The poetics of Nirmal Verma and his stylistics

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The poetics of Nirmal Verma and his stylistics

Annie Montaut

To cite this version:

Annie Montaut. The poetics of Nirmal Verma and his stylistics: from the grammar of indeniteness to

the subversion of gender oppositions. Odjel za orijentalisktiku Hrvatsjiga loloskog drustva i losofski

fakultet, 2006, 5, pp.247-296. �halshs-00549407�

The poetics of Nirmal Verma and his stylistics : from the grammar of

indefiniteness to the subversion of gender oppositions

in Voices from South Asia, Language in South Asian Literature,

(Theo Damsteegt ed.) Odjel za orijentalisktiku Hrvatsjiga filoloskog

drustva, Biblioteca Orientalika, Zagreb, 2006, pp. 247-296

Annie Montaut, Inalco/CEIAS

Nirmal Verma has explained in numerous essays the specific function and

intrinsic quality of art and, especially, literature, in particular Indian literature

Such theories have in the past repeatedly been discarded as an artificial desire to

invent roots for himself in the Indian tradition in order to legitimate a novelistic

style that is largely made up of foreign influences

. The view that Nirmal Verma’s

novelistic art is an adaptation of European technics and notions is indeed quite

wide spread in Indian literary critique, ranging from Indranath Madan (1966 :

136-38), Lakshmisagar Varshneya (1970 : 69 sq), Chandrakanta Bandivadekar

(1977 : 399) to, more recently, Jaydev (1993 : 48-49). These numerous

evaluations leave behind the impression that Verma is a Hindi writer who writes

in Hindi about Western (English) themes, structuring contents and characters

according to Western literary principles

, such as that of the late twentieth century

Western novel, where « characters often do not have names, and their motivations

and feelings remain shadowy»

The recent fame of the author (he was awarded the Gyanpith distinction in

2001 ?) has certainly made the judgments about his work less critical and has even

led to some sort of admiration for his ideology of art, making him into a kind of

Sartre or ‘maître à penser’ of his generation. Yet, such enthusiasm is often of

dubious origin as the wish to reinforce a hindu perspective is an important motif

for some of his supporters. However, reasoned comparisons of the theoretical

essays and the text of his novels have been rare and restricted to two recent papers,

both from 2000 (Prasenjit Gupta and Annie Montaut). The latter is mainly

devoted to matters of form and, like the former, deals with the contents and

narrative structure of the text rather than with its style in the phrastic meaning of

the term. What will be at stake here, as is has been in these two papers, is the

resolution of the implicit or explicit contradiction between the essays as a purely

Hindu worldview and Verma’s fiction as a Western form invested on westernized

figures and westernized intrigues or, to phrase it more adequately in a western

guise: the absence of a proper story.

See section 4. A significant selection of these essays have been translated in English under the

suggestive title India and Europe (Verma 2000).

In an already ancient conference in Paris by Alok Rai, who saw this radical opposition between

Premchand, naturally rooted in the traditions of India yet writing in a « progressive » style inspired

by the western social realism, et Nirmal Verma, uprooted and therefore in need of inventing roots.

Similarly the German critic Gaeffke, a classic reference, speaks of a « language of the

existentialist post-war jargon » (1978 : 69).

Review of The Crows of Deliverance, Publishers Weekly 238.36 : 53, August 8, 1991.

A sample of a theoretical program within the narrative offers even more

insight since it is both, implicitly, a philosophical/theoretical program and a

practical illustration of that program involving the material (here scriptural)

devices implicated in the concrete realization of the artist’s program. Such a

sample can be found in Ek cithrâ sukh (A rag called happiness in English

translation).

I will therefore start with an explanation of the content and formal

explanation of this short sample, then develop its main formal devices by

analysing some crucial extracts of the novels, eventually relating the results of the

analyses to the “philosohical’ background displayed in Nirmal’s essays.

1. Still life: a lesson of looking

In the novel mentioned above, the episode of the lesson of « how to see »

is introduced by a project, if not a full fledged program, of being a writer : « I will

remember, I will write it in my dairy ». This is followed by an outline of a scene

observed from the room on the barsati : « Bitti was hanging the clothes (…) and

I… »

. It is quite striking how the three dots (quite frequent in Nirmal Verma’s

fictional writing) link both first the observed scene to the « I », and then the « I »

to his favorite game (khel) which triggers the memory of the drawing lesson. This

punctuation also has another effect: it makes the word to stand in isolation, like an

island suspended between two silences, cut off from what precedes and what

follows, while at the same time connected to the neighboring sequences as an

iconic announce of what will follow. Knowing that the whole structure of the

novel is made to disclose, within the main protagonist, the inner « I » (maiN) who

observes the events in the third person (« he », vah) and is transformed into a

writer by writing from memory and by reliving the events, having left the deserted

scene at the end of the novel in a Proustian structure

we cannot overestimate the

impact of this short piece of poetics within the overall economy of the novel. Such

a meta-narrative injunction to « see » describes the writer’s stance in a novel

aimed, among other goals, at describing the genesis of the writer. Let us first re-

read the passage, which carries on with the third person right after the quote

mentioned above, and right before taking us into the « lesson » :

vah apne bistar par le th. Kitn br vah yah khel apne se khelt th,

jaise vah duniy se kah

bâhar se dekh rahâ hai, shâm, chhat, bittî aur

Dairî – ab unhen nahîn jântâ. Vah unhen pahlî bâr dekh rahâ hai.

Uske Drâing mâsTar klâs men kahte the –

he was lying on his bed. How many times had not he played this game

with himself, as if he was looking at the world from outside, evening,

roof-top, Bitti and Dairy – now he does not know them. He is looking

p. 19. My own translation, in order to keep a very literal and almost word-to-word equivalent,

including punctuation, which is generally never kept in the translations (an exception is the French

Le Toit de tôle rouge / Lâl Tîn kî chat at Actes Sud, 2004, but not Un Bonheur en lambeaux / Ek

chithrâ sukh, Actes Sud, 2000). Kuldip Singh’s translation gives : « Bitty was hanging clothes out

to dry (…). », the ‘aur maiN’ sequence is sikipped.

See the analysis of the structure of the novel in Montaut (2000). One of the threads linking

memory, death, rebirth and vision with writing (and art) is the diary given by the young boy’s

mother, whose death he repeatedly sees again and again.

at them for the first time. His drawing master used to say in the

classroom --

dekho, yah seb hai, yah seb Tebul par rahtâ hai. Ise dhyân se dekho.

Sîdhî âNkhoN se — ek sunn nigâh sûî kî nok–sî seb par bîdh jâtî Vah

dhîre-dhîre havâ meN ghulne lagtâ, gâyab ho jâtâ. Phir, phir, acânak

patâ caltâ – seb vahîN hai, mez par, jaise-kâ taisâ – sirf vah alag ho

gayâ hai, kamre se, dûsre laRkoN se, mez aur kursiyoN se – aur pahlî

bâr seb ko naî nigâhoN se dekh rahâ hai. NaNgâ, sâbut, sampûrN …

itnâ sampûrN ki vah bhaybhît-sâ ho jâtâ, bhaybhît bhî nahîN – sirf ek

ajîb-sâ vismay pakaR letâ, jaise kisîne uskî âNkhoN se paTTî khol dî

hai (p. 19).

look, this is an apple, this apple is on the table. Look at it with

attention. With right eyes – an empty look pierced the apple like the

head of a needle. It/he began to slowly dissolve in the air, disappeared.

Then, then, suddenly became aware – the apple is exactly there, such

as itself – only he/it has got separated, from the room, from the other

children, from the table and the chairs – and for the first time looks at

the apple with new eyes (a new look). Naked, entire, complete … In

such a wholeness (completion) that he became kind of frightened, not

even frightened – only a somewhat strange wonder seized (him), as if

someone had lifted a bandage from his eyes.

What strikes the reader about the formal structure of this short passage, of the

whole writing process, is the density of specific stylistic devices making it a

microcosm: the shifting reference in the pronominal system, the repetitions, the

use of the so-called short (truncated) imperfect sometimes called indefinite or

poetic imperfect, the very peculiar system of punctuation, the linking of

« independent » clauses or sentences with dashes rather than with commas or full

stops, an abundance of markers of indefiniteness (comparisons, the approximation

suffix –sâ, rectifications such as « frightening, not even frightening »), a number

of formal devices which all contribute to create the position of standing aloof

(dunyâ se bâhar, alag) and the empathy described in this fragment as the correct

attitude to look at things in order to write about them/describe them

. It is

significant that the passage occurs in the novel immediately after the decision to

transform the experienced feeling into a written experience thorugh the use of

diary which is given to the boy by his dead mother as a tool for precisely seeing

and remembering and thereby transcending death

. It is therefore all the more

obvious that the right vision, which makes remembering possible and allows a

Most of these devices are omitted in the English translation : « Lying on his bed, the boy played

at his secret game. He imagined that a part of him was outside, looking in at Bitty and Darry, the

diffuse afternoon light, the ceiling, as if he’d seen none of these before. At school, his art teacher

used to say : ‘Look, this thing on the table is an apple. Look at it carefully. Look at it straight so

you see nothing else whatever.’ Slowly, then, he would feel hi seye draw to a needle-point and

stick into the apple even as the rest of him seemed to fall away. The other boys in the class, the

desks, the chairs – all disappeared. Only the apple remained. In its nakedness, fullness, wholeness.

