Excuse me, your border is perforated

In the vast, enigmatic world of vernacular literature lies the opportunity to tell our stories and listen to those of others

0ne passionate s cholar.

1 2 Indian wr iters. 24 Australian \\•Titers. Inmunerable stories. Th.is was the A u stralia India Literatures International Forum (AILIF), held at our magnificent house of books, the Scace Library of r ew South Wales from September 4 to 6, 2012. The legen dary writer and actor Girish Ka.mad led a stellar contingent of writers from India who shared the space with many Australian writers including award wi nning Indigenous wr iters Alexis Wright and Ali Cobby E ckermann.

A love affair and the birth of AILIF

Before we continue w ith the story of AILIF, we muse first tel1 the story of how AILlF was born.

Tc is in part, the story o f a Dell1i girl, Dr Mridula Nath Chakraborty from the Writing and Society R esearcl1 Ce n tre (WS RC) at the Unive rsity of Western Sydney (U\X7S), t he passi on and brains behind AILIF. The story b ears celling because it reaffirms the value of multilingualism and the value of a ground -b reaking event such as 1ULIF. It began when Dr C h akraborty or Mridula as she is familiarly called, became fascinated by the work of the ce lebrated Hindi write r, Munshi Premchand when smdying in an Engli sh medium school in Ddhi. Up on the insistence of her m other, she d1en learnt co read and write in her mother tongue, Bengali. The story con tinued when Mrid ufa began wo r king with Katha, the acclaimed publishing house chat specializes i.o translations, and she feU d eeply in love with Indian literature in translation, findi ng a " renewed se nse of d1e famastically expressive intricacies and idio m s of the vernacula r to ngues, the regi onal la nguages o f India". Howe ve r, it is u pon her arrival in Australia that the p lot chickens. Mridula's e loquent words tell us of a journey of revel ation, one chat many of us have undertaken as lnd ia.n immigrants co Aus u-alia, finding d1at A ltStralia is truly multilingual, w i d1 almost 400 languages spoken h ere by people of 270 ancestries. With the backing of t he WSRC at UWS, and its very suppo r tive director Prof Anthony Uhlmann, she was spurred onto action.

"I came co chis countr y four years ago wi d1 the usual stereotype of it being a monolingu al nation. Bur by simply taking a mun, I would encounter d1e so unds and la nguages from all corners of che world in all meir energy and urgency," she revealed '1 was increasin gly aware of the many indigenous languages that resound in d1is continent. Eve n as I enjoy th e spectacula r style and success of lndia.n writing i.n Engl ish, I knew drnt 1 wanted co showcase vernacu la r L1dian literamre in all its richness. Most of d1e wor ld knows and celebrates Indian w riting in English, but does nor really have any sense of the breadd1 and depth of its 22 official regional languages and 300 dialects, or the li t eratures d1at Aourish in d1em. This is what I wanted to bring to Australia AILIF is a coming together o f these sou.ndscapes, these multifarious tongues of the world, from m y home country to this one Th e scale was large to begin wid1; but it was aston ishing to discover d1e many Australian voices 1 found in the process of bri.oging m y rwo worlds cogether. I knew mac I would have to pick and choose between d1e Indian languages, but doing d1e same with Aus tralian literauu e was even m ore cliJficult, given d1e range of established and equally talented emerging voices I kept finding".

Potent perforations

NS Madhavan, the muchadmired Malayalam writer, in bis presentation at AILIF, m emorably spoke of d1e Malayalam lan guage as being perforated. The image of a perforated l angu age, bringing co mind d1e borders of the o ld dot matrix printer paper or a fishing net, is so potent d1ar it immediately lays bare me primacy and inevitability of perforation in human existen ce, as is in the nam.ral "vorld around us. It reminds us chat like Malayalam, our lives, stories, and indeed all our languages are perforated, fuU of necessary and welcoming holes, where currems of influence from the East, West, North, and Soud1, from above, from be low, from all a.round, m ay b low in and blow out, endlessly regen erating and res hap ing the very holes d1em selves

For rnose of us involved wirn creating new sto ri es of Ausu-alia's m ul ticulnual reality, d1e idea of perforations also reminds us o f d1e primacy of dive rsi ty, and we app laud d1e role p layed b y AILlF in celebrating d1is.

"AfLIF is a salutary rem inder d1at like genetic diversity, we need linguistic diversity, o r el se the h uma n tongue will w id1er away and perish lil,e a single strand of DNA," s aid Mr idula ''At a cime when Asia is becoming increasingly important to Australia, and lndian migration is on di e rise here, it is important co remember that l.ndia exists in m yriad tongues, religion s, culmres and modalities. Indian writing in English usually offers a metropolitan vi ew of me contrasts and contradictions of d1e vase subcontinent. Vern acular literature offers a valu ab l e way of understa nding these nuanced m ul tiplicities of India and ope n s die w in dow to a textured, layered wo rld ".

She went on, "Outs id e of crjcket, Auscralia occup ies a lj m ited space in die Inruan imagination. As bilateral relations between the two nations increase in coming decades, it will be critical co Lmderstand what makes d1i s is land nation tick What better way to ente r this world than through its aboriginal, indigen o u s and multicultural Eteratures, which tell uruque stories about the nation to itself and die world?"

The oth er d,j11g about pe rforations is that diey cru1 erase bound acies and facilitate exchange. Mamang Dru from Arunachal Pradesh reminded us abou t die numinous exchange b etwee n d1e human an d the non -human, of talking co the land a nd liste ning as d1e land talks back. Bern Le Hum, die Inclian-English -Australian wciter of chree ac clrum ed novels, r eminded LIS of those pcimal perfora tio n s between fact ru1d fiction itself.

