A constantly changing writing curve

Understanding and experiencing the pulse of a country and putting this into words is a task for a skilled travel writer

BY LEANNE WOODWARD

For those who have thought about writing, finding inspiration for stories is often half the challenge. But as I found at the Australian Festival of Writing hosted by Melbourne University, when you integrate themes from your own travel experiences, coming up with ideas is the last problem you encounter.

There is a world of stories out there, of different people you meet, of societies and cultural habits, even of the bizarre. You can write about different social issues, how people relate and share lives, understanding of other people’s habits, festivals, and celebrations, and the trials and tribulations that accompany travel.

Presenters at the Festival of Travel Writing included reporters, journalists and writers such as Joe Hildebrand, Christopher Kremmer, Alex Landragin, Claire Scobie and Josiane Behmoiras. Each of these particular presenters spoke about a common theme, of incorporating in their writings their travel experiences in India, or the other way around, the travel experiences of Indian people in Australia.

I expected to hear grand stories of festivals, stories of the weird and wonderful, and stories of the people they had met. There was some of this, but more so these writers spoke of their journey and efforts in trying to understand these experiences. There was a feeling that when travelling to

Australia or India for the first time, you might as well forget any preset notions of what you think the country or people may be like. I gathered from these particular writers, that it doesn’t take long for some, if not all, of these notions to be quashed, and for many new ideas to prevail. And once you think you know and understand a place and people, then you are again presented with new ideas and notions, and with deeper revelations. These could be complete contradictions to what you, as the traveller, had originally thought.

Here lies the difficulty in writing about a place in which you had not grown up, and the characters that live there. How do you portray these identities and from what perspective? How well do you need to understand what you are attempting to portray to be true to the actuality, while avoiding making generalizations and false judgements.

Each of these presenters spoke of their efforts to develop a better understanding of themes, ideas and places about which they had written. To do this they immersed themselves in the resident society, participated in local events, local work and activities with people and families, learned from local religion, tried to understand politics, and read local media and texts. For some this was an impossible search, as their attempt to find the reason for things was, seemingly endless.

When talking about their own published works about India/ Australia, none of these authors claimed their works as perfect, or that they had included every element possible. On the other hand, they realised that there is always more you can know to a story. Their stories presented were not a ‘be all and end all’ representation, rather a moment in their own continuous learning process.

Author Christopher Kramer describes his reasons for writing: “to understand, to explore, obtain wisdom, enlightenment, to document history, to engage others, to fulfil curiosity and to compare and put forward ideas”.

Christopher Kremmer, journalist and author of Carpet Wars, Bandit Palace and Inhaling Mahatma has extensive experience in India. At 32, he got a job as a journalist working in India and south Asia, working for ten years in the region and chasing the lessthan-exotic Asia, following a trail of tumultuous events, politics, rebellions, famines and natural disasters as part of his journalistic work. Regardless, he describes India as a place of tremendous optimism and resilience.

Christopher shared a wellremembered experience of meeting with former Prime Minister Rajeev Gandhi back in 1991, who was full of hope, as he remembers clearly. Only a few days following their meeting, Gandhi was assassinated by a woman suicide bomber. This story and others just as memorable, took Christopher Kremmer on a hopeless quest to reconcile and to find reason.

Christopher returned to Australia in 2002, and now shares his life with his Indian born wife. But after all this, and experiencing so much, having delved deep into India’s politics, wisdom, history, events and society, he still doesn’t fully understand India.

Likewise, author Josiane

Behmoiras has had several opportunities in her life to experience India. For her India is a huge puzzle, for everything you will find a reason, and for every reason, another reason!

Josiane is a novelist currently working on two projects that incorporate Indian themes. In the first, she talks about some of the many cultural exchanges between Australia and India, and the experiences of the people involved. The second project is a series of fiction novels of travellers experience when visiting Delhi. “Often people travel so that they can have those original elusive experiences. They leave their home with many expectations,” she said, admitting that she travelled to India when young and came back horrified and shocked in many ways. She returned later, living and working with a local family and more recently, since her daughter is now married to a Punjabi man, she visited India for family reasons. Each subsequent visit has shown Josiane India from a different angle, developing her understanding, respect and obviously her passion, as is reflected in her projects.

From another perspective, Joe Hildebrand, a writer for the Daily Telegraph has recently been involved in hosting a TV series called ‘Dumb, Drunk and Racist’. In this series, a group of Indian youths from various backgrounds visit and travel within Australia. The aim of the show is to see if Australia lives up to its reputation of being dumb, drunk and racist.

The visiting Indians travelled to various places, met different Australians and participated in activities that demonstrated the good and bad sides of Australia.

One particular activity from the show that Joe shared involved showing the Indians footage of the Cronulla riot, an incident of violence fuelled by racial anger, which moved Amir, a 21 year old Punjabi Sikh law student, to tears. Joe remembered wondering why Amir was so affected since he had heard of student protests in Punjab, stories of stabbings and of the Golden Temple massacre incident. Amir explained, “Yes, people kill in India all the time, but they don’t enjoy it.”

Joe had reported on the Cronulla riots for the Daily Telegraph at that time, so he knew the event well. Having grown up in multicultural Dandenong, it never occurred to him that the extent of racism in the riots were a part of the Australian urban environment. After the riots, Joe wondered if there was “actually a level of racist toxicity present in the Australian people?” The Indian visitors were genuinely worried as they had heard of attacks on cab drivers in Melbourne and Australians abusing Indians at call centres. Their expectations of Australia had been shaped by these stories and more; in exactly the same way as an Australian’s expectation of India is also shaped.

All the presenters demonstrated that having your ‘own’ travel experience will lead you to a better understanding and respect for a place and people, because relying on other people stories and on media is not enough to really find out how things are. Even so, it appears that the more you delve into a country, the more unceasing diversity you will find, and the less you can rely on your judgements or expectations.