Ac­com­pa­ny­ing Ira Math­ur to the pre­sen­ta­tion of her mem­oir, Love the Dark Days at the JLF.

Tere­sa White

The Jaipur whirl is now be­hind us. Imshah left for the US to sup­port his moth­er in a med­ical pro­ce­dure. Ira and I have been float­ing amongst the foothills of the Hi­malayas in Sri­na­gar, Kash­mir. Dolce far niente (the sweet­ness of do­ing noth­ing).

The crisp, clear moun­tain air and the over­all qui­etude have pro­vid­ed the per­fect space for re­cal­i­bra­tion and ret­ro­spec­tion.

With dis­tance and al­ti­tude, I have been able to con­sid­er the JLF’s of­fer­ings and what I have tak­en away.

The fes­ti­val’s in­au­gur­al ad­dress re­gard­ed con­ti­nu­ity and change, with the keynote de­liv­ered by No­bel lau­re­ate Ven­ki Ra­makr­ish­nan. Ra­makr­ish­nan spoke of bridg­ing the di­vide be­tween the arts and sci­ences, ground­ing his call to ac­tion in CP Snow’s sem­i­nal 1959 lec­ture and lament, “The Two Cul­tures”. His premise, like Snow’s, is that sci­ence and the hu­man­i­ties rep­re­sent “the whole in­tel­lec­tu­al life of West­ern So­ci­ety” but have been es­tranged from each oth­er and, thus, the po­ten­tial for ei­ther field to im­prove our world is con­strained.

This con­cern may sound on point to­day with all that’s go­ing on in the world, but this has long been a fea­ture of Trinida­di­an “elite ed­u­ca­tion” (though tra­di­tion­al­ly less so of QRC and Bish­op’s). Back home, the bi­fur­ca­tion is ce­ment­ed at 14–15 years, and the hu­man­i­ties are de­cid­ed­ly “the soft op­tion.”

By con­trast, my hus­band went to a fa­mous­ly good school in Eng­land (it usu­al­ly places in the Top 10 of the na­tion’s league ta­bles), he did about 14 CXC equiv­a­lents, and any no­tion that the arts were for the less aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly gift­ed would have been viewed ini­tial­ly with sur­prise and then with dis­dain.

All schol­ar­ship has the po­ten­tial to be mu­tu­al­ly com­ple­men­tary. The so­cial sci­ences lend weight to the analy­sis of sta­tis­ti­cal da­ta. The broad in­fer­ences af­ford­ed by a ground­ing in Lit­er­a­ture, for ex­am­ple, cast light on be­hav­iour­al nu­ance and hu­man com­plex­i­ty. It’s all good.

One of the fes­ti­val’s tri­umvi­rate, William Dal­rym­ple, sug­gest­ed that this bridg­ing be­tween the dis­ci­plines should be the 2025 JLF’s theme, an idea that he re­turned to through­out. And, though it is one of my favourite bug­bears, it wasn’t what emerged for me as my main take­away. Though it does have a strong bear­ing on how things played out.

Through­out the fes­ti­val, my thoughts con­tin­u­ous­ly re­turned to pos­ter­i­ty (all fu­ture gen­er­a­tions of peo­ple) and lega­cy (the long-last­ing im­pact of things that have tak­en place), and how those things all tie up in­to what it means to be hu­man.

In oth­er words, how, as ra­tio­nal and so­cial an­i­mals, we put our­selves at the cen­tre of every­thing (even when we are claim­ing not to), how we re­ly up­on each oth­er, how we ex­plore our in­ner lives and out­er en­vi­ron­ments, how we make mean­ing of the com­plex­i­ties that we nav­i­gate, how we ex­pe­ri­ence em­pa­thy, awe and tran­scen­dence, how we fos­ter com­pas­sion (and, by ex­ten­sion, sow hate), how we ex­press our unique per­spec­tives, how we sur­vive and thrive, how our acts of self-dis­cov­ery can make the world a bet­ter place for our kind—hu­mankind.

