And in all this lightness and weight, what is the mass of the writer, who carries an extra baggage of words around - her existence, based solely to carry some meaning, writes Pritha Kejriwal about Arundhati Roy.
Many a philosopher has mulled over the theory of eternal recurrence in life…and the fact that things might disappear completely after happening once, things might never return, an enormous sense of ambiguity is attached to all of life…oscillating between meaning and meaninglessness… lightness and weight… morality and immorality.
“And in all this lightness and weight, what is the mass of the writer, who carries an extra baggage of words around – her existence, based solely to carry some meaning.”
And all of this gave us a cynical lens to view the world.
Where there is an absence of a perspective, a context…where there is no way to compare one’s choices with previous ones, everything is to be cynically permitted…
And yet, we build our houses, we laugh, we cry, we fight tooth and nail and we love…only because we have no other life to live…Amor fati (love of fate), laissez faire (let it be), einmal ist keinmal (what happens once, happens never)…say it in whichever language, cynicism and passivity towards life reign supreme. No burden of responsibility…light as feathers, we could drift through life…
And in all this lightness and weight, what is the mass of the writer, who carries an extra baggage of words around – her existence, based solely to carry some meaning. And even if they are written once, their very being, makes life return once more; their creator-the writer, becomes the creator of life; and thus, if not forever, life happens twice at least, and is somewhat redeemed…
And a good writer, redeems our lives with an extra force, with more meaning, gives it that much more significance.
And Arundhati Roy is a good writer.
So, as I prepare to weigh her, not that I am an authority to do so… so to weigh her in the lightest possible way, without being burdened by responsibility, I get the urge to paint her… to suddenly sweep the canvas with the longest possible strokes… broad and lush… smooth and satin… plump and fluid…
It is perhaps the liquid pool of her voice, I dip my brush into, and each time, the tip touches the canvas, the strokes become kinetic, acquire their own motion, paint themselves into their very own, unique musical patterns… broad and lush… smooth and satin… plump and fluid…
These patterns have a hypnotic quality to them… sucking us inside a world, which lies on the other side of the mirror, where we are suddenly forced to look into the eye of ghosts we had always shut our eyes to. It’s the world that stretches beyond ‘the end of imagination’… gruesome and beautiful at the same time, and one can only be guided by one’s own sense of beauty to negotiate through it.
Arundhati Roy and her world, and if one looks closely, it’s the very world we live in, and yet it seems different… perhaps the reds are a little more redder, the blues a little more bluer, the yellows a little more yellower… she has perhaps polished and dusted them with a degree of earnestness more than many of us could rustle, dabbed a little more colour in places, from where they had faded… and conjured up a more dramatic vision of our own world, where turkeys could speak, where small things sometimes became bigger, and big things were crushed and pulverized, where the most mundane daily habits, sometimes seemed unbelievably absurd and cruel, where the jelly was a little thicker, where summers seemed a little more oppressive and spring grew promises on trees…
The world of a writer – exaggerated – only to bear the unbearable lightness, with a little more dignity… only to give a little meaning to all that meaninglessness… only to give some sound to the otherwise silent nuclear blasts, only to give some colour to our blood, some density to our sweat, some reckless motion to our harnessed rivers, some sadness in our blank eyes, a little more emotion to the curl of our lips…only to make our deaths more deathlike and our lives more lifelike.Exaggerated all right – only to balance the ambiguity the world demands from her, simplified all right – only to balance the complexity the world demands from her, complex all right – only to balance the simplicity the world demands from her… pure all right, only to balance the impurity the world demands from her.
While addressing audiences in America, just after 9/11, in her speech, titled ‘Come September’, Roy said, “Just to share the grief of history. To thin the mists a little. To say to the citizens of America, in the gentlest, most human way: Welcome to the World.”
So, what kind of bridges does Roy strive to build?
In the same address, she concluded, “Another world is not only possible, she’s on her way. Maybe many of us won’t be here to greet her, but on a quiet day, if I listen very carefully, I can hear her breathing.” So, what kind of a world does she dream of?In her essay titled, ‘The greater common good’ – Roy wrote, “Listen then, to the story of the Narmada Valley. Understand it. And, if you wish, enlist. Who knows, it may lead to magic”
So, what kind of stories does Roy want to tell?
How much weight do her bridges, her stories and her world carry?
Do the bridges really connect two peoples, two worlds, do her stories really lead to magic, and is another world, the world of her dreams, really alive, ready to be born?
Perhaps the writer’s life has always had to negotiate these questions. Arundhati’s life has been bombarded with them much more than many others. And this very frenzy of questioning that she is able to generate, doubly legitimizes the being of Arundhati Roy.
Just as incredible beauty, infallible justice, incredible goodness are ambiguous and questionable, Arundhati Roy is questionable. But it is equally unjust, and ugly to let go of the idea of incredible beauty, infallible justice and incredible goodness. Their weightlessness is an unbearable thought.
Similarly, as most of her critics rightly or wrongly accuse her of being light…it is an unbearable thought.
