drawn on his notebook either, because unfortunately shirts had not been invented, nor notebooks. It was so long and so far back. Unfortunately, also, he did not receive it for doing a good deed either!

Is this getting suspenseful? Are you getting curious?

Have you heard of Cain and Abel? They were the first two children on earth, born to Adam and Eve.

Adam and Eve, after they were tempted by the Dark Angel, who took the form of a serpent, and after they were sent out from the beautiful Garden of Eden, lived a normal life like you and I. They had two children: two sons - Cain and Abel.

Cain spent his life farming, and Abel spent his life sheep-rearing. Cain brought home grains and vegetables to eat and Abel brought home milk and meat to eat. It was a perfect combination. Father Adam, Mother Eve, brothers Cain and Abel, their beautiful, fertile, lush farm and the rolling, undulating hills with green, green grassy meadows for sheep to run around; for sheep to eat grass, grow fat and juicy. However, happiness does not last forever.

In our most excited and happy moments, we forget ourselves. In our moments of excessive self-belief and achievements, we forget He who helps us. Cain did too!  After all, he was human, like us. To Err is Human. He erred. To forgive IS divine, but if the error is that of forgetting He who created us, God chooses to remind us. God chose to remind Cain. He punished him. How...?

God sent him away from his parents. Away. Alone. Far Away. However, God is kind. He does not totally let us down. In order to protect Cain, he put a mark on his head. To remind others that Cain should not be touched or hurt. He put a star on his head. Various people say various things, but a STAR sounds a good thing to put. Especially if you want to mark someone outstanding. Only, in this case, as a reminder of his Sin. SO what was the act of sin Cain committed that upset God so much?

It starts thus: like we all do, Cain and Abel grew up playing and having fun when young. As they grew up, one day Adam called them: 'Cain, Abel! Listen up!! You both have grown up. You too are fine young lads now and strong. You will have to start working at our ranch and bring food for the family.'

Cain and Abel listened. When Pa says something, we listen. They must have said, 'Yes, papa. We understand.' But Cain probably did not fully agree or appreciate. He was not disobedient or anything, but was just that bit fiercely proud. Sometimes, as they say, Pride precedes Fall.

Anyway, Cain was asked to be a farmer. He stayed home closer to parents, taking care of the lands and growing wheat for bread, grains and lentils for stew, oats and barley too. He was happy that he did not have to travel and get burnt in the sun. He wasn't very adventurous. Also, he got to keep his parents more. Abel... he went out.

Abel was asked to rear sheep, tend to lambs and ewes. He was the wanderer. No major adventure or anything, but just that he had to travel. It required him to roam about. All over the hills and mountains, greens and glades, wherever grass was to be found. After all, they were the God's special inhabitants of this earth and the entire world that they know was their ranch. Abel must have felt happy to be let to roam, while Cain toiled at home. Only, roaming and shepherding is not always fun. Not when it involves running behind sheep that stray everywhere. Yet, he did what he was told with obedience. So.

Cain was a farmer, Abel was a shepherd. Cain, who must have felt happy being home... was unhappy. Abel, who must be sulking because he was to chase sheep all day long... was happy. We are what we choose to be!

Why was Cain unhappy? The land he had to grow crop were not exactly completely fertile. It was dry and often sandy. At times, he had to dig out rocks. Rains were scarce too. During summer, when the sun beats down hard on your back, as you work, it is not fun. It just is not fun, out to be working in the sun. Remember, shirts had not been invented!

Abel? oh, he was happy; young, cute eyes, curly locks, legs grown strong due to roaming freely around, smile at the corner of his lips... you get the picture. Every time he came back home, he brouhgt along fat and tender lamb. There would be fire in the open at nights. The family of four got together; fire and stake, juicy and succulent tender meat, to savour and eat. Abel was the apple of Adam's eye, the fav of Eve's heart and in general, the toast of the family. Except...

Cain resented it. Would you not? In his place? He toils hard to make harvest out of a land that boils, is sandy and tough; and here comes Abel... takes away the attention. Thus...

One day, Adam beckoned Cain, 'The harvest must be ready. Go get them. Separate the chaff from the wheat. Make a portion of your best produce as offering to God. Then, bring the rest.' Cain, who never generally spoke against Papa, said, ' But, Papa! Why should we give the best away? Even if it's God! It is a tough soil, I have worked it out all by myself. Don't we deserve the best?'

Adam said, 'We deserve the rest, the best to God we reserve!'

'But... but..."