On that first day, I al­so went to hear Katy Hes­sel speak at a ses­sion ti­tled, “Wife­dom and the Lit­er­ary Soror­i­ty”. I had bought her book, The Sto­ry of Art With­out Men, for my daugh­ter Pop­py a few years ago when it first came out, and Pop­py had thor­ough­ly en­joyed it.

Hes­sel raised an im­por­tant point—

even when women artists were cel­e­brat­ed in their own times, their lega­cy of­ten fad­ed. Their great­ness was not kept alive in the pub­lic con­scious­ness as it was for their male con­tem­po­raries of com­pa­ra­ble (or even less­er) stand­ing.

That point about what we keep and lose, what we re­mem­ber and what we for­get, im­me­di­ate­ly leads to how things of val­ue are pre­served. The most ob­vi­ous ex­am­ple is through the cre­ation of books—the cel­e­bra­tion of which is the very rai­son d’être of the fes­ti­val.

Cul­tur­al con­ti­nu­ity

and evo­lu­tion

Stephen Green­blatt, in con­ver­sa­tion with William Dal­rym­ple, re­vis­it­ed his 2011 clas­sic, The Swerve. His the­sis was that the crit­i­cal in­ci­dent which changed the course of the world, caus­ing it to en­ter Moder­ni­ty, was ac­ci­den­tal. That in­ci­dent was the chance re­cov­ery of a po­em ti­tled On the Na­ture of Things by Lu­cretius. The po­em had been painstak­ing­ly tran­scribed by a 15th-cen­tu­ry pa­pal emis­sary, Pog­gio Brac­ci­oli­ni.

Whether one is re­li­gious or not, the ques­tion­ing of as­sump­tions as self-ev­i­dent truths is cru­cial for fruit­ful hu­man in­quiry. Lu­cretius es­poused the idea that the uni­verse was cre­at­ed by ac­ci­dent, with­out in­ten­tion, not as the di­vine act of a cre­ator who had hu­man be­ings in mind. We are not unique; our souls die along with our bod­ies.

There­fore, all or­gan­ised re­li­gions are su­per­sti­tious in na­ture and po­ten­tial­ly fear-gen­er­at­ing and cru­el. Life should be about the pur­suit of plea­sure (not just sex­u­al or bod­i­ly), and we should gen­er­ate plea­sure amongst oth­ers.

These be­liefs were clear­ly hereti­cal and cost Brac­ci­oli­ni his life. How­ev­er, his tran­scrip­tions trav­elled (Ben Jon­son pos­sessed a copy), and they opened a new av­enue of ex­plo­ration. The En­light­en­ment dawned.

The dis­cov­ery of the po­em from ob­scu­ri­ty in a Ger­man monastery was for­tu­itous but pos­si­ble, chiefly be­cause it had been com­mit­ted to ink and pa­per—the stuff of books.

Green­blatt posit­ed that dur­ing the Re­nais­sance, peo­ple be­came in­ter­est­ed in find­ing arte­facts buried in the ground, and this in­ter­est led to search­ing for lost texts. Many texts were ac­tu­al­ly found in li­brary cat­a­logues in monas­ter­ies. The ad­vent of Is­lam was an im­por­tant ve­hi­cle for cir­cu­lat­ing these texts with­in West­ern Eu­rope (through Spain and Is­tan­bul). In­deed, to quote him: “Cul­ture doesn’t last un­less you keep it alive.”

On the joy of texts and beau­ti­ful­ly pro­duced books, I al­so en­joyed a very pleas­ant launch of a book of chil­dren’s sto­ries, The Whis­per­ing Moun­tains: Hi­malayan Folk­tales and Folk­lore by Na­mi­ta Gokhale and Mal­shri Lal.

