Cold Enough for Snow

 

"I had one vague, exhausted thought that perhaps it was all right not to understand all things, but simply to see and hold them".

When an author writes what you have been thinking about, you get a little friendlier with the author, and the book begins to feel extra nice. 

Possibly as a loose extension of that quote, I have begun to appreciate books without a plot, books where I care less about the names of characters or where they hail from and like to engross myself in observing what they do. The comfort to volitionally pick such books got real with Jhumpa Lahiri's Whereabouts. The writing, I feel, in such books is delicate, clearly rejuvenating, as if the words here have an additional job of calming the reader who's annoyed at the lack of a plot. 

The New York Times reviews Cold Enough for Snow by Jessica Au with the following headline - A Mother and Daughter go sightseeing. They see each other. Now this's a crude one line approximation of this deceptively simple and beautiful novella.

A daughter (the unnamed narrator) and her mother travel to Tokyo and as they see different sites, a swirl of memories - memories they remember clearly, others safely forgotten and many they pretend are hazy, envelopes them gently. 

"Earlier in the year, I had asked her to come with me on a trip to Japan. We did not live in the same city anymore, and had never really been away together as adults, but I was beginning to feel that it was important, for reasons I could not yet name".

Walking through the cemetery at Aoyama, visiting a large outdoor museum in Koganei Park, a church in Osaka, over admiring artwork, having food and reading horoscopes, over little conversations, often punctuated by deep silences, the mother and daughter share many things between them and convey quite a lot (though not explicitly) to us readers. The daughter reflects on her university days, her first job as a waitress in the restaurant, her relationship with her boyfriend, her thoughts on having children. 

She mulls over the frugality she feels she has inherited from her mother, the need to be desired even when she isn't sure if she really likes the person who desires her, the urge to be diligent and perfect even when no one's steadfast about it. 

However, not all is self introspection as the love story of her maternal uncle, the tantrums her elder sister threw as a kid at their maternal grandfather's funeral, a visit to her boyfriend's father's house and kayaking across a crater lake add layers. 

The writing is highly evocative creating a montage of images. The attention to detail is immaculate - the description of a nature trail, a convenience store highly elaborate. However, this doesn't make the read cumbersome for it is of the 'right' length. There is a mild philosophical touch to the words, for instance -

 "Nowadays, she said, people were hungry to know everything, thinking that they could understand it all, as if enlightenment were just around the corner. But, she said, in fact there was no control, and understanding would not lessen any pain. The best we could do in this life was to pass through it, like smoke through the branches, suffering, until we either reached a state of nothingness, or else suffered elsewhere".

"By looking indirectly at the thing they wanted to focus on, they were sometimes able to see it even more clearly than with their own eyes." 

Cold Enough for Snow through the ruminations of a daughter-mother duo makes us see/recall some of our own memories clearly, making them 'warm enough' for us to embrace.

On a River's Bank

On a River’s Bank by A Madhavan, translated from Tamil by M Vijayalakshmi, explores environmental degradation as a result of over exploitation of nature. Published in 1974 as Punalum Manalum, it’s an early, notable instance of what is now termed as ‘eco-fiction’. 

The novella is set in Vallamedu (a place near Trivandrum as hinted by the mention of Marudan Kuzhi dam), the site of confluence of two rivers - Kottaiyaru and Perumanaiyaru. Sand harvesting is the most important commercial activity for the inhabitants on the riverfront. 

Angusami, a well respected 50 yr old man who knows the river like the back of his hand, a star employee of the sand contractor for several years; Damodaran, a diligent and well-mannered young man who’s like a son to Angusami; Panki, a young woman & Angusami’s step daughter who’s an object of revulsion for her ugly looks are the three principal characters. 

Panki labours hard at the riverfront and at home yet elicits nothing but extreme hatred from Angusami. Damodaran, her only friend, serves as a bridge between her and Angusami. Over time, sand dredging alters the river's course and its banks shrink. Swelling menacingly under torrential rain, the river threatens to take away the life it nurtures.

The river, a primary force in steering the narrative forward, described in vivid detail is a character too. It is interesting to note how its vagaries match Angusami’s moods - its bountiful flow mirroring the content and blissful life he spent with his beloved wife Tangammai until she died of smallpox, its eddies reflect the emotional abyss he falls into when incapacitated by a shoulder dislocation injury. The Madan Sami (the river God) festival, flora and fauna terms enhance the local flavor. That the women characters here only embody a man’s love and hatred, the excessive stress on women's looks, a whole village fretting about ugly-faced Panki’s marriage may feel annoying and dated.

For the way nature’s vagaries, its wrath are explored dwelling on human relationships, On a River’s Bank by A Madhavan reminded me strongly of Dweepa by Na D’Souza, translated from Kannada by Susheela Punitha. The setting (the river) is just as important (maybe even more) as the principal human characters and for this reason, the book reminded me of Neela Padmanabhan’s Where the Lord Sleeps. Interestingly, both A Madhavan and Neela Padmanabhan are from the same region, the former born in Trivandrum, his parents hailed from Kanyakumari and the latter was born in Nagercoil, both the authors were known for their literary prowess in Malayalam and Tamil.

That continuous sand dredging alters a river’s course and degrades it beyond repair is something I have witnessed in the case of Bharathapuzha river that flows through my maternal grandmother’s town in Kerala. That the book written back in 1974 focused on this important environmental issue is pretty impressive. Lovers of Amitav Ghosh’s fiction on climate change/ecological issues now have a work to turn attention to from the arena of Indian translated literature in On a River’s Bank by A Madhavan, thanks to Ratna Books. 

With an end that leaves room for contemplation, On a River’s Bank clearly indicates that when man begins to plunder, nature can get ruthless.