"Footprints" review in Business World magazine

Another review appeared in May this year in the top Indian biz mag BUSINESS WORLD.

"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.

http://www.businessworld.in/bw/2010_05_17_Life_In_Red.html

Book Interview in THE SENTINEL -- All About "Footprints"

KARUNAMAY SINHA's interview about my work and book FOOTPRINTS IN THE BAJRA in THE SENTINEL. Please read and air your comments! Personally I am happy to re-connect with The Sentinel where I had worked as a cub sub editor and reporter once upon a time :)

The paper copy has some nice photographs I had sent them. The e-paper has this ordinary layout.

"Footprints in the Bajra" reviewed in Pioneer newspaper

PIONEER, a newspaper from Delhi, has the latest word on my novel FOOTPRINTS IN THE BAJRA.

In case it opens up, here is the PDF or the e-page on the "Books Agenda" page. You might have to scroll for the page.

A six-column review, it says a lot of things. However, I must add as a comment that I am not per se interested in the "reform" of a Maoist and that was not what I intended in my book with the protagonist Muskaan. The end is, in my opinion, more nuanced than what prevalent political interpretations are whenever it comes to topics on Maoism and the parties engaged against the ideology or in solidarity with it.

If you so not wish to see the link, read the review below:

Reform of a Maoist

Footprints in the Bajra
Author: Nabina Das
Publisher: Pustak Mahal
Price: Rs 175

Shwetank Dubey says Nabina Das ably recreates the milieu of Maoist-infested regions of India

Reform is always good, especially when it concerns someone who has been misled, used, lied to and then forsaken by those who she thinks are her well-wishers. The only thing that such a person can do is give back what she got, albeit with much more intensity. Everyone has to wake up some day or the other and smell the coffee, and that is what Muskaan, the protagonist in Nabina Das’ novel Footprints in the Bajra, did. After feeling betrayed by her mentor, she finally took refuge in the advice given by her student-activist friend from New Delhi and decided to chart her own life, for once.

For anyone who comes from the rural areas of Bihar, Chhattisgarh and parts of West Bengal, Maoism is nothing new. It has been there as a part and parcel of their lives since decades. Illiteracy being a common curse in such regions, it plays a very important part in helping Maoist rebels build an army to fight against the administration and the Government. The simple villagers are made to believe that they are better off fighting the Government than supporting it. And that is what the main villain in the novel, the village teacher, Suryakant Sahay aka Comrade Suraj, cashes on. With the help of his second in command, Nirav Saxena alias Comrade Avadhut, they perform the most unsaintly acts of attacking and killing the Chaudharys of Chabutara, the upper class village, as well as devising strategies against the Government.

Since time immemorial, landlords have been touted to be major oppressors so much so that the divide created by the upper castes has led to even a greater help to the Maoists. As Nabina Das puts it in her novel, with the help of the Internally Displaced People (IDP), Maoists built a strong army. Such IDPs were made to fight for the “cause” and inducted in the Red Army. After a lot of investigative journalism, as well as the changed stance of the Government, it has now become common knowledge about how uneducated people in rural areas, especially those living in places where the Government and administration takes a lot of time to reach, have been cheated by the Maoist brigade since decades, in the promise of a better life and “revenge” from their erstwhile oppressors. Added to this is the fact that farming also underwent a drastic change wherein grain crops were replaced by poppy fields. This turned into a major funding device for the Maoists. All this has been quite prominently woven into the story by Nabina Das.

Everything undergoes change, and so does Muskaan’s life. The various upheavals in her life, right from being a child soldier, being held captive by the Chaudharys, being kept in a safe house, to joining the non-Government organisation Shaktishalini and pursuing higher studies and, finally, of closing the entire chapter by being an “emancipator” of the masses, are few things to be reckoned with.

Being betrayed is a very heart-breaking feeling and Muskaan faces this throughout her life, till she decides to hold the reins herself. Her first lover, Palash, decides to break up with her after she is abducted by the Chaudharys after an attack by the so-called Hunting Brigade formed by the upper castes with the help of the administration to quell the Maoist menace, the details of which are revealed much later in an emotional outburst to Nora.

Nirav and Sahay use her for their own interests in furthering their cause. After their group is disbanded, they find it in their best interests to tie-up with the Maoist brigade from across the border in Nepal. They realise the Red Brigade in India is mismanaged and there is no common thinking or a leader. Moreover, for their cause to survive, they decide that the best option is to adopt the stance taken by the Nepal Maoists — take to politics. Muskaan plays a very important role in this (as a pawn for Sahay and Nirav) after she joins Shaktishalini. The NGO is hacked by Nirav for his tie-up with the Nepal Maoists, while Rehana (who runs the NGO) thinks that she has found the perfect mentor for her cause of upliftment of women.