I t

was all so frightening and wonderful, as if he were seeing an apple for the first time ever, as if a

blindfold had come unstuck. » (pp. 14-145).

For the details of the analysis see Montaut 2000.

memory to be written, has to do with life and death, as art generally has in

Nirmal’s perception.

Along with the formal structures of this paragraph, which are in a way

seminal throughout Nirmal’s writing, some highly loaded words deserve a more

detailed comment

, in order to locate the whole « lesson » in the global body of the

author’s philosophical/aesthetical statements mentioned in the introduction

(before coming back to it in conclusion). Among these are dhyân and sîdhî.

Dhyân, which literally means « attention », is also the word used from medieval

times till today to indicate the concentration a devotee seeks in order to meditate

on a deity and reach a further state of union with the divine. As for sîdhî, a

feminine adjective, it literally means « straight, right » but is also is related to the

yogic powers (cf. the noun siddha, which indicates an utterly accomplished

person or some sort of saint endowed with spiritual powers) or the inner

realization of the self and of true knowledge

. This makes it obvious that the type

of perception involved in the lesson appeal to a specific way of looking , whether

it is named nigâh, âNkh or dekh in Hindi. Perhaps we can relate it to the

ritualized darshan, but the text makes no use of the word darshan, neither in this

passage nor elsewhere, as it avoids direct explicit analogies with the religious or

philosophical vocabularies. Attempting to get at the the sacred is not done through

of ready-made categories in the novel but is the result of the very immanent acts

and words as they get transcended into their bare intrinsic self. That is also hinted

at in the the frequent use of the word sunn (empty, dumb) and is further

emphasized by the use of words with a rich alliteration such as sûî the needle, sî

the approximative suffix, or seb the apple.

What is of special interest is of course the effect of this intense, absolute

gaze, literally piercing (bhinc) the apple to reach at its inner nature: the apple

begins to dissolve in the emptyness, while the pronoun which replaces it (vah) is

also the form used for the boy, making both viewer and viewed interchangeable

for a moment in a first reading. Once dissolved, the apple suddenly appears in its

absolute wholeness, which is paradigmatically equivalent to its nakedness,

integrity/solidity, while again the ambiguity of the pronoun vah momentarily

connects the viewed object and the viewer. A special gazeis thus required for the

object to appear in its very self and in its own being (i.e.: undistorted by the

observer), and this specific perception can only come about when someoneis

himself detached (alag) from all the present contingencies (other pupils, table and

chairs), who looks from nowhere or from outside the world (free from worldly

contingencies), and thus perceives the object for the first time because he has

freed his vision from habitual attachmentsthat are socially or psychologically or

historically conditioned, like a « blindfold » (paTTî) before one’s eyes. This kind

of perception is also described as almost frightening; an emotion that is

immediately corrected into another fundamental aesthetic emotion, amazament

The seeing for the first time, « playing » as if one is not aware of what has

previously been seen in the observed scene is then a « game » which is aschildish

as it is philosophical.

Sîdhâ, with long first vowel, is the tadbhav for siddh (with the classical vowel lengthening

compensating the simplification of medial consonant cluster)

Cf. the eight, later nine and eleven, fundamental emotions in the classical theories of rasa, in the

most clearly presented synthesis of Kunjuni Raja.

As for the object that is put before the pupils to observe, the apple, it too

belongs to the well known tradition in the training of western still-life painters

but this tradition is here renewed (nativized ?) by the words that are used to

describe it. The apple, while disclosing its pure object-ness in a literally wonderful

way, becomes part of a process. This process, the perception that units the

perceived object and the perceiverthrough the act of perception itself, is a classic

reference in the theory of meaning and grammar as well as in the theory of

aesthetics in Sanskrit. Besides, the way the object has to be perceived echoes the

pictorial perception of Raza (2002, 2004) in his theory of bindu, the focal point,

which amounts to reaching the inner spiritual truth of an object once the ocular,

superficial perception is transcended by the artist’s concentration (dhyân). In

Nirmal Verma’s novel, the still life is generally distortedonce things once are

perceived correctly. It is subtly distorted into a vibrating life, things becoming

living entities and active participants, again a subdued reference to the classical

vision of the cosmic world in Indian philosophy.

Further on in Ek Cithrâ Sukh,

after the suicide of an important character in one of the last chapters, when the

boy is already becoming an adult and a writer, and when the fusion of his « I »

and his « he »

, allows a « you » to appear in the shifting process of

(de)identification, objects are also described as active entities endowed with a

consciousness of their own, a crucial feature for this world of inter-relatedness to

connect « I », « he », « it », the self, the other, the world.

vahâN ab koî nahîN thâ. Koî nahîN thâ. Sirf vah thâ, jo ab maiN hûN…

DurghaTnâ kî bhî ek âtmâ hotî hai. Yah maiNne dekhâ thâ. Dekhâ thâ,

maiN Thîk kahtâ hûN, kyoNki uskî gandh âpas kî cîzoN ko bhî patâ cal

jâtî hai aur ve apnî-apnî jagah se uThkar tumheN gher letî haiN… aur

tum unheN hakkî-bakkî nigâhoN se aise dekh rahe ho jaise unheN pahle

kabhî nahîN dekhâ (p. 140)

Now there was nobody there. Nobody was there. He only was there,

who is now I…

Catastrophies have their own soul. This I have seen. I have seen, I say

right, because even the things around become aware of their smell and

get up from their place to circle around you… And you look at them

with dumbfounded eyes as if you had never seen them before

2. The central episode of ECS: approximation and comparison

The scene of the memory of the fair at Allahabad takes place at the

beginning of the last third of the novel (pp. 98-100) and features just one shard of

memory among many others, but this small piece gives the book its title. There is

also another reason to consider this scene as vital in the global economy of the

novel (and use it to observe its stylistic texture) : it explicitly raises the question

of rebirth, being cut off from family and social support, and, as to tis form, it

mixes short dialogues with « poetical » sequences that are equally short, which

NV has always had a special interest in painting, partly out of a personal taste partly out of a

family surrounding since his brother is the well-known painter Ram Kumar.

Fully explicite in NV’s essays (see conclusion), but showing without metadiscourse in his

fiction.

The writing alternately focuses on the same character as a first person narrator or as a third

person observer in the sequence.

reflect a perception that is strongly reminiscent of the one depicted just before the

lesson in perception.

The boy, who has already been staying with his cousin Bitti for a few

months in her barsati at Nizamuddin, sometimes feverish and sometimes better,

observing Bitti’s friends in their theatrical activities as amateurs, spends his time

reading a book about a missionary and a panther. He wanders around in the

neighborhood and remembers his days in Allahabad, his home town that he left

because of a persistent fever. Among the memories that continue to recur, is that

of his mother’s death in the hospital in Allahabad, that of the fair with his cousin,

where both visited the strange spectacle of a dwarf who was stripped of all his

clothes except a few rags as a result of his walking and running in the cold wind

of the fan in the circus tent. This spectacle was shown to them as an answer to a

question aby Bitti: “what is happiness like ?”. Right after that, just before leaving

the fair ground, they step in for the last round on the giant wheel and are forgotten

by the manager, who has not seen them when he stops the machine.

koî unheN nahîN dekh saktâ ? ve adrishya haiN…ve kahîN ûpar haiN,

havâ aur andhere meN, ek dûsre ke andhere meN jakRe hue, shahar kî

roshniyoN, gharoN, aur âdmiyoN ke ûpar jahâN kabhî ve rahte the,

bahut pahle, kisî dûsre janm meN […] vah bîc andhere meN baiThâ thâ,

na nîce, na ûpar, samûcî duniyâ se kaTâ huâ

- BiTTî, kyâ tum pichle janm meN vishvâs karti ho?

- main nahîN kartî… tum karte ho?

