Paulo da Costa: Magic Realism and Metafiction

I was reading a short story 'Turn The Page' by Paulo da Costa (Luso-Canadian author) and it really struck me as something brilliant, the idea at least. I've come across metafictional works before but this seemed different (rest assured, it isn't a marketing pitch for a Bollywood movie). The story itself is a part of a collection 'New Writing 14' published by British Council in association with Granta, so I'm not sure if you'll be able to find it elsewhere, but the idea is as follows:

The book starts with two characters who have been abandoned by the writer. They have to look for their own destinies, figure out their role in the scheme of things. They sleep at night and when the male character gets up, he realizes that the female character has been 'deleted' from the script. He wonders how it would have been in the pre-computer era when they would either be together because there wasn't an option, or simply be torn apart. Today, through cut-copy-paste mechanisms, their characters, their lives could be modified. He moves out of the 'white room with paper-thin walls' and is thrown in the 'real world' where his quest for an identity begins. He constantly wonders if his author has abandoned him for good, or if his story has been told earlier and he is just following the script, or if this exploration, this abandonment is his story, so he really hasn't been abandoned (sorry for using 'abandon' so many times, I just can't seem to abandon it! :P). Beyond that it gets into the usual realm of the meaning of his life, his purpose in this world, etc. etc. as he takes a more material shape from a nebulous, rather ephemeral existence and ultimately ends with him being slashed by red lines by the editor.

I fell in love with the idea of a character and/or characters being abandoned (again!) by the author and them trying to figure out their own lives. Would make for an interesting writing exercise, if nothing else. I realized that towards the end, the story had a more philosophical bent, but I missed that meaning, and would have to go back to again a few times to understand that. If I do, I'll share it with you.

I found an interview of da Costa here. Do visit the link. He talks about magic realism and how he has been compared to Allende, Marquez and the like. Also, his take on writing, the life of a writer, primarily after a million Creative Writing programs have cropped up in the past decade and how it has become even more difficult to break into mainstream publishing as they all flock to these programs (Creative Writing MFAs, but for Columbia and Iowa, have seen rather low publishing success, and even there it's more related to 'contacts' rather than creative brilliance - that's basically his point - it's forming a nexus that excludes more than it includes, and gives primacy to a certain sort of brilliance, often referred to as MFA Fiction as opposed to literary fiction or just fiction).

Maybe we could have our own Writing competition on this theme (of abandonment of a character by his/her/its progenitor) right here!

An Ego Booster

Some ten months ago, I had done a book review of the six book Ramayana series written by Ashok Banker in a Harry-Potter-meets-Lord-of-the-Rings Science Fiction-Fanstasy genre for our campus newsletter, Vox Populi. The same, I had put up on my earlier blog here. Today, while browsing through Banker's website, I saw that a couple of days earlier, he acknowledged my review on his website and has reproduced it in full over there (without informing me, though. Edit: The review has been removed by him, probably after reading this post.). It might have been a little polite to drop me a comment on the blog, or an email, but even so, it made me happy. I really like that guy's writing and it's an honour for me that he liked the review (I presume he did, or else he wouldn't have posted it on his website).

Thinking of that, and rereading my review reminded me today that although I wasn't happy with his portrayal of Sita in the book in the sense that he is unable to create the character of a paragon of purity and chastity as we know Sita, but he did something really important. I realized that he created a woman of action. From the introductory scene onwards, Sita is shown to be a warrior princess, whose swordsmanship rivals the best in the business. She's fearless, witty, decisive in her actions, fleet-footed and nimble-minded, very different from the image of Sita that has been given to us over and over again, without compromising on her ideals. I liked that. I really liked that.

This thought led me to another one, that of the Taj Mahal. We have been brought up being told that it was built by Shah Jahan in the memory of Mumtaz Mahal to immortalize her. If so, why did he name it the Taj Mahal. Does it symbolize his eternal love for Mumtaz or his eternal love for Mumtaz. All it has done is put him in the history books and rendered him immortal. I, somehow, have always been uncomfortable and unsatisfied with the origin of the Taj Mahal and the explanations that have been provided to me thereof. On the contrary, I find a valid reason for Rama relinquishing Sita after he heard the washerman's comments. Banker is quiet on the issue. He said that he couldn't relate Rama's character to this incident (or something to that effect). I can. If Rama had kept Sita with him even after a seed of distrust had taken roots in the mind of his subjects, as the rumours grew, he would have become the bigger person, one who accepted Sita unconditionally, with her follies. Sita's purity would have been a matter of constant scrutiny with Rama rising above all debate. By sending Sita to the forest, Rama diverted the public's sympathy towards Sita, took all the blame upon himself, making sure that all the accusations ever made in the ages to come (which they continue to be till today), were hurled upon him and not his wife. He made Sita into a revered goddess while he himself stepped down the pedestal. This is not a religious interpretation of the story, it is an attempted literary analysis where the coherency of a character is maintained.

I once attended a talk by the famous Hindi author, Narendra Kohli who has written another six book series on the Ramayana (sadly I haven't read those as yet) and he spoke on a similar issue. We all know that Lord Krishna had 16000 wives, and he has been a subject to constant ridicule (and envy) for his flirtatious nature and the excess of his paramours. What Kohli revealed was that not many know the story behind the secret to his 16000 wives (apart from Rukmini). These were all women who were captured by the asuras, raped and kept in captivity. Krishna went on a mission and rescued all of them. Being 'impure', these women were shunned by the society and no one accepted them in marriage. With no other alternative, they turned to their rescuer, Krishna, some with plea in their eyes, others with accusations. It was then that he decided to marry all of them to validate their place in the society and grant them the respect that they deserved. Yet, a sin had been committed with each one of them and that had to be paid for. By marrying them and liberating them from their misery, Krishna took the responsibility of those 16000 sins upon himself, and that is what he pays for till date by being ridicules by the common man unable to comprehend the immensity of his action.

It doesn't matter if it conforms with the actual epic or not, or if it comes under the purview of people's religious beliefs, but it is a valid interpretation and an interesting take on the whole issue. These two incidents always remind me not to judge in haste, and not to judge with incomplete information. There are always more reasons, more thoughts, more leading circumstances to any action or event than we can ever find out. That jigsaw will never be complete.