About FOOTPRINTS IN THE BAJRA (Cedar Books, New Delhi); By Nabina Das

"Fittingly for a poet, Nabina’s novel also has a strong lyrical core. 'Footprints in the Bajra' takes the homely image of the millet field as its central metaphor. ... But the novel is less a thriller about guerrilla action than a subtly colored character study of a fascinating group of individuals who intersect at various points in their lives ..." -- DEBRA CASTILLO, author, editor and distinguished professor (Cornell University, April 17, 2010).

**
Footprints in the Bajra is a serious book that moves at a smart uncontrived pace. It voices deep concerns about how and why the deprived and the marginalized in certain parts of our country join the Maoist ranks; how they adopt desperate and often terrible measures to wrench justice and to make their voices heard... a confident debut novel, a good read, which will leave you with plenty to mull over. -- PRITI AISOLA, author (See Paris for Me, Penguin-India, 2009) in DANSE MACABRE XXXIV.

**
In her debut novel, Nabina Das writes about an India where social divides stand taller than multistoried shopping malls. Footprints in the Bajra, inspired by what she saw while touring the interiors of Bihar as part of a travelling theatre group, inquires into why the Maoists have an influence over a large section of Indian society. Das talked to Uttara Choudhury in New York about her book, and its protagonist Muskaan -- DAILY NEWS AND ANALYSIS, Mumbai, March 28, 2010.

**


"The interspersion of references from both the West and India do not clash. Shakespeare and Lazarus as reference points are brought in with ease, as also Valmiki and Goddess Chhinnamasta, and nothing jars ... The language is poetic and creates visual images of beauty and ugliness side by side." -- ABHA IYENGAR, poet (Yearnings: Serene Woods, 2010) and fiction writer in MUSE INDIA, May-Jun 2010


**
Shwetank Dubey says Nabina Das ably recreates the milieu of Maoist-infested regions of India -- Nabina Das has chosen the first person account of narrating a story from the main characters of the novel, Nora the sheherwali (urban dweller), Muskaan the rebel, Suryakant Sahay the crafty clandestine planner and Avadhut the frontrunner of all the operations... the book deals with something that no urban resident is bound to know on his own — the life and times of people living in Maoist infested areas and why do they give in to the temptation provided by the Red Brigade. -- PIONEER newspaper, April 25, 2010.
**
'"If you misrepresent them, they'll abduct and kill you," says Muskaan, our hostess'... goes the first line with which Nabina Das settles everything about her novel -- style, subject and pace... Excellent plotline. Wonderful detail. A beautifully crafted book. -- Karunamay Sinha; THE STATESMAN, Sunday supplement "8th Day", May 16, 2010.
**

"This is bitter-sweet, if a rather longish tale of a modern-day Maoist revolution and the seeds of destruction and betrayal that lie embedded in it." -- Business World, May 17, 2010

Friday, January 25, 2008

Making it to page 1 (published in Indiatogether.org)




3 October 2005 - Recently I met this lady from Chennai. To start a conversation I asked her what her occupation was. I was hoping to receive a stock reply like you often do from homely looking women in their late fifties. She surprised me by saying that she actually ran a small-scale business -- that of providing computer hardware to companies. She started to work while she was in her later 30s. She traveled from her city to other towns, combed the streets of her city, walked, rode buses, soaked in rain and endured the humid sun. Not to mention inquisitive neighbours and disdainful dissenters.



There are probably not many like her who single handedly launched a project like this and brought it up to a respectable status. “When I would reach my client’s place, they would ask: where is your man?” Revathi said. “”Here am I”, I would say as I opened up my tool box …!” “Their mouths would gape open,” she said laughingly.


Stories such as Revathi’s do not always make news in regular newspapers. It’s not typically rags to riches stuff, nor is it news of the weird. In a country where political shenanigans, hoopla on cricket or scandals seem to go down well with the morning’s cup of coffee, Revathis are usually not even on the metro page of a moderate size or even a town newspaper.


My experiences with the news coverage in places like Assam or Delhi highlighted nothing that could be put in the category of community news coverage. Community mattered when political leaders visited a ward or a municipality for a specific reason or when it was time to woo voters. Even then, assignment editors would not want the stories to be woven around the tribal farmer with his subsistence pig farm or the poor Muslim pith crafter community (whose craft is nearly vanishing).


In 1988-89, in Guwahati, Assam, where I started learning the first lessons in journalism, as any newbie would be, I used to be the jack of all trades – whether it was covering the annual book fair, writing a theater or a film review, interviewing the best school in town, attending a meeting or profiling a cultural persona. As a fledgling reporter cum subeditor, I was obviously not writing hot political stories, investigative themes or business stories. I was too new and young for all that. But I knew there were stories swarming around me – people, events and moments of life in the community. It was just that they were really not perceived as story ideas. National politics, state politics, big business and glitzy cultural news made headlines.