- mujhe patâ nahîN… lekin aisâ samay zarûr rahâ hogâ jab hameN

koî nahîN jântâ hogâ, merâ matlab hai…

Nobody can see them? They are invisible… They are somewhere above,

in the wind and the dark, frozen in each other’s darkness, above the

lights of the city, the houses, the men, where the have once lived, long

ago, in some other life (…). He was sitting in the middle, in the

darkness, neither below nor above, cut off from the whole world.

- Bitti, do you believe in previous birth?

- No, I don’t… Do you?

- I don’t know… but there must sure be a moment when nobody

knows you, I mean...

A long (one page) dialogue follows, on the question whether people who are

reborn in one single life can change identity and life in this rebirth, in order to

“leave/quit themselves”. Then the boys asks her cousin what she would like to do

later and she answers she would like to be like the dwarf – “clad with rags

(cithRe)?” exclaims the boy, and his cousin answers – “they were not rags, they

were happiness”.

The description following the dialogue belongs to the often mentioned

poetic suggestiveness of Nirmal’s style and particularly this “controlled epiphany,

impressionistic evocation of setting (…) virtually impossible to emulate

. Let us

try to analyse first how the “evocation of setting” is produced at the phrastic level

at least, since it is the level most commonly ignored when commenting on

Nirmal’s poetic virtuosity. Part of it occurs before the dialogue sequence, part of it

between the two main dialogued sequences. In the first setting of the frame (the

« His mastery of succinct details, controlled epiphany, and impressionistic evocation of setting

is virtually impossible to emulate » (Aamer Hussein 1991 : 22).

first lines quoted above), “high” in the sky (ûpar), one expression is repeated

three times: andhere meN “in the dark”

. The third occurrence, which at the first

reading seems to occur as a precision (bîc andhere meN), in fact opens on a more

precise indication of the location that apparently contradicts the very first setting

(“ûpar”), since it is now specified as being “neither low nor high”. The notion of

“middle” (bîc) then appears as a trigger for the creation of an inter-space, both

high and not high, a space where contradictions are suspended since it is itself

transcending the differential categories (“na…na”) in a distinctly advaitin

formulation (neti…neti). It is from this position that the required detachment (“cut

off from the whole world”) is obtained, along with the “invisibility”: the two kids

in the empty space are adrishya “invisible”, and what they can still see (city,

houses, men) appears to them as belonging to a previous life, while at the same

time the outside darkness changes into a shared inner darkness (ek dûrsre ke

andhere meN), transforming and balancing the outside and the inside.

Repetitions are not just a pattern that is used to musicalize the narrative, they

induce a subtle twisting of notional categories which is further developed in the

second attempt of “setting the frame”, half way through the dialogue:

use kuch samajh meN nahîN âyâ, kintu us rât bîc havâ meN baiThe hue

use sab kuch sac lagâ thâ, asambhav lekin sac, candnî rât meN peRoN

ke nîce ek khel jaisâ, jismeN jo dikhâî detâ hai, vah nahîN hai, jo

sacmuc meN hai vah dikhâî nahîN detâ.

he did not understand anything, but sitting in the air of that night he felt

as if everything was true, impossible but true, like a play under the trees

in the silvery (moon-lighted) night, in which what is visible does not

exist, what does exist is not visible.

Again the in-between position, this time, in-between the air, is used to create the

place where intellectual incomprehension changes into the feeling (lagâ) of truth,

a realization comparable to the wonder at the dissolved apple. This feeling,

involving only un-referential pronouns (kuch nahîN, sab kuch, jo ”nothing,

everything, which”), hence relying on a basis of indefiniteness, amounts to

shifting and opposing the categories of the visible and the truth (words each

repeated several times), so as to convey a deliberate turning of the focalized view-

point, just like the boy’s usual game (as if he did not know, as if he had never

seen). The comparative expression ek khel jaisâ, “as in a game”, emphasizes the

other devices for approximation (aisâ lagâ), building the scenario of a game

which is not really a game, and more generally posits blurred categories in order

to dissolve the very notion of clear-cut categories and to suggest the inter-space as

the only point from which to observe truth. It has long been observed that Nirmal

Verma makes a profuse use of such expressions as “X ko or aisâ lagâ (jaisâ)”, X

felt like / as if”, “had the impression that”, or “it was like”. The psychological

interpretation of hesitation, indeterminacy, while focalizing on the inner

subjectivity, is a secondary effect of the high frequency of similar expressions,

which mainly create the space for an adjacent category or notion. Whether it is a

metaphor or a comparison (introduced by lagâ or mâno) or a comparative clause,

all these devices present the referent as double (one signified for two signifiers),

inaccessible by means of a single clear-cut wording, requiring to be hinted at

(suggested) by other representations, questioning therefore its sheer referenciality

and direct intelligibility. In a distinct yet similar way, the approximation affix –sâ,

originally a contraction of jaisâ (< Sk sadrishya “looking as > resembling” <

verbal root DRSH/DARSH), which in Hindi can be suffixed to nouns, adjectives,

participles, with an attenuative or approximate meaning

, transforms a notional

category into a wider and vaguer one with blurred contours, that is, a notion which

is not precisely categorisable.

This is a kind of re-birth within this birth which opens the way to a

different, clairvoyant life, linked to the quality of being invisible and unknown to

the others, detached, beyond the secure parameters of measure, society, time and

space (ghar choRkar).

And then right after this piece of dialogue already set in such a specifically

“evocating” frame, occurs a short piece of poetic description:

vah bhaybhît-sâ haNsne lagâ (…) [BiTTî] kâ svar itnâ halkâ thâ ki

andhere meN jân paRâ, jaise vah kisî svapn kâ chilkâ hai, jo uske

hâth rah gayâ hai… târoN kî pîlî châNh meN kâmptâ huâ – use nice

kî taraf khîNctâ huâ, jahâN Illâhâbâd ke itne varSh bekâr tukRoN kî

tarah havâ meN uR rahe the…

kind of frightened, he started laughing (…). Bitti’s voice was so light

that it seemed in the darkness as some peeling of a dream which had

remained in his hand… shivering in the yellow/pale shadow of the

stars – pulling him down, where all the many Allahabad years were

flying in the air like useless bits and pieces…

How is the poetic dimension obtained here? No particularly poetic word except

the vagueness of the “dream” in its Sanskrit equivalent (svapn), no great metaphor,

no elaborate phraseology or metaphor. But this single sentence, further de-

articulated by the punctuation (suspensive marks, dashes), is right from the

beginning framed /lit on the background created by the boy’s state of mind:

bhaybhît-sâ, the very word associated with the feeling of wonder, which creates

an expectation for what follows. What follows is in the dialogue Bitti’s answer

regarding “happiness” and rags, and the way it is reverberated in the narrative by

the boy’s reaction. This single sentence, describing the boy’s emotions at his

cousin’s answer, is both a comment on the last, crucial words, as well as a

projection of this truth onto the boy’s relationship with the world outside and the

narrator’s writing. We remain in the repeated location of “in the dark” with the

recurring use of comparative clause (jân paRâ jaise) and nominal expressions (kî

tarah). The voice, made the outer shell of some dream, then made immaterial,

further recovers materiality when described as shivering or trembling in the boy’s

hand, and this trembling is in a way taken from the twinkling light of stars by

means of a chiasm

. The whole scene becomes strange (a suggestion of the

metaphysical / aesthetical wonder) because words are slightly displaced, either by

a trope or by an apparent inadequacy (chilkâ, châNh): the selection of the

improper word is a well-known impressionist device (the French symbolist poet

Verlaine claimed it, along with unbalanced prosody), and this “anaucitya” so to

speak, is handled by NV with great mastery. A dream has no chilkâ, but the chilkâ

makes it physically sensible that the boy is left with a shesh, a remaining (?), a left

over in both psycho-analytical and physical (the echo, dhvani of the voice)

meanings. Similarly the “pieces” (tukRâ) are deliberately presented as a bizar

See Montaut 1995 in Faits de langue, summarized in Montaut 2004 : 254-6.

A usual way of describing the stars in NV.

metaphor for years, by means of the most undefined segmentable object and a

very banal word which has practically no meaning except that of ‘broken object’.

The very notion of brokenness, unconnectedness, uselessness is what matters here

to re-create and give fresh life to the worn out metaphor of “gone with the wind”.

To distort it too, since they are not exactly gone with the wind and forgotten, they

are half forgotten half part of the surrounding wind, as is the contingent pieces of

the past for the detached person.