I bought a few copies (one for my­self and the oth­ers as gifts). Be­yond the state­ment that moun­tain peo­ple are no­to­ri­ous­ly stub­born (no­body in the au­di­ence quib­bled with it), all the ar­che­types we know ap­pear in these sto­ries: the cun­ning trick­ster, the flu­id shapeshifter, the wise crone, and in­tu­itive and per­cep­tive an­i­mals.

There was dis­cus­sion on the use of paus­es and in­to­na­tion in the Hi­malayan sto­ry­telling tra­di­tion—a pat­tern of call and re­sponse, with the es­tab­lished open­ing chant, to which lis­ten­ers must re­spond for the tale to pro­ceed. Rem­i­nis­cent of our Anan­si, soucouyant, la­ga­hoo, and lavway?

I agreed whole­heart­ed­ly with that ses­sion’s con­clud­ing state­ment, “To be­come tru­ly ma­ture is to re­turn to child­hood in­no­cence…” fol­lowed by its log­i­cal con­clu­sion, “… And the world is young again.”

I have nev­er shed that love of chil­dren’s lit­er­a­ture, and it took me to lis­ten to Sam Lei­th talk about his book, The Haunt­ed Wood: A His­to­ry of Child­hood Read­ing. He spoke good sense about many things that peo­ple get their knick­ers in a twist about, from Rowl­ing to Kipling.

An in­ter­est­ing point he made is that orig­i­nal­i­ty is not an es­sen­tial re­quire­ment of good chil­dren’s lit­er­a­ture. We con­tin­u­al­ly re­vert to pri­mal nar­ra­tives and build up­on them; these ar­che­typ­al forms ren­der great strength and vi­tal­i­ty to a plot sim­ply be­cause of fa­mil­iar­i­ty.

Again, that point is made about the uni­ver­sal­i­ty of the per­for­ma­tive acts of hu­man be­ings, how we so­cialise our young, our shared dreams, and our shared night­mares.

Green­blatt posits that it is sig­nif­i­cant that our mod­ern ra­tio­nal world, a world char­ac­terised by sci­en­tif­ic in­quiry and em­piri­cism, was shaped by a po­em—a fa­mil­iar ve­hi­cle for nar­rat­ing sto­ries and shar­ing ideas. Again, we have that idea of dis­man­tling the bar­ri­ers be­tween the two cul­tures of the arts and sci­ences.

How­ev­er, I be­lieve that this dis­man­tling is the means for our evo­lu­tion, but not the essence of our evo­lu­tion­ary pur­pose. The es­sen­tial point is the be­quest: the sus­tained pass­ing of cu­mu­la­tive ba­tons be­tween gen­er­a­tions as an ever-deep­en­ing foun­da­tion in our quest for im­prove­ment.

Be­witched by the lan­guage of flow­ers

In Green­blatt’s words: “It is our col­lec­tive oblig­a­tion to trans­mit the cul­ture to the next gen­er­a­tion … We need to hold on to what makes us hu­man be­ings.” These pre­cious lega­cies are the re­mit of the hu­man­i­ties, art, law, and sci­ence.

One can­not think of gifts for fu­ture gen­er­a­tions with­out be­ing con­cerned about our liv­ing en­vi­ron­ment and what we are do­ing to it. We can on­ly stop our dam­age when we val­ue what we have.

I found my­self be­witched by the ses­sion on In­dia’s icon­ic trees and fra­grant flow­ers, with

S Natesh speak­ing on trees and R S Chauhan on flow­ers. Natesh is a botanist (a man of sci­ence), and Chauhan is a judge (a man of let­ters). Yes, that theme again, but I main­tain that is on­ly the means.

The endgame, as voiced by Natesh, is es­tab­lish­ing con­nec­tions as part of a shared lega­cy, our past and hope­ful­ly our fu­ture. Natesh told us that all icon­ic trees have great re­lat­able sto­ries of cul­tur­al and his­tor­i­cal sig­nif­i­cance. They in­spire awe. I be­lieve him.