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. While the narratives are quite detailed when read from the perspective of it being a scholarly article (footprints of good education and reading prowess among the main protagonists are inadvertently displayed), there are various other details that could have been made clearer. The motive of people like the headmaster and the businessman for joining such a cause is a bit muddled.

However, 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.

Reading from "Footprints in the Bajra", April 17, 4-5 p.m.

I shall be reading from my first novel FOOTPRINTS IN THE BAJRA on Saturday, April 17, 4-5 p.m. at Buffalo Street Books in downtown Ithaca. See the event details here.

If you are in the area, please come for the reading. See a review of Footprints in Danse Macabre journal (USA) and a book interview in Daily News and Analysis (DNA), Bombay.

I must mention, my neighbors at Maplewood Park, a Cornell University housing area, where I have lived for 7 long years because Mr. M did his PhD here, have been very sweet to invite the residents to this reading. They even made a poster of the event!

Photo courtesy: Maplewood Park staff Priyanka Bangale.

Interview: Footprints in the Bajra is a portrait of Muskaan, a Maoist rebel from the age of 13

Daily News and Analysis (DNA), a prominent financial newspaper from Bombay, published my book interview in their Sunday Mag, March 28. You can go to the digital link here or see the PDF page here. Or read the interview in full here below:

Footprints in the Bajra is a portrait of Muskaan, a Maoist rebel from the age of 13

By Uttara Choudhury

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.

What prompted you to take up such a complex issue in your debut novel?

On a primary level, my interest in socio-political movements with a current portent, especially in India, goaded me to tell this story. The complexity is not regarding Maoism per se, but the state’s inability to offer a cohesive system for its people.
On a deeper level, I am interested in lives. The novel is really just a slice of life story, about Muskaan the young Maoist rebel, and Nora, her friend from the city. Maoism is mentioned in the background only to paint these lives. In no way is the book a primer on Maoist philosophy.

As a journalist and NGO worker, I have had access to lives affected by Maoism and the state’s actions. Bloodshed and killings were the only gains these people came home with. Those stories stayed with me as examples of harsh reality outside the TV screen and disposable newsprint. I felt compelled to let these characters speak in my book.

Your novel delves into the life of a Maoist recruit — a teenage girl named Muskaan. Did your research for the novel point to the fact that young women are drawn to the Naxalite movement?

It is a fact that in ‘modern’ India young people from regions with little development find themselves on the sidelines. Their anger with the system has percolated upwards. The recent mining claims in Orissa sparked off huge protests, not just in the villages but also among city folk who until recently had no idea about the Kondh people — Dongria, Kutia and Jharania — and their ways.

Generations of caste and class atrocities together with government apathy has helped mobilise ranks on the side of the extreme left. Sometimes these young rebels don’t know what being a Maoist means. I had once asked a person in jest who proudly called himself a Maoist, whether he was happy not to be called a Stalinist. He promptly said if being a Stalinist helped avenge his people, he’d happily be one.

These are my characters in Footprints. They live in Durjanpur, Banka or Patalgarh — names that are linear views, hence negative in connotation.

For the marginalised, the situation is stark. Muskaan is a Maoist recruited as a child soldier at 13. She is an example of how these ‘renegade’ movements use young people as a staple for propagating their adventurist tactics. We have examples of such far-left movements in other parts of the world, like the Shining Path in Peru.

Would you say the Maoists are a greater threat to India than global or cross-border terrorism from Pakistan?

Sadly, what gets lost in the debate is the plight of a huge chunk of people. Maoism or Naxalism does appear to be an option for the disadvantaged, especially Dalits and tribals, although I am aware of people who are striving for alternative movements away from guns and gore.

When it comes from the government, the word “threat” certainly is the key operative here. Whether Maoists are delighted at that labeling I have no idea, for I’m not a practitioner of the movement. But calling Maoism a “threat” helps situate the public view about this far-left movement. Threats justify the forming of counter-attack groups and human rights negligence. This precludes any investigation into how the poorer swathe of India eats, works, sleeps and dies.

The threat works well for the government in distracting the people. Meanwhile, deaths and displacements continue in the middle plane whether in Kashmir, Manipur, Orissa or Chhattisgarh.

Do you think American audiences will be able to relate to Muskaan and a story about a slice of rural India?

American writing is rich and diverse. Jhumpa Lahiri, Junot Diaz and Nam Le have successfully drawn readers into worlds outside their own familiar confines. Muskaan’s India may not be familiar to a lot of readers even in wealthy, urban India.