Last but not least

, as far as formal devices are concerned, the punctuation

of this sentence prevents the reader from operating hierarchies in the syntactic

levels and clauses; on the contrary, flat pauses, which oppose the logical

demarcations between clauses and especially the lowering tone of end marks,

create here not only a rhythm but also a melodic line with almost no peaks and

mainly silences (…, --- ), a silent breathing, a space for internal echoes to

reverberate. Assuming that standard punctuation in a written text is a marker of

logical junctures and helps in interpretating logical dependencies, we are dealing

here with a process of de-intellectualisation, allowing for a parallel reading with a

non-logical interpretation, a relation of equivalence and not of dependence and

hierarchy which best suits the register of feelings than that of intellect.

3. The incipit of Lâl Tîn kî chat : the “atonal” punctuation and the de-

temporalized imperfect

The one and a half page incipit of LTC is particular in many respects: the

formal division of the book makes it an incipit of the first section (“In one

breathe”, ek sns meN) rather than of the whole novel, before chapter one among

the seven which make this first section, none of them bearing a title. But section

two (“Above the town”, shahar se ûpar) has no title (it consists in seven chapters,

with, again, no title), and section three (“Beyond consolation”, tasallî se pare),

has only one chapter

. Yet this incipit bears the title of the novel itself, Lâl Tîn kî

chat. Another peculiarity is the use of the tenses and punctuation: 16 dashes

(among which 6 in the first six lines), 3 dots, 1 question mark, 1 exclamation mark,

for only 24 full stops. An opening in the imperfect is in no way strange for a novel,

nor is the interruption of such a static and descriptive frame or background by an

event in the preterit (simple past), which also appear in the novel: such preterit

forms occur in paragraphs 4, 6, 8, 10, 11. The dominance of the imperfect,

however, has two particularities, both related to the Hindi language itself. The

first one is not stylistically marked since it is the regular habitual and actual

imperfects which are formed with the imperfect of the verb can be used as an

auxiliary (thâ, the, thî, thîN for gender and number variations, nominal-type

variations). If such a form itself is unmarked, combined with the massive use of

the copula or existential verb (with the same form), as is the case right from the

first sentence (sab taiyâr thâ “everything was ready”), the result is a particular

emphasis on the static aspect. Both copula and auxiliary polarize each other, and

both are polarized also by the same auxiliary thâ used with a past participle to

denote a resultant state: munh khulâ thâ “his mouth was open”.

The second peculiarity, this one stylistically marked and occurring almost

only in written texts, is the alternative form of the imperfect, without copula: phail

There is a definite decrescendo in the structure, the first section occupying about half of the

book and the last one a bare fifteenth of it.

jâtî “expanded, extended” (phail jâtî thî), lagtâ “seemed” (lagtâ thâ). Some

authors use it less (Alka Saraogi for instance) than others, but none use it more

than Nirmal Verma does. Given the craftsmanship and controlled mastery of his

writing, this is very likely to have some meaning.

This tense is identical in form to the present (rather unaccomplished)

participle, except in the feminine plural

. This adjective-like form (nominal

category)has often been considered to convey more of a habitual sense than the

regular “general” or “habitual” imperfect

. However its occurrence in the incipit

(p. 8), quite representative of the other occurrences throughout the novel, does not

denote particularly habitual processes or states

. Its first occurrence in the fifth

paragraph (havâ chaltî) is chained directly on actualized imperfects (leTar-bâks

laTak rahâ thâ “the letter box was hanging/dangling”, jaise … jhûl rahâ ho “as

if … was swinging”), which describe the actual situation at a specific moment –

the time of departure. The short imperfect then describes a process that may be

repeated (“every time when the wind was blowing”, “at each wind blow”) but

within the short span of this specific sequence when everything is getting ready

for departure. During this limited duration the door may be repeatedly flapping in

the wind (to vah hilne lagtâ), but not more repeatedly than the previous long

imperfects in the above context, and the light sound it diffuses (ek dhîmî-sî âvâz

phail jâtî) inducing the pony to look around with its tired watery eyes (apnî thakî

dabdabâî ânkhoN se dekhne lagtâ), all in the short form of the imperfect, is

definitely not connected with a specifically habitual notion

However, this flapping in the wind introduces a future leitmotiv of the novel

and is then the beginning of an indistinct series. Moreover, this initial occurrence,

within the syntactic diptych of temporal-dependent and main clause, one clause

being located only in relation with the other, therefore none being externally

stabilized, marks the process, even if not really habitual, but de-temporalized in a

way. The serialization and the de-temporalization converge here to extract the

process out of the actualized temporal frame of the narration. Hence its effect of

“vagueness”, blurred contours, and poetic impressionism, which is consistent with

the formal nature of this tense (a participle, more nominal than verbal). It is

consistent, too, with the other participles in collocation with the various

imperfects of the text. The first paragraph contains a number of nominal and

participle clauses, very loosely related to the main verb, and indeed presented as

Where there is an additional nasalization (tnîN vs participle thî), similar to the simple past form

compared with the past (accomplished) participle. As a predicate, the form is homonyme to the

counterfactual mood (Montaut 2003, 2004b).

Van Olphen (1970) after Lienhard (1964) and Platts (1876 [1967]: 145) makes it a form

conveying habits, routine, remote past or duration. Similarly, Nespital (1980) labels it « imperfect

habitual » in his 39 « temporal grammemes ». “Routine imperfective” in McGregor, the form is

according to him used to describe “not actions presented as actually occurring, but actions

presented as those which would typically occur in given circumstances” (1976: 171). Kellogg

(1876: 233-234) is as often the most perceptive, both in calling the form an “indefinite imperfect”

and emphasizing the lack of “reference to any particular time”, with no equivalent in English, so

that “maiN âtâ hûN” means according to his translation as well “I ceme” as “I would come”.

Which, as is well known, are represented by a specifically marked form, the grammaticalized

« frequentative » aspect with karnâ (« do ») as an auxiliary following the main verb in the past

participle.

The printed translation « a tin letter box hung on one nail from the gate, like a dead bird

suspended uspside down. It creaked rustily, rocked by the wind », p. 4.

independent clauses (Sab taiyâr thâ. Bistar, poTliyâN – ek sûTkes The hold-all,

bundles -- a suitcase.)

, or clauses hanging in a sort of syntactic vacuum due to

the dashes (TaTTû ko râs thâme – “holding the reins of a pony”). All such devices

converge in producing an interruption of the narrative sequence, introducing a

kind of pause, on a flat, atone melodic level, detached from the running course of

events. The first chapter (p. 16) gives a more canonical illustration of the use of

both imperfects, since the short form occurs there for marking habits. But,

similarly, such habits are more habitual than the ones marked by the long form.

Both kids Kaya and Chote wait for their father to come at night and kiss them in

their bed. The whole page describes his coming and their state of mind. The first

paragraph contains two sequences in the short form, each chained on a previous

long form. The first centers on the actions performed by the father, the second on

Kaya’s expectations and fears. In between long forms occur, although the

temporal frame is exactly the same, because the viewpoint shifts towards the inner

state of the children. This subtle shift (here in the viewpoint, elsewhere in the

scenario described here, in the focus, the topic, the character or the actions

presented in the foreground) is enough to break the continuity created by the short

form as an indistinct, quasi nominal, static, theater of blurred events. The short

form creates this absolute absence of saliency so specific of Nirmal’s gift for

representing an impressionistic shadowy suggested world

One of the most representative poetic passages of the novel, when Kaya

comes back at night to her uncle’s house and finds the veranda lit like a magic

ship, also exhibits a similar mix of nominal clauses, dashes, and short imperfects

(along with comparative structures such as mentioned above):

vah zine ke pâs âî, to pâNv ThiThak gae. Sab kamroN kî battiyâN jal

rahî thîN.

Kâyâ ko ek bahut purânî kitâb kî foTo yâd ho âî – andhere pânî se

khaRâ jahâz. Navambar kî râtoN meN, jab havâ sâf hotî

, vah makân

sacmuc jahâz lagtâ thâ. Lambâ galiyârâ Dek-sâ dikhâî detâ – vahâN

hameshâ ek mez aur kuch ârâm-kursiiyâN paRî rahtî thiN. Garmî ke

dinoN meN vahâN câcâ ke mitr tâsh khelte the, khânâ-pînâ bhî vahâN

hotâ thâ. Lekin sitambar ke mahîne meN ve shahroN kî taraf cal dete.

Galiyârâ ujâR paR jâtâ. Mez, kursiyâN, phûloN ke gamle bîtî huî

garmiyoN ke khaNDahar-se dikhâî dete. Câcâ jab kabhî bâhar na

jâte, to der shâm tak vahâN baiThe rahte. Bilkul akele. Mez par ek

botal, ek gilâs, pânî kâ ek jag… aur sâmne SaNjaulî ki battiyâN… jo

do pahâRoN ke bîc jagmagâtî rahtîN. (p. 135)

Which is not reproduced in the printed translation : « Everything was ready : the hold-all,

bundles, and one suitcase », p. 3.

