babbling

Well then. I just finished reading Cry, the beloved country. I remember all the ACS boys had to read it for O level literature, but for some reason, RGS girls had to read something else, for the life of me I cannot remember it, except it was African (and not South Africanand therefore not dealing with racial tension) and dealt with village life and with bare-breasted natives dancing around the fire, tom-tomming to ancient rhythms. Or so.

Anyway, Alan Paton's book is remarkably straightforward, and surprising for such a style only yields pathos in the most gifted of writers, (instead of turning into melodrama, which is what it would do in my hands). He writes of a broken South Africa, in 1948, well before Mandela, of rivers that run red, of tribes that are broken by colonialism, with no new structure of moral order to replace them, of white men who are parochially invested in keeping the African men downtrodden. And he speaks too of an Africa beautiful, where Zulu cries echo across the land, welcoming the new and the old. And he says, "Cry the beloved country, for the unborn child that is the inheritor of our fear".

And of course it is fear that debilitates, fear of loss of power, fear of urbanization, fear of the white man that leads to assault, rape, pillaging, murder- what South Africa was associated with just a few short years ago. And he says, that only love, and forgiveness will cast out fear. It may have taken South Africa more than 40 years since then, to grant universal enfranchisement and voting rights in the 1994 elections, but the path to reconciliation has been begun and one hopes that there is no turning back.

The sad thing about communal violence, Amitav Ghosh writes is the tragedy of brothers, peoples living in harmony prior, killing each other. Whether it is the partition in India or in Sri Lanka, it is heartbreaking to see families that have lived 20 years together, sharing rituals, breaking bread, taking up violence against the other.

And then, I know that this is random, but i was reminded of Michael Ondaatje's poem which I shall pirate here, for its description of what violence does; create a new language. And I was thinking about it in the trishaw today- that it requires this, this is the historical record of those deaths from ethnic violence. Of dead bodies of priests, that came floating down the rivers. This is all that lasts, of the forgotten. And that is both terrifyingly tragic and ennoblingly commemorative.

The Distance of A Shout
By Michael Ondaatje

We lived on the medieval coast
south of warrior kingdoms
during the ancient age of winds
as they drove all things before them

Monks from the north came
down our streams floating that was
the year no one ate river fish

There was no book of the fores
no book of the sea, but these
are the places people died

Handwriting occurred on waves
on leaves, the scripts of smoke
a sign on the bridge along the Mahaweli River

A gradual acceptance of this new language.