But an interesting aspect of this early stage was that I was also learning to edit town roundups for The Sentinel, a Guwahati English daily, where I was a sub-editor. That put me in touch with town reporters who were filing stories from towns all over Assam. These were literally barefoot reporters who would survive on a paltry salary and dream of finding the big story some day. Most of the time, I acquainted myself with their work through faxes, handwritten and mailed reports and telephone (there wasn’t any e-mail then). One such reporter from either a small town like Dhekiajuli or Bijni faxed a story about a tiger venturing into a part of the town and attacking a person or being warded off by some fearless townspeople. The story was dramatized, poorly written and obviously the reporter did not ask several necessary questions. One of my senior colleagues pinned up the handwritten report, all outrageous portions underlined, for everyone’s review. The entire newsroom resounded with guffaws.


I am pretty sure that story about the tiger attacking a human in a small town in Assam never made into that edition. May be it would, if it was higher on the death score, or the fearless town people were somebody to reckon with. Anyhow, I happened to remember this particular incident. Something told me right then that someone had to take note of that kind of town or village life and elevate it to the rank of news. But that was not happening. All our town reporters were eager to do, was to write was a big time story. Period.


News coverage in Delhi had not much exception, except that here the themes were bigger. I worked with Down To Earth - an environmental magazine -- and many years later, at Tehelka.com. My colleagues and I wrote and edited stories on environmental disasters, million-bucks deals, super cops and super stars, war with corporate giants, political parodies, scandals and apocalyptic events. The public needed godheads – different ones at different times – and villains as well, and we provided them just that. Some how, the community in question here, never seemed to take any interest in its own microcosm – or so we were made to understand.


This could have been the nature of things for all times to come but then, what is journalism without the spirit of quest and change.
I am sometimes glad that took the time to look at affairs of the world from different angles, as a student, as a journalist, a short-term teacher of language or even as an NGO worker. At the National Foundation for India (a funding agency aided by Ford Foundation), I worked closely with journalists to creating space for community/development reporting from the Northeast, Bihar, Rajasthan, and parts of South India. Those projects brought me closer to ‘real life real news’ issues.


Interestingly, during these projects, news the way it has always been changed remarkably. Especially, the northeast -- seen normally as the hub of all shades of insurgency and unrest, a trouble spot in the national canvas, a zone marked by poverty and inaccessibility, and oftentimes, fringe presence in the mainstream – emerged in a fresh new light.


I worked with reporters who wrote about farmers emerging from insurgency crisis through planned subsistence farming, women raising awareness about dangers of alcohol and drugs though door to door campaigns, communities misused by politicians coming up to voice their needs, artisans’ groups bolstering themselves against government apathy through small cooperatives, and much more. Each of these themes generated scores of stories. The Revathis of this world – from the northern badlands to the northeast and the south all had a chance to make headlines. Community news was being created, at least during those projects.


But then, this endeavour had to be pushed along, cushioned with incentives to even writers and reporters and followed up with aggressive media campaign for column space in major papers. We lobbied with newspapers in all corners of the country, especially those that did not regard community news as strong a sales indicator as politics, cricket or big ticket entertainment. Community reporting for most publications, was inside page stuff that didn't sell. We were trying to change that notion, and maybe we did, for a while.
Ithaca, a town of roughly 30,000 population in New York state, and home to Cornell University, is where my exposure to community journalism took on a special meaning.


Working with The Ithaca Journal as assistant Metro editor for the past two years has again brought me closer to the concept of community journalism. Dairy fests, bake and sales, AIDS run, firehouse fund-raisers, EcoVillage, reading partnerships, community art efforts, church missions for literacy, local farming – the list can be endless and evolving. Here community journalism was the benchmark of one’s understanding of slice Americana, how life went about in small town America in general. Often this brand of journalism could be oblivious of issues like war and peace, climate talks or globalisation. But at least in Ithaca, it all blended into a worthy mix of stories that had both local and national impact. So much so, that a small group of students lobbying to save a small patch of woodland from being turned into a parking lot in the prestigious Cornell University grabbed national press recently. The community here was extending its tentacles to life outside, to issues more complex.


Such a representation of life – through a prism that reflects intimate and seemingly commonplace events -- is not common for Indian English newsreaders. But again, efforts do exist in several vernacular media, although there too, they seldom become national headlines. Even when they make it to page 1, there has to be something more than just a community news element in it.


It will be worth trying to regenerate – or reinvigorate -- a culture of community journalism in the English newspapers in India and lobby for a greater proportion of those stories that are about local efforts. Whether it is profiling the Revathis of the world, seeing how the 73rd amendment is enacted in villages, witnessing the coming up of a local-run anganwadi for quake-stricken Kutchhi children or interviewing the village dai who now campaigns for right of the girl child and against female infanticide – which my esteemed former colleagues and I have been lucky to involve ourselves with -- community journalism only has a better future. It is a tool for reflecting empowerment and is an indicator of people's participation in a vibrant democracy like India. ⊕


Nabina Das 3 Oct 2005
Nabina Das is an Ithaca, New York based journalist.