Even within a series of apparently similar reminiscences, as in page 17 when the little boy

remembers all the facts related to the automnal exodus from the hill station, all processes in the

short form are in a way inter-changeable, (utrâî shurû ho jâtî, cîR kî sûiyâN dikhâî detîN, pîlî paR

jâtîN, shahar ko dekhtâ), but the one in the long form, closing a quite long enumeration, relates to

a very salient fact (pitâ kâ cehrâ jhâNktâ thâ) : father’s face is such a saliency in Chote’s

imagination that it breaks the continuity and prevents the use of the short forms which blurs

differential features. Both sequences are respectedly as follows in K. Singh’s translation : « [Chote

saw what looked like swarms of ants] marching downhill in single files among yellowing pines,

away towards distant cities » and « behind which peered one face : his Babuji’s », p. 10.

This short form in a dependant clause is located by the long imperfect in the main clause.

She went near the stairs, and then felt her legs freeze. All the lights in

the rooms were lit.

Kaya remembered a picture in a very ancient book – a ship standing in

the dark sea. In the nights of November, when the air was pure, the

house really resembled a ship. The long veranda looked like a deck –

there were always a few chairs and a table there. In summer, Uncle’s

friends used to play cards there, eating and drinking was also served

there. But in September they used to leave for the city. The veranda

suddenly became deserted. Table, chairs, flower-pots looked like the

ruins/remnants of the gone/ past summer. Whenever Uncle did not go

out, he used to sit there late in the evening. Absolutely alone. A bottle

on the table, a glass, a jug of water… and the lights of Sanjauli in

front… Which glimmered (were glimmering) between two

mountains

The entire end of the sequence is in the short imperfect, as is the evocation of the

veranda like a deck in November in the beginning (after its initial location in the

long imperfect). In between is the evocation, similarly habitual in a similarly

vague past, during summer. The short forms occur right at the time of the exodus

of friends down to the city. They are maintained although the topic shifts from the

house to its owner and resident and to the landscape far away: what unites the

whole sequence is the atmosphere of solitude, emptiness and gravity, the magic

beauty of this deserted deck, which makes the house look like a ship in the ocean

at night, aloof and luminous (whereas the summer playful atmosphere, although

made of serial enumerations of actions and habits, does not fit in the mental frame

suggested by the opening comparison).

Such a technique of suspension – which delocalizes the sequence from the

temporal frame—is not purely a play of form used to subvert the classical

orientation of the narrative time, from a “before” to an “after” by means of

articulated steps. What is at stake here is this particular space out of /beyond the

rational and phenomenological points of reference which build the ordinary time-

space frame. The goal in Nirmal’s fiction as in Indian classical philosophy, of

being a writer, an artist, a “seer” (rishi), is to reach this literally extra-ordinary

time-space which is outside time-space while proceeding from time-space,

echoing Nirmal Verma’s obsessive longing for immanent transcendence

The same novel (LTC) contains some passages which almost theorize this

kind of longing or at least attach this perception to characters (the protagonist

Kaya for instance) who describe such feelings as true knowledge and

understanding. One of these takes place just after the death of the dog Ginny run

over by a train in a tunnel under the eyes of both Kaya and her mysterious cousin

Lama. The sequence is described in a combination of simple past (narrative

« Seeing the lit house, Kaya recalled a picture she had seen in an old book – of a ship anchored

in darkness. In the clear November night the house loooked like that ship. The long veranda with

folding chairs set out on it was a deck. In the summer Chacha played card here with his friends and

treated them to food and drink, but they left for the plains by September. With their departure, the

veranda started looking deserted. The empty chairs, the card table, the flowerpots : the ruins of a

lost summer. Chacha now sat among these alone, nursing his drink, looking at the Sanjauli lights

glimmering between two hills. » in K. Singh’s translation (p. 108-9).

Cf. conclusion. Cf. also Rushdie, in a totally different way, in Imaginary Homelands, specially

the chapter “Is Nothing sacred?”.

preterits) and progressive imperfect, before it suddenly shifts to the short

imperfect in describing the running of the dog toward the tunnel: “she did not look

aside (here nor there) as if she had found (present perfect) this mysterious treasure

she was looking for (progressive imperfect). Vah na udhar dekhtî na idhar, jaise

vah jo chipâ khazânâ dhûndh rahî thî use mil gayâ ho (49)

. That is already a

quite unusual use of the short imperfect, since the dog is obviously not described

in a routine activity but only during this single and last run towards the tunnel;

within which iteration is not ruled out but not prevailing in the meaning of the

predicate. And suddenly after this very unusual tense pattern, the narrative shifts

to the present: a present of an untemporal (untemporalized) Kaya since she is the

Kaya remembering for ever the event: yah main dekh saktî hûn, yâd kar saktî hûn,

duhârâ saktî hûn. Ginnî nîce utartî huî rail kî paTriyon ke âge, etc. “ This I can

see, I can remember, I can repeat. Ginny going down in front of the rails” (50)

Then again the narration uses the regular pattern for the imperfect (aur main

khaRî thî “and I was standing”), with an “I” that is dissociated in a way since the

girl listens to her own shriek as if it was not hers (mujhe kâfî hairânî huî ki main

khud bâhar se apnî cîkh sun rahî hûn, khud apne ko apne meN bhendte hue “I was

quite amazed [discovering] that I was myself hearing my own scream from

outside, tearing myself in myself”

). A very long sequence with nominal

expansions, describing the sudden silence after the disappearing of the roaring

smoking train, after which nothing was left (kuch bhî sheSh nahîn rahâ), only “a

speedless speed/ a motionless move/ goalless goal, where there is no time, no

death, no night, no day, only a life running between the rails, a ball of wool” (ek

gatihîn gati, jahân na samay hai, na mrityu, na rât na din, sirf paTriyon ke bîc

bhâgtî huî ek jân, ûn kâ golâ… (51)

. Then again, after this speedless speed,

directionless direction, leading to emptiness, transcending both the categories of

oriented space and time (no day nor night, no time) and death, the description

goes on in the present: jo smriti nahîn hai, vah smriti banne se pahle kî smriti hai,

jo mere lie ek bahut purânî rât ka svapn ban gayâ, “which is not memory, it is

memory before memory is born, which became for me the dream of a very ancient

night”

. This memory which is beyond memory since it is before the making of

memory, building for the girl a primeval night beyond the very concept of

beginning, before any process, before temporality itself which transforms the

things experienced into the memory of them, introduces a distinctly non narrative

dimension in the text. If the first occurrence of the present may be explained by

the grammar of comparison, this is not the case in the second clause, which is not

relative but independent (vah smriti banne se pahle kî smriti hai). The relative

« [She moved as if mesmerized], looking neither at her left nor right as though she had picked

up … the scent of the cache she had been looking for all her life »

« All this I can see again, recall, repeat to myself. There was Ginny crawling down the slope,

stopping short of the railway track » (p. 38 in K. Singh’s translation).

« In a daze I realized that I too was screaming – even as that scream tore through me, I felt

detached from myself, listening to it from the outside »

« leaving behind nothing, a nothingness, time spinning to a standstill, a living creature running

for its life between the rails, a little ball of wool » in K. Singh’s translation.

« all of which is a memory, a nightmare that keeps returning. I return to this day, and wait again

by the gaping tunnel : first there is the smoke, then the roar of the wheels, the impatient panicky

call from behind the bushes – Ginny ! Ginny ! Ginny ! But that, too, subsides with the dying

whimper » --

clauses that follow this equation (na…na: beyond time and death), although they

seem to link up with the narration in the long imperfect (“where I came back often

and often, sat down, waiting”: jahân main bâr-bâr lauT âtî thî, baiTh jâtî thî,

pratîkSâ kartî huî), in fact evoke a Kaya born after this traumatic experience and

its transcendence in the na… na space of “beyond”. Immediately after the

sequence of these two regular imperfects (habitual in the strong meaning since the

routine is a life long one for Kaya), short imperfects occur, disclosing the content

of the repeated drama, demarcated by a simple comma from the preceding

sequence: “the mouth of tunnel remained open, first came the smoke then the

noise of the wheels, then the anxious call coming from behind the bushes, Ginny,

Ginny, Ginny… which slowly changed into a dying whisper (surang kâ munh

khulâ rahtâ, pahle dhuân âtâ, phir pahiyon kâ shor, phir jhaRiyoN ke pîche se âtâ

huâ becain kâtar bulâvâ, Ginnî, Ginnî… jo dhîre-dhîre martî huî phusphusâhaT

men badal jâtâ.)