Since you live two lives, shuttling between the US and India, will your second novel be cast in India or America?

I plan to work on a book based on Assam, my home state, and the upheavals it has witnessed. Tentatively, it’s called “The Boatman of New York.” It would be a generational story across continents.

FOOTPRINTS Cover Kitsch...

Some of my friends have perhaps seen my older post "My Sketch and the Fun I have with it!". In that post stuck some versions of a sketch I've been doing for a few months ... until now that it has become something palpable. The cover of my novel FOOTPRINTS IN THE BAJRA.

But I just thought it'd be interesting to see those sub-sketches again alongside a few cover options that were thrown at me, by the publishers as well as my dithering mind. But I soon realized what I actually wanted, and I rooted for it, successfully!

This was one photographic option, but I realized these are paddy, not millet, in a parched land!

This was definitely pearl millet (bajra), but this option looked very boring too me; even with the ominous red sky, it seemed to have no soul or drama. People who know me, they know I prefer both!

This photo above is the same when I was tinting it red-pink...

Cedar sent me this photographic option. A girl walking through some crop field. But the locale looked non-Indian, certainly non-Bihar, and not even remotely any closer to my story and the protagonist/s. Too stiff, too transliterated, too predictable. Nope!

These ones below are the versions of the Madhubani drawing I was starting to visualize as my cover. So you have upside down, truncated, full drawing...

Oh, don't miss the gun! I had to labor HARD to make it look like a country gun!

And of course, what you see below is the original B&W sketch when I started working with it ...

Images: from the Internet; drawings: by Nabina Das

Bajra (PEAR MILLET) in my book FOOTPRINTS...

PEAR MILLET in my book FOOTPRINTS IN THE BAJRA:

"ಸಜ್ಜೆ (Sajje in Kannada); கம்பு (Kambu in Tamil); बाजरा (Bajra in Urdu,Punjabi and Hindi), बाजरी (Bajri in Marathi), సజ్జలు (Sajjalu in Telugu)

...

Pearl millet is well adapted to production systems characterized by drought, low soil fertility, and high temperature. It performs well in soils with high salinity or low pH. Because of its tolerance to difficult growing conditions, it can be grown in areas where other cereal crops, such as maize or wheat, would not survive.

...

In its traditional growing areas in India and many African countries, pearl millet is consumed in the form of leavened or unleavened breads, porridges, boiled or steamed foods, and (alcoholic) beverages. In the Sahel and elsewhere in West Africa, pearl millet is an important ingredient of couscous. The stalks are a valued building material, fuel and livestock feed.

...

India is the largest producer of pearl millet. It is primarily consumed in the states of Gujarat and Rajasthan"

My book describes a little bit about Bajra swathes in Bihar, in the fictional north Bihar village of Durjanpur. For fact, Bihar has only some areas under millet cultivation, where erratic irrigation programs and vagaries of weather largely impact the output.

Info from Wikipedia; Image from Wikipedia.

FOOTPRINTS IN THE BAJRA: My Novel is Published

Good news! My novel FOOTPRINTS IN THE BAJRA is out!

Published by Cedar Books, India, Footprints is about an India that is too strange to believe, yet is a reality for thousands of its citizens crouching at the margins.

A story about a slice of rural India, it is written from an urban perspective, mainly from the point of view the two main protagonists, while each chapter is a first-person narrative voice from the chief characters.

Footprints looks into the life of a young Maoist recruit -- a teenaged girl named Muskaan -- the way it spirals through bloodshed, retaliation, deception and yet, brings out her elemental dreams of life and love.

Maoism has been repeatedly touted by many in India as a greater "threat" than even the global (read, Al Qaeda) or cross-border (Indo-Pakistan) terrorism, with the government not quite able to get its head around the phenomenon. Maoism, the allegedly romantic refuge of the country's rural denizens, is not exactly a path strewn with roses for the socially deprived and the segregated. Centuries-old injustice, flawed government policies, flagrant violations of the basic human rights and deep-seated official apathy even in a "modern" India, have driven the poor and the marginalized to turn to Maoism, only adding to the statistics of death and destabilization.

Call it a scourge, malaise or wrong judgment, it is also a terrible reality that Maoism in India has sheltered swathes of disgruntled populations that have perhaps little or no idea about Mao or Revolution. All they look out for is social justice in their own terms. The civil society is perhaps divided on if this is right or wrong, but there is no denying that lives have been torn up on all sides.