Chauhan called up­on the lan­guage of flow­ers as sym­bol­ic rep­re­sen­ta­tions of things that need to be said but can­not eas­i­ly be said, whether aris­ing from the taboo of sex­u­al pas­sion or the in­ef­fa­ble na­ture of faith. Flow­ers mat­ter. They bring joy and seren­i­ty (“Flow­ers keep judges sane”). They have med­i­c­i­nal prop­er­ties and eco­nom­ic val­ue. They are a ve­hi­cle for us to com­mune with the nat­ur­al world. They em­body the tran­sience of life.

Green­blatt ad­vised that “we can­not spend our lives brood­ing about dy­ing.” How­ev­er, we can spend our lives think­ing about liv­ing well as we build our lega­cies for our in­evitable exe­unt. With­out a doubt, the urge to pre­serve be­ings that are born to die is in­trigu­ing. Not sur­pris­ing­ly, all three of us, Ira, Imshah and I went to hear the No­bel lau­re­ate, Ven­ki Ra­makr­ish­nan, speak again, this time about why we die and the quest for im­mor­tal­i­ty.

Ra­makr­ish­nan set the stage for our time-bound lives. From the mo­ment of con­cep­tion, we start ac­cu­mu­lat­ing bod­i­ly changes and bod­i­ly dam­age. When that ac­cu­mu­la­tion, ei­ther grad­u­al­ly or sud­den­ly, reach­es the point of crit­i­cal sys­tems fail­ure, we die.

Nos­tal­gia for the past can be se­duc­tive, dan­ger­ous

At a macro lev­el, evo­lu­tion has cre­at­ed op­ti­mal lifes­pans. We are most cre­ative when we are young. Our cog­ni­tive skills de­cline with age, whilst our abil­i­ty to ac­cu­mu­late pow­er and wealth in­creas­es. Lin­ger­ing age­ing pop­u­la­tions and de­clin­ing birth rates do not au­gur well for a vi­brant so­ci­ety.

As ex­pect­ed, our ac­cess to re­sources (through wealth cre­ation) pro­longs our lives. But, more per­ti­nent­ly, mor­tal­i­ty rates im­prove when peo­ple main­tain a cir­cle of friends and pos­sess an in­trin­sic sense of pur­pose. Again, we see the link­ing of what it means so­ci­o­log­i­cal­ly to be hu­man with sci­en­tif­ic, in this case, macro-bi­o­log­i­cal, out­comes.

Leav­ing Ra­makr­ish­nan’s ses­sion, I went straight to Char­lotte Wood’s ses­sion on her nov­el, Stone Yard De­vo­tion­al (it had al­so been cit­ed the night be­fore as a New York Times must-read for Feb­ru­ary). In so do­ing, I was trans­port­ed from ru­mi­nat­ing on the macro to ru­mi­nat­ing on the mi­cro.

Ra­makr­ish­nan con­firmed what we all in­tu­itive­ly know to be true, that stress is the great dri­ver of bod­i­ly dam­age. But how does stress man­i­fest with­in spe­cif­ic in­di­vid­u­als, and how do they cope? Wood’s book deals with re­treat­ing from the on­slaught of every­day life as her un­named hero­ine, de­spair­ing at her fail­ures in the field of wildlife con­ser­va­tion, opts to live the monas­tic life of a nun—even though she nev­er ful­ly be­lieves in God.

There is lit­tle ac­tion in the plot, but our hero­ine has a rich­ly imag­i­na­tive in­ter­nal life. She dreams vivid­ly. She pon­ders on ca­su­al cru­el­ties in small-town Aus­tralia, on her re­la­tion­ship with her moth­er, on how we get or don’t get along with oth­ers (es­pe­cial­ly peo­ple whose cir­cum­stances place them with­in our so­cial units), and how we achieve a moral reck­on­ing.