This rewriting / rehearsing, repeating the whole episode in a de-

temporalized way echoes the initial present: main dekh saktî hûn, yâd kar saktî

hûN, “I can see, I can remember”, in a quasi-performative way since this

particular remembering which is beyond memory amounts to the very act of

writing this precise sequence commented above. Performing the process of

remembering is describing the “remembered” event in the way it is described by

the de-temporalized and de-localized Kaya. Ordinary (psychological) memory

indeed requires a sequence, a first occurrence of the event, and a second ‘visit’ of

the event. A thing happens, and then is revisited, within the oriented sequence of

time. In contrast with this view, there is no first occurrence of the event here that

could be a beginning for the process of memory. This is why memory is said to

be before the making of memory. This is also why the clause is in the present,

obviously not a narrative present nor a general present. If there is a name for such

a tense in Nirmal, that would be the present of eternity, or the absolute present, as

he himself repeatedly names it in his essays on culture and art (cirantan

vartamân).

Memory, therefore writing (since Kaya, like Munnu, is, at times, speaking

in the first person and the present of discourse when she becomes a philosopher),

is transforming the event (that previously ‘happened’ within an ordered sequence

with a before and an after) into a non event, a never happened because always

already there: eternity: the contingent accident into absolute truth. It gives the

impression of a presentification

of facts in the mode of the absolute. So that we

could call this type of short imperfect the imperfect of eternity or of pure present

(cirantam present: eternal present).

Interestingly, the next paragraph after the remembering of the “accident”

leads to another conclusion of this metaphysical/biological experience: “then it

seemed to me that on that afternoon I had seen Lama for the first time” (tab mujhe

lagâ jaise us dupahar ko mainne pahlî bâr Lâmâ ko dekhâ hai)

. And this vision

of a familiar person “as if” it was the first time she was seen, as if we had never

seen her, of course echoes the lesson of seeing described in the beginning or the

paper.

Making present in the meaning the French philosopher Levinas gives to the word present.

Again a quite different translation in K. Singh’s : « A Lama I had not seen before rambled

along… ».

4. The background: cognitive frame in Nirmal Verma’s essays

A writer who writes a narrative but discards chains of events as

meaningless before the primeval memory, memory before memory, time which

allows no day no night, equated to non time, in the same way as motion can be

equated to motionlessness (gatihîn gati), looking till the point of evanescence of

the object seen in the seer, discovering the “I” up to the point where it stops being

“I” and identifies with “he”, who is cut off from the world and becomes a

nonseparate part of the whole world. This clearly sounds like a series of

unsolvable paradoxes, proceeding from an unsustainable stand when looked at

from the “western” rational and logical framework

. And clearly not from the

traditional “Indian” viewpoint. What is this viewpoint like, according to Nirmal

Verma?

Let us start with the first paradoxes, dealing with time. The

contemporaneousness (samkâlîntâ) of past within present, says Nirmal, is an

intrinsic part of traditional cultures, and has been particularly preserved in the

Indian ethos

. Those societies which are traditional in nature have absolutely no

need for the past. My feeling of being part (ansh) of the Indian culture does not

only rely on being linked with a piece of ground which is called India but rather

derives from the fact that I live in a time (samay) which is eternally

contemporaneous to me”: jo sahaj rûp se paramparâgat hotâ hai use atît kî koî

âvashyaktâ nahîN hai. Merî yah bhâvnâ ki main bhârtîya sanskriti kâ ang hûN,

keval islie nahïn hai ki main zamîn ke ek ansh se juRâ hûN jise bhârat kahte haiN

balki islie ki main ek aise samay meN jîtâ hûn jo cirantan rûp se merâ samkâlîn

hai (Dh 70-71), whereas cultural identity has been “given” to the West with

historical conscience, as the realization of culture as a collective historical culture

objectivable in churches, museums, dates, etc.. This uneasiness to separate past

from present and future is in fact a typical manifestation of what some call a

mythical mentality (mithakîya bodh). In another essay devoted to the relation of

“time, myth and reality”, Nirmal criticizes this vision of a time oriented and

progressing from past to future, which values change, and substitutes a natural

process like a never ending wheel (cakrâkâr, anavarat silsilâ) “which past and

future are both intertwined with the eternal/never-ending present. This does not

mean that the distinct categories of time do not exist but they do not move from a

beginning to an end, their motion takes both within a smooth global vision – a

motion (gati) that we can call a pause (virâm), where there remains no longer any

difference between motion (gati) and motionlessness (gatihîntâ). This ‘eternal

present’ is not something like a playful dream, nor is its consciousness limited to

prehistoric populations (adi-manuSya). This consciousness of time has always

been present in man (as the consciousness of nature (prakriti kâ bodh), but

historical time (aithihâsik samay) tries to suppress (dabne) and crush (kucalne)

this consciousness, this awareness (cetnâ, bodh) … although it never completely

succeeded in crushing it. Man always kept it alive as a dream and memory buried

If such a thing as « western » has any meaning

Even if this ethos may seem vague and more related to feelings than to objectivity (aspaST

bhâvnâ), undefined (aparibhâSit) or at least not allowing historical definitions (aithihâsik

paribhâSâen). Dh 70

in his intimate self, where distinctions of time, melt in the mystery and miracle of

death and rebirth”, (Sh 191-1); and this echoes what Freud has called the

suppressed impressions (dabe hue prabhâv) hidden in the layers of

subconsiousness

. It also reminds NV of the concept of memory in Proust, where

the flow of events condensed into a never ending present (nirantar vartamân)

where there is no beginning and no end. Such a conception of time can be called

the time consciousness of nature, that is especially strong in Hindu myth but in no

way the exclusive property of Indian culture. It is now the role of art in mythless

societies to fulfill this part, kalâ mithak kî bhûmikâ kamobesh adâ kar saktî hai

(Sh 192).

These reflexions can help as the philosophical background for the

conceptions alluded to in the novel in the form of some formulations like “gatihîn

gati” or the negative definition of “memory before memory”. They make

evocations of prehistoric, primeval times intelligible in the context of locating past

in relation to present (Kaya’s meditation).They also confirm that the classical

framework of space-time so indispensable for a rational thinking no longer hold

true, nor does the very notion of category (shreNî), distinction (bhed) and limit

(sîmâ), the latter two obviously constitutive of the first

Moreover, if we try to understand this feeling of “being part of the Indian

culture” (ansh), and read for instance the essays on colonization and

postcolonization entitled “Dhalân se utarte hue”

, we find a clear opposition

between a western(ized) objective rational concept of culture and an Indian

subjective empathic conception, which resisted to some extent the imposition of

rational objectivity with British cultural domination over India. First starting with

the classical metaphor of the body as a window that opens for the soul on the

knowable world in western philosophy, Nirmal brings against it the Indian

viewpoint, where the world is not seen through a window, but rather the window

is the world, as well as the soul. This means that the visible object (world) is not

distinct from the viewer (the soul) and the instrument (window). “The difference

between body and soul is as artificial in the Indian tradition as is the contradiction

(antarvirodh) between outside and inside. What our ancestors had seen from the

window centuries ago – trees, rivers, a vast unchanging landscape of animals and

men, is the same that I see, and I discover that I am not simply a spectator

(darshak) of this surroundings (paridrishya), rather am I in the middle of them

(unke bîc), an indifferentiate part (abhinn ansh) of them. There was a feeling of

union (sanlagnatâ kâ bhâv) which naturally conjoined me to the time and the

world (kâl aur vishv ke sâth). What matters is that this inner relation (andrûnî

sambandh) between the various components of the external surroundings is as

important as the feeling of oneness / onesoulness (ekâtmâ kî bhâvnâ) between the

viewer (driSTâ) and the viewed (drishya). The person who sees and the object

which is seen, their mutual relation (…) is a better key of alacrity (sphurtidâyak)

It can be added that Freud also, as Nirmal in the end of this essay, explicitly states the analogy

between this primitive feeling (oceanic feeling, refusing the limits between inside and outside,

here and there, past and present, etc .) and art (also love). Malaise dans la civilisation.

Both time and space perception relate to a form of consciousness (cetnâ) which is indivisible,

unbreakable (akhandit), which sees everything together, tearing through the limits of space and

time (jo kâl aur spes kî sîmâoN ko bhedkar sab kuch eksâth dekhtî hai, p. 16 “Kâl aur smriti”).

Hence Dh. in the references below. Similarly Sh. will refer to « Shatâbdî ke Dhalte hue Dhalân ».

and empathy or sympathy (âtmîyatâ) than the separation of viewer, viewed, man

and landscape into distinct fragments as does European culture (alag-alag

khandoN meN vibhâjit karke) (DH, p. 72). This is this whole mental state which

has been challenged by the British colonization.