Below is the cover of my book. I am happy to say that the cover art is also by me, adapted from my favorite Madhubani painting style of Bihar!

The idea was to present a so-called rough and rustic appeal, in the way Madhubani derives its colors from vegetable and rock dyes, and in the way the symbolism of a tree, the sun and the thick outlines form a cohesive whole with burnt red, ochre and deep green tones. It is a world of idioms, myths and moving accounts that my art tries to capture.

This is the standalone front cover:

I sketched the motif on paper with pencil and ink and later went on to color it with ordinary marker pen! Following the scan, Cedar's design team helped improve the resolution.

The sun in the underbelly of a human-like form (a twisted imitation of "the tree of life") with a bloodied root-sprung head was my idea of the unstable "system". The green pearl millet or the bajra is present in a "semi-circle of life" as opposed to the "circle of life" concept popular in Madhubani art.

This is the back cover:

The book will be on Amazon (worldwide) and Rediff (India) for purchase later on. Right now, it goes to the 19th New Delhi World Book Fair 2010, Jan 30-Feb 7. Updates to follow!

"Footprints in the Bajra" Goes to Press

January 8, 2010. It is an important date for me. My first novel "Footprints in the Bajra" went to press today from Cedar Books, India. Updates to follow.

My book pitch a winner at the 2008 Kala Ghoda Literary Festival, Mumbai, India

My book pitch entry became a winner at the 2008 Kala Ghoda Literary Festival, Mumbai, India, early this year. HarperCollins India and Palador publishing houses have expressed their interest in this novel. I have just finished up -- PHEW!! -- revising the 200+ page-long manuscript and have carted it off to HarperCollins India. Hopefully they'll see the sparks of genius in my work. In fact, the preliminary chapters of the novel have won a 2007 Joan Jakobson Scholarship for Fiction from Wesleyan University (where I workshopped it with the writer Josip Novakovich) and a 2007 Julio Lobo Scholarship for Fiction from Lesley College, Cambridge, Mass.
Details below:

Title: FOOTPRINTS IN THE BAJRA
Genre(s): Literary Fiction

Blurb:
Violence. Revolutionary passion. Change. FOOTPRINTS IN THE BAJRA is about a young Maoist recruit, Muskaan from Bihar who meets Nora, a student-activist. Muskaan’s transition in belief, aided by Nora, through a series of staggering bloodletting and self-reflection takes her to America, reshaping her radical zeal through her newfound love.

Synopsis:
FOOTPRINTS IN THE BAJRA is a novel about Muskaan, a teenaged girl recruited by Maoists in a remote north Bihar village. Muskaan fiercely clings on to her ideology of change until she comes across Nora, a student-cum-theater activist from Delhi, who has her eyes set on studies and career in the US.

FOOTPRINTS charts the moment of transition – in belief and identity – in the life of Muskaan. It begins with how the young rebel and her comrades, while capitalizing on the presence of Nora and her theater troupe members in Durjanpur, carry out a bloody kidnapping and killing in the outskirts of the village. During this incident, Nora accidentally finds out Muskaan’s radical role – carefully concealed so far. The event pits them together in a new relationship where Muskaan turns into an adversary because of Nora’s exclusive knowledge about their rebel outfit.

Even as Maoists threaten her with death, Nora quietly convinces Muskaan of the possibility of a different world before she is released owing to political pressures from Delhi. Muskaan discovers that her reverence for her foster uncle and mentor Suryakant Sahay and her senior comrade Avadhut fail to pass muster when it comes to representing the real aspirations of the people around her. Her nascent passion for Palash, a comrade-in-arms, also suffers a breach as she finds him to be far situated from the idealistic plane she imagined. Confused yet adamant, she reaches out to Nora who is in New York by this time, studying and working.

Through a series of self-reflection and her lonely struggle to break out of her familiar web of violence and retaliation, Muskaan manages to arrive in the US as a student. All along, Nora’s friendship and support act as her mainstay. Their blooming friendship – even when they are miles apart – reveals to the young rebel a far more radical possibility for changing life, not only for her, but also for her community and society where century-old causes have always generated equally archaic and unsettling effects. Finally, when in love, and in a decisive stage of her life and friendship, Muskaan sees the path to change clearly in front of her. She returns home to follow the path, however forked it is.

This is the story of Muskaan’s bewilderment and untutored enlightenment, about the effects of globalization and its new economic mores spanning from the badlands of Bihar to Delhi’s elite environment and American ivory towers of intellectualism.

Through her new love and tough choices it offers, she sets out to stamp new footprints, this time not steeped in blood, but in intense hope and no less elemental desires to see life-changing dreams come true.