Adam had turned his back.  'It is He who shines the sun, gives rain, tends to the crops when we're asleep at night. o to him we offer the best. It's thanks giving.'

'But, but, but...'

'NO.'Adam was firm. 'This is getting tiresome.' He turned to Cain. 'Remember, Cain. He is everywhere. He sees everything. He knows everything. And when He's upset, he will get angry. So! When you've reaped the harvest, give HIM the best and bring home the rest.' Roger and out!!

Disappointed, deflated, but not sulking, Cain asked, 'How do I offer him, Papa?'

Adam smiled. He must have put his arm around Cain affectionately, around Cain's strong shoulders, big and rugged as Cain was. All the hard work must have naturally made him a big and strong lad. 'My dear son, Cain, simple. Take a portion - a big one -  of the harvest, place it on the top of the flat part of the big rock that we see over there,' he pointed in the distance and continued, 'and God, seeing our obedience, will accept. After that, you bring home the rest. Brother Abel will be back tonight too. Then, tonight, after he too makes his best offering to God, we'll celebrate.'

It sort of made Cain wince. Abel! Oh!! Oooh!!! So he went, heaviness in his heart, plodding and trudging; when you are low at heart, your energy is down. Cain went. He reaped the harvest. Low in spirits, he couldn't care. There was no song during harvest. So he did not separate the wheat from the chaff and kept a good portion of produce on the flat surface of the rock, came home.

Abel too, close to sun down, came home.

Eve was outside, for some little reason....

Author's Note: It's getting too long, I know. So I am breaking it into two. Part I Ends. Part II...

The Fall - a short story

The story below is nothing new. It is from the Bible. But, as a story teller, I had to regale a group of tweens and I thought I should make it imaginative and visual without really pushing in the didactic angle to it. Feel free to use it to entertain kids as a story telling, but please do give me the courtesy through a simple acknowledgement.

THE FALL

(How the Garden of Eden was lost... forever!)

The Garden of EDEN

God took six days to create the world. Then He took a day off. The Seventh Day. However, one cannot go on a holiday forever; definitely not God. He is the Creator and the Preserver. So he went about preserving. Preservation is the art of management. He went about managing the plants and the trees, the birds and the animals... He created a beautiful garden.

Beautiful beyond words. It was the equivalent of the Paradise above. It was called the Garden of Eden. Here all year long it was green, it was joy and happiness. Animals never preyed on each other. The strong and the meek co-existed together. Lions, deers, tigers, lambs, wolves, rabbits, bears, squirrels... And the flowers were unfading, the fruits were ripe always, the water spouted as clear springs, ran as bubbly streams, fell into the ponds where one could gaze into the crystal clear depths like into a mirror. It was heaven!

Here God let Adam and Eve live happily ever after. Wait! Is there a happily ever after where humans are involved? Yes, if we are happy and content with what we have. It is human nature not to be. How does our story take a turn?

There were two trees. The Tree of Life and The Tree of Knowledge. The Tree of Life they were allowed to eat from. As long as they ate the fruits from The Tree of Life, they would be eternal. The Tree of Knowledge, He forbade them to eat from. “Be it known, that you two may roam around wherever you want to in this garden, shall have the fruits of all, but one. This...,” he pointed to The Tree of Knowledge, “you shall avoid eating from, if you want to live eternal and here.” Then He went about his work.

There was a snake. It was the wiliest of all God’s creation. The snake had once been an angel in Paradise and was God’s most trusted and beloved angels. One day the angel got funny ideas of becoming God and challenging His authority... and got thrown out of Heaven. Cursed to be a snake. It waited for revenge.

When Adam was out and about, tending to the gardens, watering the plants and sowing seeds and reaping harvest, Eve was bored. She did what a lot of us do. She wandered through Eden. She sauntered by past The Tree of Knowledge. She passed it by, looking longingly at the ripe, red, juicy fruits that hung ever so tantalisingly close. She stopped. Took two steps back. Stood under the tree. The longing to reach out and pluck one of them, just only one of them once, was building up. “NO Eve!” said an inner voice. She hastened past it, forgetting the longing. The snake, hidden behind the leaves of a higher branch of the selfsame tree, saw this, rolled its eyes in a naughty twirl, smirked. A plan was born! Revenge! It would wait, patiently.

The days rolled by. All was well and God was in Heaven. Of course, he came for daily visits to Eden to know of the well-being of his creation.