Ra­makr­ish­nan’s so­cial ob­ser­va­tions on longevi­ty ran to hav­ing a cir­cle of friends and a sense of pur­pose. So, how do we, as in­di­vid­u­als with our quirks and pro­cliv­i­ties, nav­i­gate these so­cial com­plex­i­ties? It is my deeply held con­vic­tion that the an­swer to this ques­tion lies in good fic­tion and thought­ful, high­ly in­tro­spec­tive mem­oirs.

I spoke in my last piece about the “Hy­phen­at­ed Nar­ra­tives” ses­sion with Ira and Sheena Pa­tel. Both writ­ers deal with the some­times trau­mat­ic lega­cies of hav­ing mixed prog­en­i­tors. Sheena brought up an in­ter­est­ing point about the lim­its of claim­ing such lega­cies.

Nos­tal­gia for the past can be se­duc­tive, but it is al­so dan­ger­ous be­cause one can cap­i­talise on the vic­tim­i­sa­tion of one’s par­ents when that ex­pe­ri­ence of vic­tim­i­sa­tion is not ac­tu­al­ly yours.

The an­gel is in the de­tails

Hm­m­mm. Yes, the an­gel, not the dev­il, is in the de­tail. Where is the line drawn be­tween ap­pro­pri­at­ing some­body else’s (even our par­ents’) vic­tim­hood and cham­pi­oning moral resti­tu­tion for oth­ers? The an­swer must lie in com­pas­sion. In­deed, an au­then­ti­cal­ly ren­dered com­pas­sion rings true, and this truth is, thus, beau­ti­ful. This is where the heart is lift­ed and awe falls up­on us.

On the fi­nal day, I went to hear Benoy Behl speak of the an­cient Bud­dhist paint­ings of the Ajan­ta Cave. It was en­chant­i­ng. In the sim­plest lan­guage, he stat­ed that what makes these paint­ings beau­ti­ful is their vi­sion of life: a sense of com­pas­sion that ex­ists in all of us and that is God-like. Specif­i­cal­ly, he spoke of the in­ward eye and how it was con­veyed by the down­ward, oblique­ly fo­cused eyes of the de­pict­ed fig­ures, paint­ed two cen­turies BCE, yet an im­age that is still a fea­ture of Asian art to­day.

I learnt more about this in­ward eye on Day 1 in Behl’s con­ver­sa­tion with Har­sha De­he­jia up­on the launch of De­he­jia’s book, The Third Eye of In­di­an Art. De­he­jia de­fined this third eye as a space in the in­ner mind where the ob­ject be­comes an ar­che­type, which, in turn, be­comes alive. It is a metaphor, which must be ab­sorbed to un­der­stand the mean­ing be­hind it.

The mean­ing has sev­er­al lev­els as it is re­vealed to the view­er, mov­ing from ob­ject to sub­ject with the pur­pose of restor­ing part of our be­ing. In so do­ing, art trans­ports us be­yond the ma­te­r­i­al world in­to sen­su­ous­ness, which is not com­plete with­out our sub­se­quent con­tem­pla­tion.

Such rich­es, such lega­cies, the very best of what it means to be hu­man, and what we must pre­serve for our chil­dren. Yes; dis­man­tle the bar­ri­ers be­tween the sci­ences and hu­man­i­ties as a means of bring­ing about a bet­ter world for our de­scen­dants. But let us get in­to the busi­ness of pre­serv­ing our rich lega­cies in­so­far as they cut the track for fresh-blood­ed agouti to run and thrive. Let us live gen­er­ous­ly, but die grace­ful­ly.

And this was just my small slice of what the JLF had on of­fer. Blow-mind. Ira and I are now in Mum­bai, and we leave for Lon­don to­mor­row. There, we will meet up with Imshah again and stop for a few days be­fore head­ing back to T&T.

For those short days, I will be in my sec­ond home, the oth­er coun­try that I love with this one heart. I will be spend­ing time with one of my two daugh­ters, both of whom I al­so love with this same one heart. Lega­cies, pass­ing ba­tons, lov­ing. In­deed, I have said it be­fore, and I shall say it again: my cup run­neth over.