Indira Goswami (1942 – 2011) is an
iconic figure in Assamese literature who lived and worked as a peace activist
with almost motherly concern for humanity. She twice tried to commit suicide
after suffering shocks with her father's and husband‘s demises very early in
her life, which damaged her psyche and shattered the very foundation of her
existence. Her writing was a positive reinforcement, for which she developed an
intense passion and essentially made an identity with her emphatic stories,
touching the lives of many. Instead of escaping the harsh realities and the
cruelties of life, she confronted them courageously, witnessed them in
proximity, experienced and reproduced them through her writing, filtering
through her sensitive soul. Her writings are full of imagery, highlighting the
issues of politics and militancy in Assam. Further, Goswami emphatically
captures the theme of gruesome horror of insurgency, the brutality of militant
and endless fear of prolonged obscure violence. It is well felt in her writings.
Her descriptions of brutality and the characters of the stories seem to be
vivid imagery, translating the ordeal most aptly.
The
title, ‘The Journey ‘, signifies the meaning of looking into the life of
people. It mainly features the struggles of life, which seems to never end, and
memories still haunting. Through her writings in the regional language, the
barbaric practices and abuses committed in the name of faith, tradition and
patriarchy have been attacked. She stood against the backdrop of armed
militancy, marks a crossroads where various modes of aggression coalesce with a
dynamic pattern of survival instinct.
The
Journey ‘begins with Professor Mirajkar who returns to Guwahati from his visit
to Kaziranga. It is marked as the brief journey but an eventful one. The story
delineates the various types of emergence and moment of exposing multiple types
and the existence of aggression. They can be experienced as both visible and
invisible – as well as the clear and systemic description. The plot also points
to the violence faced by women through the character of Nirmali whose legs are
broken by her villagers for being in an affair with an Indian soldier. The
details of the story contain gender-based violence, political violence and
other forms of abuse. The writer illustrates the sense of destruction and
social decay caused by the agglomerates of these different types of violence
persistent in the world. 'The Journey' is a largely mimetic story that tends to
work through practical codes, with the undersigned female narrator and the
'mainlander,' Professor Mirajkar, who is back in Guwahati from a trip to
Assam's popular tourist destination, Kaziranga National Park, as a 'late'
ambassador.
The
National Reserve Park is also a protected location, as is the zoo, aquarium, or
exhibition. Both Mirajkar and the narrator can ponder over the natural world
from afar in this regulated space. Mirajkar might not be afraid of wild animals
because of the tourist drive's protection. At the other hand, the attacker's
bullet could potentially cut a swathe through this "safe" area and
pledge dreadful intimacy. . This spatial non-synchronicity scenario is
inaugurated dramatically when the car stops in the middle. All passengers leave
their enclave enclosed, standing in front of several small businesses. As the
driver, Ramakanta, questions the repairs, the narrator sees a man approaching
them suddenly. A person (manavmurti) gradually emerges from one of the rows of
shops (dukan), which is a bit further from the national road (rashtriya path).
This
personification is used in the well classified way. This Manavmurti has
something distinct, different-world and ancient, and seems to emerge almost as
a figure from a picture. Unlike the immediate response of the narrator to this
Manavmurti (whom she soon starts to speak to as the honorary Aatoi), the
physical presence to his wife is slightly delayed. She makes her entrance with
a kerosene lamp when the narrator and Mirajkar sit in Aatoi's decrepit store.
Gradually, the storyteller noticed her blouse full of patches and her ‗withered
flesh ‘as she fought to make tea. While Aatoi is hard to identify, his wife is
clearly identified as a victim of poverty. This picture of distressed village
women accentuates deprivation, pain and shallowness.
The
wife is the rough, insistent note of a bad and terror-scarred present. From
her, we learn that one of her child, Konbap, joined the rebels, while Nirmali,
a daughter of her own, broke her leg as a revenge for having an affair with an
Indian soldier. She is still afraid of Indian military bullets killing her son.
She
continues to harangue her husband to see if Konbap, the son who joined the
militant party, was seen near the railways. In addition, we hear from her that
the annual floods have ravaged much of her land and also killed her eldest son.
Aatoi and his wife both mention the absolute misery caused by the slow violent
floods and the consequent public and political apathy towards the problem at
various points of the conversation. In the following paragraph, the wife's
analysis of sluggish abuse reaches its apogee:
it
quotes, "I have suffered for seven years. You ought to look at our
situation once and tell the government about it”.
You
must also see the plight of our villagers when you go to see the animals in
Kaziranga. The utterance of the wife of Aatoi marks the beginning of the cycle
of the "bad" statements affecting the narrator and the time of
Mirajkar. It is notable that the protagonist loves and sees from afar into the
mesmerizing natural beauty of nature. The wife's comment is a shameful
indictment of the indifference of this remote, "tourist" eye. The
natural world‘s beauty is apparent but the misery of the people living in this
world remains fortified in ignorance. A little while after his wife's scathing
criticism of the distant "tourist" feel, Aatoi says
“But
you see some Kaziranga tigers? I hear that in 1966 there were only 20 tigers,
but now there are about 60 tigers. Even the number of rhinos is said to have
risen from 300 to around 1500, and I believe over 500 elephants are present.”
This
highlights the reality of wild animals, which along with militant violence
creates hazards to their lives, who feel themselves helpless and incapable of
responding to the situation.
But the
brief instant "for a moment," if a "human tornado," Konbap,
unexpectedly flies into the scene "accessing an explosion", is even
quicker. Konbap is identified as a "young man with awful arms and one-eye
shots on his lips" (ibid.). Under his eyelid, a strip of his flesh was
ripped at his corner of the cheek. The "hideous" guy pushes Nirmali
into her belly and calls her a "malignant slut," running with the
money to buy two U.S. carbohydrates from poachers hunting rhinos, while his
parents are telling him to stay and return the money to Mirajkar and his
narrator. The essence of the narrative seems to be influenced by these two
sequences that speed the perception of time.
Nevertheless,
both middle-class characters presumably know that the word
"terrorism" only deals with the swift, unexpected existence of
violence, in chaotic fashion, which, like Konbap, seems to leave only
destruction and confusion. Yet the emotional bond between the two middle-class
observers and the poor couple is much more important than that. Through looking
closely at the storyline, we note that this relationship develops in a parallel
process of coming out of an "enclave" room. This understanding
reflects the gradual discovery of the impact of long violence on poor people.
Though seemingly imitate and unilinear, 'The Journey' demonstrates how various
meanings of experiential time complicatedly merge into a single experience to
reveal the impact of multiple types of abuse.
SOURCES
The
Journey by Indira Goswami
http://jicrjournal.com/gallery/8-jicr-august-3061.pdf
Written by Asha Singh (Student of 2nd yr. B.A.B.Ed.)