Another day. Adam as usual was out and about, working. Eve sauntered around. She wandered past by The Tree of Life, then to The Tree of Knowledge. Something like a magnet welled up inside her and drew her to the Tree. The need was growing. She half-raised her right hand, the delicate fingers cupping the fingers like she was about to pluck a ball. The fingers gently quivered, a strange feeling coursing through the body, from toe to head. She stopped. “Hello... Go ahead!” A voice!

Eve turned around. No one. She looked to the ground. Nothing. She looked up: a little bobbing head from amid the leaves of a branch was smiling at her in a very friendly manner. “Who are you?” “Nevermind me,” the snake said, “what is important is how you feel!” It smiled gently, enticingly. Eve smiled back, not sure, vaguely. “Go ahead! Pluck the fruit.” “Nnnnno!” stuttered Eve, “God has told us to stay away from these fruits. He is our Father and Father know better.” She hurried away. The snake was disappointed. Ssssssooo close! I’ll bide my time, it thought to itself.

Eve didn’t tell this to Adam. You can trust her with a secret, surely! But that night, she slept fitfully. The snake and the fruits kept appearing in her dreams alternately, one after the other, until they were mixed up in a flash of montage and she slept off.

The next day. She decided not to wander through that way. She chose another part of the garden. After all, it was huge. A few days passed and one day, she decided she had not passed by The Tree. She walked in that direction. As though guided by some force, she stopped under The Tree of Knowledge. Should I? Should I not?... I should not! She stepped out of the shadows of The Tree and was about to walk off... “You should!” came a voicsssse! The snake. It stepped down from the tree. Wonder of wonders! Snakehead, walking on two legs, like herself, like Adam! She gaped with open mouth.

The Snake chose the moment, reached out, “inky, pinky, ponky,” selected a rich, red, juicy fruit, opened its mouth, bit it deep that juice, sweet smelling, flowed at the corners of its mouth, down its arm! Eve was transfixed. “See.... I ate. Nothing has happened. Do not deny yourself happiness. Go ahead, bite... Bite!”

“Bbbbut... But but, I shan’t. Orders are orders. I want to live here, eternal. This is dangerous.”

“Bah! You do not seem to know everything. This is The Tree of Knowledge. He has forbade you not to eat because... Well, it is not my business,’ the Snake tried to walk away, carelessly. “Listen... Look... Tell me what don’t I know. What is not your business? Please,” asked Eve.

“Nnnnothing!”

“No, please!”

“Okay. This is The Tree of Knowledge. Anyone who eats the fruits from The Tree will attain Knowledge as God has. Now, if you get Knowledge, you will know everything He knows. He wouldn’t want that, would He? You should want that, wouldn’t you? Eve!”

She had to know. With a flutter of her heart, she reached for the fruit, slowly, delicately brought it close to her lips, with trembling fingers and racing heart.... As her teeth sunk into the succulent flesh of the fruit, a million volt of many things coursed through her veins. The Snake watched, victorious.

Adam, having completed his morning’s work, was heading home for lunch. He happened to be passing by. Eve saw him, “Come here! This is wonderful.”

Adam halted in his tracks. Open-mouthed, he saw with shock on his face, Eve holding a partly bitten fruit, standing under the tree, The Snake next to her. In a minute he understood what had happened. “Eve, Eve, what have you done, oh! That will be it. You have broken God’s Law.”

“Adam, but, this is wonderful. You should taste it too. It is juicy, it is delicious and so very unlike other fruits in the other trees,” she extended the forbidden fruit. Adam was afraid. Also, he did not want Eve to face God alone. He took the fruit in his hand and without delay bit into it. The Snake watched, satisfied. He was beaming smiles.

That moment, as the juices of the fruit raced through his veins, Adam felt funny, looking at Eve curiously as never before. Looked at himself, looked back at Eve. She felt strange, too, looking at Adam looking at her. She felt as if he was scrutinising here. They both held eyes, only for a second, looked back at each other’s bodies, fled behind a bush each, farther from each other, hiding their nakedness from one another. Only their heads showed from behind the bushes. They stayed there, feeling sorrowful, shameful, until almost evening. The Snake? Well, he went back to the branches above.

When the evening came, God came by, to see if his creation was all right. By this time, Adam and Eve had managed to roughly hew a string of leaves for themselves to hide their naked bodies, Adam around his waist, till mid-thigh and Eve around her shoulders and her waist. God saw them. Why are you wearing these? Sheepishly they both came forward. “Ah... Um...” chorused both.

