All snow and warm

The author's own unconscious input as a literary artist keeps the momentum going.Raji Narasimhan

March 03, 2012 08:30 pm | Updated 08:31 pm IST

To Kill a Snow Dragonfly, Sharad P. Paul, Fourth Estate (Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers) Rs.399.

To Kill a Snow Dragonfly, Sharad P. Paul, Fourth Estate (Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers) Rs.399.

“There are times when one must negotiate a future with the past.” That reflection by the narrator of this haunting story about the Tibetan diaspora, sums up the spirit in which he perceives this event.

How exactly is this grafting of the future with the past to be carried out? Lobsang, the narrator's Tibetan friend, a refugee studying in the Tibet-friendly atmosphere of Dharamsala to become a tantric lama like his grandfather, says, it has to be done by reawakening in the minds of the Tibetan youth a love for their language and thereby stemming their “lemming-like rush to become Americanised”.

The narrator asks him if the Tibetan refugees hated the Chinese. In answer, he refutes, in more evocative and politically evolved tones, hatred as a means of abolishing hatred. People defeated by powerful nations do not “seek a geographical identity but an understanding of the map of our human hearts”.

That goes home. It is a form of non-violent protest. And the basic idea of non-violent protest has by now got absorbed into strategies of expressing dissent, as a feasible and potent mode of pressing the opponent into a listening, dialoguing stance.

Narrator's depiction

But beyond this approbation of dialectics, Lobsang's position does not get the reader's willing suspension of disbelief as the narrator's depiction of the snows of Tibet does. The snow is an omniscient presence in the book, powerful and compassionate, enthralling and ambassadorial, like the cloud of Kalidas's Meghadoot . Lobsang's dialectics do not win you over as the snow does. And this winning over is needed in the interests of the structural cohesion of the book.

Essentially, the book is a recall. But a recall need not be diary-like. Lobsang is recounting to the author the episodes of his and his family's life in occupied Tibet and his escape to India with his sister, Bhunchung. He may have related the tantric powers of his grandfather and his conversing with the snow, which are the body of the book. But he could not have made them fable-like as they are in the book. For Lobsang, who is a hard-core Tibetan believer, the fabulous and the real are a continuum, not separate. The fabulous, fairy tale element which pervades the grandfather's dialogues with the snow in the book is the author's own unconscious input as a literary artist. Couldn't a plaintive note of wish-fulfillment matching this fairy tale quality, have been introduced into Lobsang's pronouncement that the Chinese dragon too would, one day, having eaten its fill, look for love and for genuine friendship from fellow countries?

Lobsang's kind of thinking has to in some way prevail over current political/popular attitudes to China, at least here in this country. So shot through are these with negative feelings that large-hearted references to the Tibet situation in literary contexts have to win a tolerant, approving reception over and above these feelings. Prevailing politics can intrude into the reader's mind. And this intrusion can make the writing seem lacking in forethought. It can make it open to the charge of not anticipating the hurdles present in carrying the reader along with Lobsang's way of thinking. It can, in effect, make the writing seem lost of muscle.

It is a pity that this should have happened to sections of the book. The rapture invoked by it stays. But the discomfort caused by Lobsang's idealistic/ futuristic utterances jab at the rapture — like the pea in the mattress jabbing through the soft padding. Yet they don't negate it. It lingers. The book triumphs in the ultimate reckoning.

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