With this kind of background we can now accept as “natural” (sahaj) the

lesson of seeing commented at the beginning of the paper

. The dissolution of the

object viewed (apple), allowing for a possible ambiguity (vah) of viewer and

viewed, points to this ekâtmatâ which is more philosophically expounded in the

essays, and echoes classical texts on knowledge and language (from Bhartrhari to

Abhinavagupta).

Such perceptions result in a very particular conception, too, of the self and

the other. To start with, the self in the traditional indian mental framework is both

ego (aham) and its wider form the self (âtman), and since this wider form

(brihattar rûp) is an all-encompassing form, including nature, animals, human

beings, trees and rivers, history and society

, there can be no conflict between

self and other: “the other is not in a relation of opposition (virodh) with the Indian

self, the others are part of its “I”, of its existence” (uske astitva, uske ‘maiN’ meN

shâmil haiN” (Dh p. 74). The world resulting from this assumingly ‘Indian’

tradition is indeed a world of inter-relation where everything is linked to and

intertwined with the whole universe, is part of it, is in a way it and radically

differs from the assumingly western world such as shown in the modern western

novel

dynamic motion but no orientation and no center

This world-view is inseparable from a state of detachment, again a word

and concept loosely related by the West with the traditional Indian way of life and

thought, most commonly with the sadhus who are its popular embodiment.

Characterizing this state, Nirmal uses two words, both traditionally specialized in

the description of such modes of life (or rather stages of life, namely the last two

ashramas, the eremitic vanaspratha and the ultimate detachment) aiming at the

most desired achievement, moksha (mukti)

, the freeing of the self from worldly

boundaries, and from the very consciousness of such boundaries. The words used

by Nirmal are nirvaiyaktik, detached, and taTasth, indifferent, along with their

nominal derivation nirvaiyaktitva, taTasthtâ. The first word is derived from vyakti,

individual, singular person. In Nirmal’s world, vyakti belongs to the world of

separate entities (monadic beings) and therefore is the opposite of manushya, man,

human being. Vyakti looks towards aham (ego), whereas manushya looks towards

aham

, and manushyatâ only enables one to reach sampûrNtâ, with the feeling of

wholeness or holism. Achieving the nirvaiyaktik state, literally disindividualized,

means transcending the boundaries of vyakti (egocentered), leaving the worldly

An exactly similar « lesson » is proposed by the abstract painter Raza (2002, 2004).

NV 1991 : « but there is a wider, superior form of ego, aham, which we can call âtman, which is

not in a relation of dual opposition with the phenomenal contingent world (samsar) : it is, in its

intrinsic truth, an element of this supreme absolute (param), which is somewhat larger, more

diffuse and universal than social reality, to which belongs the entire nature (prakriti), the whole of

living creatures, time and history ». See also « Kâl aur srijan », Dh.p. 13.

Either socio-historical and cut off from inner realities or ego-centered and cut off from others

and the world, a kind of double bind that Nirmal lengthily comments as the deadend of the modern

novel (Dh pp. 22-25).

Both words derive from a common root.

In this context, aham is defined as “ego kî chalnâoN aur bhrântiyoN” (Dh).

distinctive limits and social structures responsible for distinctive differences and

categories. It means reaching the world of connectedness where manushya,

humanity in a holistic sense (see below) is available. From this viewpoint, the

creator, creation and creature are no longer distinct entities, in the same way as the

viewer, viewed thing and process of vision are fused in oneness

. There is no

longer a contradiction between the cutting off from the world as in the episode of

Allahabad fair or of the drawing lesson, and get united to the whole universe, a

seemingly paradoxical path which is in fact deeply rooted in the high and low

Indian traditions of saintliness since the medieval bhakti traditions. Similarly,

taTasthtâ, often translated by “indifference”, impartiality, is derived from the

word taT, shore, bank of a river or seacoast, and being taTasth means standing on

the bank of the river, being on the shore, between earth and sea, on the limit

therefore neither in this nor that part of a divided space, connected with both. That

is how in Nirmal (as well as in the many various implicit traditions nourishing his

world-view, detachment

becomes equal to non-separateness and connectedness.

This process is obviously made more difficult to grasp in a translated language,

such concepts as aham/âtman, vyakti/manushya, nirvaiyaktik, sampûrN, akhaNDit,

being ill-rendered by English equivalents such as “I” ou “ego”, “self” or “soul”,

individual/man or human, detached, complete or holist. As rightly pointed by

Nirmal Verma in Bhârat and Europe (2000: 72-3), after Coomaraswamy he often

quotes, such “seminal concepts” are “untranslatable”, and their English translation

has often been the cause of deep misunderstandings.

Nirmal precisely defines such an opposition (vyakti / manushya, ikâî /

sampûrNtâ) in relation with the two mental attitudes he associates to respectively

the western (American) novel and specially Saul Bellow on one side, and Indian

literature on the other side. If we turn our back to the individualistic mentality of

the Western new novel, he says, “we will suddenly feel as if we leave the world of

units and arrive in the world of relations. Here all living creatures and animate

beings are intertwined, inter-related, and not only those animate beings who

breath but also the objects which externally/superficially seem to be inanimate. In

this intertwined world, the things are linked with the men, the men with the trees,

the trees with the animals, the animals with the flora /vegetation, the flora with the

sky, with the rain, with the air. A creation which is living, animate, breathing at

every second, vibrating – a creation complete within itself, within which humanity

too exists, but the important fact is that humanity is not in the center, is not

superior to everything, the measure of everything; it is only related and in its

relation(hood) it is not the autonomous unit which the individual has been

considered to be till now , on the contrary, it is complete/integral in exactly the

same way as the other living beings are complete in their relations, and in the

same way as man/ the human is not the support of creation, similarly the

Needless to emphasize the difficulties of such a view for a rational stand, difficulties echoed by

the metaphoric formulations in philosophy and mystics, since the very use of words and sentence

implies at least distinctive categories (subject / object, entity / process).

I emphasized the most radical contradiction (depiction of characters cut off from others, the

world) but the widely comment about solitude (akelâpan) favoured by many characters in Nirmal

is part of the cutting off too.

individual is not the support of man/the human, we leave the world of ends and

means and come to the world of holism”.

If Nirmal assigns such possibilities to literature, and more generally to art,

as opposed to the philosopher or the mystic, it is because art in a modern society

may assume a function similar to that of myth in a traditional society. This is

especially true for the conception of time and motion, so different in the non

modern and in the modern mentalities (cf. supra). Contemplating the stone

sculptures in Elephanta, Nirmal says: “in art there is this immobile speed (sthir

âveg) where we live in a single time / together, simultaneously, in time and past,

life and death, history and eternity (…). It is as if Shiv had centered on his face

the male power and the beauty of Shakti, both (centered) on a peaceful, detached,

fix point – in an extraordinary fusion

-- which is not simply a halt, but it is such

an invisible point (bindu) where all motions stop moving”

. As the mythic view-

point, the aesthetic view-point for Nirmal is connected with the wish for worldly

life and desire, made as much precious as the abstract path of the philosopher or

the mystic. Hence his protagonists, very much human, suffering and soothing their

pain by the discovery of contemplation, but never totally relinquishing the world

of humanity, pain and happiness, memory, events and forms (ie: the world of

maya). This passion of life (âveg) is simply transcended by decantation through

the fix gaze of a contemplating gaze into its stable, ultimate or focal, point (aTal

bindu).

Now, the last question is how much Indian is this world-view, and

symmetrically how much Western is the opposite one (the world of segmentation,

units, distinctive categories, logical oppositions, positive orientation, history, etc.).