“Did you eat the forbidden fruit?” God gritted his teeth. They were guilty and stood silently. “DID YOU?” God thundered. “Ye...ye...yes, Father!”

“I had warned you not to. Now you know. You feel naked, you feel guilty, you feel pained. GO AWAY from Eden!” They could not look at him. Red-faced, they turned. “WAIT!” He quickly made a dress for each, hewn from Fig leaves. “Wear these... Now leave! But before you leave, let me know how you came to pluck this fruit. How did you muster courage?”

Adam pointed his looks at Eve, who in turn pointed her eyes to the branches above. “The Snake!” hissed God icily. It was the scariest they had felt in his presence. “For heeding to his tempting words, from now onwards you will lose this place. You will find yourselves in a hard landscape, and Adam, you will have to till the land doubly hard, find water by yourself to feed you land. You will toil through scorching sun and chill moon, till your body throbs with pain. Eve, you shall bear children and undergo extreme pain in the process, lose a lot and bring them out. You will both SUFFER! Get out!”

He turned to The Snake, “You shall lose your feet, grovel before me, slither on the ground, find no proper food, live in the pits of the earth, travel on your belly like the worm you are, eat dust and suffer. People will hate you. You will be the enemy of humans! They will hate you, you will bite at their feet and they will kill you.” He shook his fists wrathfully. It was terrifying.

In a moment, around Adam and Eve, the landscape had changed. They were outside the Garden of Eden, the gates have been bolted, a flaming sword swung around fiercely in front of the gates, preventing humans from entering the Heaven on Earth; and the sun burned down on them... as sadly they trudged away.

* * * * *

IN THE WAKE...

IN THE WAKE...

In the light of the tunnel
in the sheen of the cave
in the glint of the deep sea corals
in the silvery meniscus of the anthill's depth
in the powdery silt of the fissures
in the sallow valley of a mother's womb
hope eternal springs:
a hidden cache beyond which
the mother lode of life.

House and I

House and I

Big house
quiet house
darkened house
shades and trellises drawn down
deafening silence inside

twitter and chirp of birds outside
somewhere an automobile squeals
a motorbike sputters by
white walls gaping back
television darkly staring vacuously

I rest my head back on the chair's headrest
close my eyes
a kaleidoscope of memories whirr
prayer bells ring
someone is offering puja
there is hope.

This house and I
we've grown intimate
to each other's smell.

Three Haikus

Ocean

mother of mr sun

at dawn; pioneer among

the prostitutes.

Rain

Barren sod vanished

like a stilleto through flesh

saplings sprouted.

Mobile Trains - a Haiku

In trains people talk

to invisible lis’ners;

intermin’ble, loud.

Poems from the 1990s - II

Prelude to Rama’s Rendezvous

The reflections green and golden

the river catches in negative black;

the rainbow weeps - a child lost in industrial fair,

a multi-coloured Malvolio with infra-red and ultra-violet for added effect.

Behold the oceans eye-full now!

HUSH!

The factory siren clarions states’ call,

time world achieves productivity;

let’s go to work, first things first.

Kodaikanal, 1990

Momentary glimpses do stay in memory:

I was twenty four, and surprised

he remembered me. There was

no mistaking, that smile of recognition

the boatman showed.

*

We went boating, each one of us, an oar

he told me, amiably, that he was

(in his sixties, I guessed)

reliving his youth’s summer in this resort;

it stands for the illusion of summer

or the summer of illusion, I do not remember.

*

The nostalgia, amid two tin beers, of youth

is like the dip of oar in those waters;

but the thought of myself at his age...?

he soothed me, told me that doubts

when are not rats, are like crabs 

(but both gnaw your thought-sod!),

life when not young is old

time past is all we have, a shipment of recollections

that are shadows, active in youth

and memories when old.

*

Suddenly, drawn to the chatter of birds,

stillness of hands holding the oars,

I found I had lost count

the number of times our muscles had flexed;

I looked at him bewildered, in awe and wonder,

lost my physical presence, but

there he was, solid before me and chatting

‘Come on, row along, some more beer?

O2

→

 Δ

Words

intemperateness, of words

the chores, of words

words

the normal boredom of words

no poet utters these words who is no curiouser

but there is a blatant silence before sounds

and a curious poet can capture and freeze

the precipitated dew drops

on realisation of their earlier sublimation;

YES:

words are the reagents

are the catalysts

the brain workers

no mere brawns.