Monday, January 14, 2008

Whispers in the Attic



ATTIC WINDOW


That’s a place
Where I saw
Summer-grown sunrays
Sprinting through a
Colored pane half-shattered,
Not fallen though
Glass not scattered,
Holding time in their hands
Like wooden strips
Chewed by termites
Pockmarked, tattered.

That’s a place
A little cubbyhole
Crammed with crazies
Inhabiting my dreams
From where a child me smelled
Fried eggs sticking
To the pan when
Forgotten in the kitchen
To answer the cat’s mew
For morning milk or
The mynah’s harsh reprimands
For householders not meeting
Her shrill demands.

That’s a place
I grew up dazed
Learning shimmering tales of
Fairies and grandmothers
Waving through photo frames
And crumbling old books
No eyes can decipher.
Memories rose from garden ferns,
Stuck to attic walls
Compelling me to hear
Their endearing calls.

That’s a place
Where days became
Empty unused vessels
Wherein I kept
My loose change
Of imaginations wild.
Surprise, nothing got lost!
Dipping my hands
I would bring them up –
A diver counting cowries,
Lost rings and treasure maps.

That’s a place
From where I heard sounds:
Cautious footsteps leading
Up to hidden stairs,
Screeches of vehicles
In the jolted street,
And derelict shouts;
Rankle of tin cans
Pulled by tiny unruly hands,
A distant roar through the sky
When airplanes flew
Knocking crying birds down
Aged and new.

That’s a place
Where time
Grew in an overarching vine
Leaves peeped at
Knick-knacks strewn
In that crowded spot:
Soiled sunset copper plates,
Sooty ceramic toads
Jostling with broken statues,
Dusty rugs, glimmering pellets –
To me all looked like gold
By the attic window,
But never old.

That’s a place
From where tender
Earthy vistas begun
Unfurling as home or hearth,
Before it all ran away quick
To ride a worldly ship and swim
With dead shells on a salty beach;
Where names became
False while the day sank deep
Down in a valley
Called mind
Inviting afternoon sleeps
And mighty high winds.

That’s a place
From where I did not ever
Want to leave,
Slip out of the broken pane
Like the impudent cat
Or a dusty feather floating off
To be caught
In other cobwebs
Inside aloof homes
And garden troughs
That sudden rains filled.
I needed that attic window
To stay with me
Like my deserted doghouse,
A veritable spot of glee.

That’s a place
I don’t want to go away from,
I don’t want to forget,
I don’t want to forfeit,
I don’t want to be released from
My seat by the broken
Berry-hued pane and junk
Shining like
Accidental fireflies
When the day departs
Breathless with a song,
And the attic window yawns
Like an ancient gong.

Whispers in the Attic


TALKING TO AN ALIEN


Start with your name please.
I come from unclean hilltops, those that are outside the maps you teach.

How do you spell your name?
I hold my head in my hands when it gets too warm for you to endure the carbon spew.

Kindly state your destination.
Feel free to bounce with me and rise above the sham, you'll see more from there.

Give us a reason for your visit.
I noticed the border patrol guy flip out a gun and shoot the rabbit because it protested too much.

This country is free and open.
I love the magnificent landfills incinerators dirty lakes and deep shit strewn everywhere.

Show us your papers.
Sucking my thumb is what I do when I am struck with anxiety, not fear.

Have you a family?
They ask me if I have talons as weapons in my hands or burp in my spleens.

Who else might be accompanying you?
Look at my face, I have no eyes or nose or mouth so I don’t feel gazes that go through.

We don’t think you’ve been in here before.
Your winding highways give me nausea and their endlessness hypnotizes me so very much.

Do you intend to take up work?
Please let me know when you need to be kidnapped, I am good for such petty ugly things.

Do not trespass what is barred to you.
Right, probably I am fine with sleeping with the monkfish in your frozen ply boxes.

Kindly look at the camera and be prepared to be photographed.
I know someone who lent me his intestine that looked like his mouth, oh how quaint!

Place your index finger right here.
If only I had the idea you love toenails better as garnish on toast.

You may sign here. Welcome dear alien!
Ah! Don’t worry I won’t pitchfork your neck and duck under your seat


Won’t eat your breadcrumbs and will hiccup only when I am asleep;


Save your roadkills for me 'cause I like the angry maggots the best


Before I fry your head and toss it away in to the crevice from where



I want to climb the fence you built and show why I prefer getting killed.

Whispers in the Attic


IDENTITY, I AM

This had to be a far off place
Where I am
Lodged between newsnights’ foggy web
And shores of dawning illusion after rowing’s done
This had to be a way off place Where I am.

This had to be a chalice half-full
It had to be me
Touching those desiccated lips that drink churned hopes
And make the tongue bite its eerie flesh Had to be me.

This had to be a mind that swims
Where waking lies
Ever so languid from gaping at billboards
And a game of duck and hide daily on my wriggling side
This had to be a mind that swims Where waking lies.

This had to be a body that cries
Quite like me
Cries from battles and for beans, in sincere scare and loathing
Searches a reason to love and call you by name
This had to be a body that cries Quite like me.