In other words, how solid is the opposition East/West, terms that Nirmal keeps

using as commodities although he repeatedly suggests that the holistic view may

not be a unique property of India (Dh. p.24). It is obvious that the “western”

values have to a considerable degree been integrated in the Indian way of looking

– leading to a kind of schizophrenic stand, which the author illustrates in a

striking way when describing his visit to Bharat Bhavan in Bhopal: on one side

the tribal art displaying myth-like creations, on the other the avant-gardist wing

… to hamen sahsâ lagegâ mâno ham ikâiyon kî duniyâ se nikalkar sambandhon kî duniyâ men

cale âe hain. Yahân sab jîv aur prâNî ek-dûsre men antargumphit hain, anyonyâshrit hain, na keval

ve prâNî jo prâNvân hain, balki ve cîzen bhî jo ûpar se niSprâN (inanimate) dikhâyî detî hain. Is

antargumphit duniyâ men cîzen âdmiyon se juRî hain, âdmî peRon se, peR jânvaron se, jânvar

vansaspati se, aur vanaspati âkâsh se, bârish se, havâ se. Ek jîvant, prâNvân, pratipal sans letî,

spandit hotî huî sriSTi – apne men sampûrN sriSTi jiske bhîtar manushya bhî hai, kintu

mahatvapûrN bât yah hai ki manuSya sriSTi ke kendr men nahî hai, sarvopari nahîn hai, sab cîzon

kâ mâpdaND nahîn hai; vah sirf sambandhit hai aur anpne sambandh men vah svâyatt ikâî nahîn

hai, jise ab tak ham vyakti mânte âe the, balki vah vaise hî sampûrN hai jaise dûsre jîv apne

sambandhon men sampûrN hain, jis tarah manuSya sriSTi kâ dhyey nahîn hai usî tarah manuSya

kâ dhyey vyakti honâ nahîn hai, ham sâdhan aur sâdhyon kî duniyâ se nikalkar sampûrNtâ kî

duniyâ men â jâte hain (Dh p. 25-6).

Literally “absorption”: tanmaytâ, a technical term and concept in classical aesthetics.

Kalâ men vah sthir âveg hai, jahân ham ek sâth, ek hî samay men kâl aur kâlâtît, jîvan aur

mrityu, itihâs aur shâshvat men bâs karte haiN (…) Shiv ne mâno apne chehare par puruS ke

vaibhav aur shakti ke saundarya donon ko ek shânt, nirvaiyaktik, aTal bindu par kendrit kar lyâ hai

– ek asâdhâran tanmayatâ men – jo mahaz Thahrâv nahîn hai, balki vah ek aisâ adrishya bindu hai,

jahân sab gatiyân nishcal ho jâtî hain Dh p. 14.

displaying modernity quite similar to western contemporary art. A tentative

answer to this last question will serve as a conclusion for this stylistic study.

Conclusion

Now coming back to the type of negative statements quoted in the

introduction, we may see something else than existential doubt and westernization

behind the “vagueness” and shallowness of the characters. Superficially this

disregard for strongly marked figures and rich individualities against an equally

rich and significant social landscape echoes the Western Nouveau Roman or New

Wave style, as well as the Indian Nai Kahânî, which has been blamed for its

westernization

. Yet the specific contextualization of this fuzzy contours

disclosed above changes the meaning of this “vagueness” obtained from the low

characterization (lack of name, motivations, feelings) of the characters.

“The effect of all this vagueness, the critic of Publishers Weekly goes on in

1991, is a langorous passivity”. And this term is rightly emphasized by Prasenjit

Gupta (2002) in his introduction: “this langorous passivity sounds orientalist in its

overtones”. However, the way Gupta himself develops “orientalist”, by

emphasizing the “restraint” as a “manifestation of some essential indianness”

may surprise the reader familiar with Said’s notion of “orientalist”, but the end of

the quote he uses to illustrate this essential indianness makes it clearer: « Restraint

is the keynote of Verma’s fiction, reflecting the paradoxical nature of the Indian

character : emotional and often volatile, yet diffident to the point of repression »

Diffidence, emotionality, volatility (unreliability) indeed suit the conventional

stereotype of the oriental nature.

What is generally assumed under the tag « oriental », along with a

« langorous passivity », is indeed the feminine, or childish, or both, component in

a male subject, therefore weak, self-contradictory, unreliable, deceptive, illogic,

unfit for manly pursuits and unaware or not interested in the principle of reality,

displaying no ability for mastership and no interest in it. This negative image,

strongly present in the XIXth century colonial discourse, but also internalized in

the native reactions to it, relates in fact to a simplified polar opposition. The

masculine principle, polarized as superior, is identified with colonial domination,

and its « other » with the subjugated weaker principle (female principle, or

eventually child world). This construction is in no way specific to the Indian

scenery, as Ashish Nandy strongly demonstrated : from times immemorial, the

drive for mastery over men proceeds from « a world view which believes in the

absolute superiority of the human over the nonhuman and the subhuman, the

masculine over the feminine, the adult over the child, the historical over the

ahistorical, and the modern or progressive over the traditional or the savage »

(Nandy 1998 : VI). What may be more specifically indian is the complex

reference in both colonial and colonialized discourse and in the post-colonial

reactions to the various layers of the Hindu scriptures and traditions.

Kshatriyahood has for instance served as an image of masculinity to be contrasted

For a criticism of these judgments, see De Bruijn 2004.

This « langorous passivity » sounds Orientalist in its undertones ; even those who appreciate

Nirmal-ji’s fiction sometimes connect the restraint to some kind of essential Indianness ».

Quoted by P. Gupta from Aamer Hussein, « Visions of India, Voices of Exile », Times Literary

Supplement 46.19 (Oct. 11, 1991 : 22).

with the general « regression » and weakness of XIXth century India

. The wish

to regain male strength in some of the XIXth century reformist models is a clear

evidence of this internalization of the « oriental » stereotype as well as the

opposite attempt to acquire a suitable image according to western values, that is, a

more « manly » image : this whole process of redefining Indianness is based on

« the perception that the loss of masculinity and cultural regression of the Hindus

was due to the loss of the original Aryan qualities which they shared with the

Westerners » (Nandy 1998 : 25), which amounts to aknowledge the superiority of

the « Western » model

. This model ranks first manhood on the hierarchy then

womanhood and last effemination in man (klîbatva).

But the more interesting (and the really specifically « Indian ») reaction to

the colonial construction at that time is the Gandhian model. As noted by almost

all observers –Nandy quotes mainly Lannoy but others too – Gandhi had in his

physical aspect and use of images or symbols a strikingly childlike appearence.

His emphasis on passive disobedience too is more on the child/woman side than

on the man’s side of the colonial polar opposition mentioned above. Instead of

opposing the colonial image by asserting the manly values in Indian culture, he

subverts it in a double way : within the polar opposition woman/man, he grants

superiority to womanhood (nâritva) on manhood (purushatva), adding a third term

at the bottom of the hierarchy, which is « kâpurushatva », the lack of masculinity

or cowardice. The second and for our purpose the more interesting subversion is

the second model, which makes both purushatva and nâritva (equal on the

hierarchy) inferior to androgyny, the ability to transcend the man/woman

dichotomy. This construction, being borrowed from the great and little traditions

of saintliness in India, was really fit to the requirements of Indians in the early

XXth century, hence its strength (Nandy 1998 : 52

This is the model that we find subtly enacted in Nirmal’s protagonists and

main characters, none of them belonging to the clear-cut categories of adulthood

all of them diffusing this oft noticed « passivity ». It is a striking evidence that

both Gandhi and Nirmal in his essays display a very similar world-view in their

non modernity : for Gandhi too time is an all embracing present rather than a

succession of clearly oriented events, memory is a collective memory grounded

on a diffuse feeling of belonging rather than on a clearly preserved collection of

facts and things « of the past ». For him too, myth is indistinct from or superior to

historical chronology, « circuminventing, Nandy comments, the unilinear pathway

from primitivism to modernity, and from political immaturity to political

Whereas, as is now well-known, the « real » tradition in classical scriptures rather emphasized

the power of shakti and the female principle as primary and superior (Malamoud 2005).

See Nandy’s account of the « kshatriyazation » of Krishna in Bankimchandra (25sq), of the

herioization Ravana for his masculine vigour, his warriorhood, his sense of politics and historicity

(20sq), of Dayanand Saraswati’s constructs.

While the first one enabled Gandhi to ask his followers to display the courage of the passive

resistance and never fear physical or mental authority.

The two novels studied here have child or adolescent protagonists. The last one (Antim aranya,

the last forest, with a word for forest which specifically points to the forest as the

space of eremitic

life and detachment, beyond social categories and rules), stages an old dying man, and as the main

protagonist, his « governess » who is a young man.

adulthood ». For him too, a certain vagueness, as opposed to the clear objectivity

of rationality, characterizes the belonging to a traditional culture, Indian in fact

Although coined in distinctively Indian words and notions, the general

concepts of what is better called non modernity than pre-modernity are certainly

not exclusively Indian nor even Eastern. As Said has shown, this « other » which

the colonial discourse has constructed into the image of the non-west has once

been part of the medieval european consciousness. Although it is far more present

and still vivacious in India than in Europe in spite of the internalization of the

western model of modernity there, it may not have completely been uprooted in

Europe itself

, and this is why reading and translating Nirmal to-day in Europe is

also maintaining alive this part of our non modern selves : reading our own story

against the grain of the modernist revolution and postmodernist market hegemony.

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