"The nunure yo u wri te abou t a p lace it becomes fictional," she said.

Prabodh Parikh's enchanting prese n tation on die art of Tagore poin ted to exchanges widiin die self, to the overflow of self while e rasing the self. Mah m ood Farooqui's enthralling lecturede m onstration of Dastangoi, an a ncient form of epic srorytelling in Urdu, pointed, aniong otli er things, co perforations of formal co nve nti o n s to revive ru1d rei nve nt failing performative fo rm s. Sharo n Rundle ru1d Meenakshi Bharat have been creatively perforating literar y borders between India and Australia widi di cir muchcommended emced anthologies o f shore srories b y Inman md Australian wri cers, A lim r;hores (20 12) and Fear Facto,·: Terror lucognito (2010)

Dhoti borders and other challenges

AILIF was also a space where die dirt could be gadiered from under the carpet and brough t o nce more, into me light. CS Lakshmi (A mbai) recounted the times whe n s he was used to being patro ruzed and msmisse cl b y male wri ters \vho would complement her on her looks or h e r cloch es, rather than o n her wri ting So she decided ro give diem a taste of dieir own medkine, saying, "The border of your dhoti is re ally beautiful! Where d id yo u buy it? I would also like to buy one fo r my h usband."

The appreciarive laugh ter from die aumence md n ot mean that women writer s scorn genuine and well-phrased compliments; instead iliac such compliments must not come at di e exp e n se of recognizing and val ui ng die acnial writing itself.

\'<Then Gogu Sbyamala spoke very m ovingly and with fie rce INDIAN inte lligence about the struggles, triwnphs, everyday joys and sorrows of d1e Da]jr peop le of Telangana, there we re few dry eyes in the aurue n ce She spoke of language bein g highl y politicized , and of how she w r ites in ru1 ind igenous, ' authentic' Telegu th at is vastly d ifferent from die Sanskritised Telegu spoken by d1e powers that be Our languages are perforated differently by the different p olitics of die places i11 which they are spoken. So while in Lima, Sa n skrit may be the language of oppress ion and erasure for som e; in Australia, it is a language diat maybe used to resist o ppressio n and erasure, deli berately m a r king diversity a nd clainllng Jegi rimacy wid1ii1 a multicultural socie ty, as the Limaa Austrajjan poet MjcJ1eUe Ca h ill told us through her precise and illuminati n g poetr y.

KynpbruTI

Sing Nongkynr ih from Jl.ilegb alaya, in enlighterung and e n tercruning the audknce with his poem about a 'cantanke rous momer', remjnded us of die power of words and d1e responsibility wid1 whkb mey must be bandied.

Th e politics of die publis lung world md not go Lmremarked.

Kab ita Dbara, founder of Brass

Mo n key Books, an Anstralian publishlng house chat rum s to publish writi n g from India in Australia, srud she was "l ooki ng for scories ilia c show how sinillar we are rather than how d ifferent we are". Yet sh e and Mita Kapm from Siyahl Literary Agency - a w r it er he r self, spoke of the challenges they faced widi die dearm of lfrerary se nsitivity and professionali sm of some publishers and booksellers in fodia a nd elsewhere Sharan K ltmar Lim bale, die Da]j t wcirer and activist wciting in Marami pointed to an economy of oppression with in publislung He spoke of me challenges faced by Dalit w r iters trying to gee published and prud in an industq d ominated by upper castes. "If anything is revolutionary (in a manuscript), me y just delete it," he said. Uday Prakash , the celebrated H indi wri t er, spo ke of t he majority of writers who are very poorly paid by mru1y roguish Indian publishers.

Storytellers of our culture

As a growing presence in Australia, we in che Indian Australian community want to see ourselves in the mirror of me Australjan sto ry What d oes it m ea n to be an Australian?

Does b eing Indian A u stralian lit into that story? Wri ters are die storytelle rs o f our culmre, be it Indian, Austra]jru,, or fodia nAustralian. The AILIF panel chaired by Chciscopher Cyrill, comprising emerging Indian Australian write rs such as ivfarusha Amin , Aashish Kaul, Chris Raja, Kuna! Shar m a, and dus wr iter, try co cell die stories of lndian Australians. Ia doing so we are trying to write ourselves into the larger mulriculmral, mul tili n g ual Austra]jan st ory, wri ting back but also writing fo rward , w riting ou rse lves into di is Australian landscape w lille being mindful of course, cha t it always was ru1cl always wiU be, Aboriginal land Finally, Mridula's wo rd s amplify the whispers arQLmd d1e State Libra r y dur ing All.IF, wher e appreciative mul tilingual con ve rsations repeatedly as ked for m ore sucl, encounters, mor e such for l.adims and Austra]jans to meet, ro perforate bo rd ers both linguistic and culnual.

"I would like to see, coming out of AILIF, tran slations of Inman literature into Engjjsh; die Indian community in Australia can make a significant co ntributio n by sponsoring and funmng tbe translation and pu blica tions of such books," she srud. "On che other side, I would like to see t he stereotypes about Auscra]ja being b roke n in India diroug h tran slatio n s o f aborigina l, indjgenous ru1d multicultural Australian literam re into me various Inma n lmguages There bas been a clamour to have tlus forum become an annual event in Aus t ra]ja: chi s is very much possible given d1e d ive rsity of me la nguages and li teramres in both c o untries. Howeve r, t he big a id co make tlus vision happen will be financial support. Th ere is enough good will and momentum at di is moment to make AILIF go places : we sho uld r ide di e wave and make th is happen!"

The re is a world om there, in here, wruting for our scocies. All tlrnt is left is for us co create diem