The delight of wording right words is no worldy thing;

the surface, the air, the light

have the last laugh - it requires dexterity

of a vet

who detects

the exact pore

where ticks

have entrenched

themselves.

in a poodle-haired,

quagmiric

labyrinthine bog.

         dog.

But there is no assurance

you’ve got it

must have to misjudge to judge

there is no purity without dirt

no abstract without concrete

no rain without heat.

words

(however) intemperate, the words

(howsoever) dulsome and choric, the words

are the mechanics lying beneath the wagon

a spanner tucked between teeth.

KAVI

When you are young and poor at math

you are fascinated towards your English teacher

(In India, it’s still a foreign language!)

Shakespeare comes to life even as synapse functions

Wordsworth and Shelley are part and parcel

of your adolescent favourites

(Lawrence, you get to know later

Lady Chatterley the flash point)

Grammar inherent, poetry immanent

(only you don’t know to put pen on paper then)

I was also poor at math

and fed my first thoughts

when I dreamt the Muse;

and felt drawn to the late librarian at Hull

(felt drawn by the neighbouring girls, too,

but that inspiration came later:

all the same both helped me with images and imageries)

No . The girls did one better,

kindled the embers more times than Yeats or anyone;

urgencies physical mean more than enjambe-

ments and Hyacinths had newer bearings

concentration was becoming a problem;

some said, ‘take a course in writing’

others: ‘study the tradition!’

(intercourse with words!)

‘What’s in a name?’... it’s a game all the same.

Since, ever since I’ve been writing

more copiously than ever

(no, I won’t be discovered in anthologies),

drooling day after day over files and notes.

What am I? a poetaster?

a contemporary clerk of a versifier?....

Poems from the 1990s

Longings from a Distant Shore

Eager voices prowl about an empty tongue,

the glib talk is around:

wails of the writhing ones reach up to the sky...

‘what am I doing haunting streets that I never belong to?’

To be alone,

sequestered like a liar’s truth...

‘what am I doing haunting the back-streets across black-waters?’

Desperate like an elliptical hangover

it does not profit at all:

an ambiguous statement, Delphic oracle and us!

devoid of direction, bereft of soil,

sinking in the whirlpool and trying to become tubers,

we are Wordsworths in Bonsai Woods -

children lost in a shopping mall.

- (written for an anguished friend abroad)

Optimistic Advice for Another Day

Mixed emotions make bundled contradictions

ripping skin and discording blood veins;

when it reaches the core

you’ve had it;

half the time when you are down

you are out too -

feelings lead to fatigue

even as nostalgia leads to a trip through unknown,

when it is averted

you have achieved it,

(coming successfully)

like a football player, like a yogi,

(numbed of physique), going through motions spiritedly

reaching dispassionately for the goal...

let out a primeval yell - the world responds.

victory is just a victory without conquest

conquering is all

lie down on a table tranquilized

see, just don’t feel, the operation performed

be part of it

the spirit shall conquer!

I cannot, never been able to

for I am dead, dead to my environs.

Reorientation

1

Jagged, let go your silence

And let the city strum the strings of turmoil.

Where rats chase lions

Elephants shy away from deer

And foxes go straight

Impale your thoughts

And let Caeser die:

He cannot breathe these mutations.

2

The impulse to create has shifted:

Medals and awards are easily returned

Kids are easily made 

than works of art.

3

Talks are on about ozone layers (still!)

And hairs on bald head:

Incongruity turns the logic of existence...

4

O Casanova,

Extend no more the dechastising of a male

As another aberration, mere obvious illusion

Because humanity believes in beliefs:

There is more to life,

On either side,

Than eggs with bacon.

The Advantages of Being a Hindu

I pass them

the copywriting chicks twinkle

their yellow teeth in flourescent braces,

kept safe-vaulted in lip-sticked exaggerations;

the unemployed loaf around theatres

with girls in hip-hugging garbs;

prostitutes get down from policevans

heading to courts,

bribing out their passionate pleas.

I try to marvel at red-buildings

erected by Indo-Saracenic colonists

with servile, beedi-stenched masons - 

but my thoughts get side-tracked,

return to ad-agency cousins

whose graphic breasts kindle my verbal creativity!

A sentimental slogan comes as timely reminder:

“Hinduism expects you to respect Sita and Nalayini!”

I safely decide to search

an accommodating Draupadi

and have a go at Arundati, too...

In this land Bharat

where

“Hinduism regards chastity and respects women”

I am a Hindu,

All Indians are my bhais and behans.