Dhupi, Salla ra Laligurans ko Fedma by Parijat: A Book Talk

Table of Contents

I prefer reading small books. For now, I am easy-going with such books. However, the messages that such books convey must comply with my objective of reading. Pārijāt's Dhupī, sallā ra lālīgurā̃sko phedmā has been quite a dense book that portrays existential traumas that the author faced throughout her life.

At the intersection of gradual and generational loss of the original culture, colonial settings, disadvantaged childhood, and the author's unique abilities (and inabilities), Parijat has beautifully portrayed how she experienced her life in the premises of Darjeeling till the mid-1950s, since the time of her early childhood that her memory could bring out.

Today, I bring the book's issues into the frame of the topics I feel are necessary to discuss.

Family - a safe space?

Parijat lost her mother when she was in her early age. She confesses that her father did not compensate for the loss of her mother. He used to talk about philosophy that small kids would not understand. He forcibly turned them to atheists after the death of the religious mother. I read from her texts that religion and tradition could keep her identity alive - a strong thread that would bind other transformative projects of her life. She says that she had been disciplined by her father when she wanted to dance. As an individual with creative instincts and innate potential in expression, she could not express her thoughts by singing or dancing. She had traumatic experiences in her life - not getting her mother's love, not sensing a belonging to any entity other than the eternal beauty of the abstractness of nature, and remaining in a really vulnerable environment she had to call home. She indicated that her father was making the family more vulnerable - financially, emotionally, and mostly by being absent because of his own illness. Her affinity to nature, abstract elements of nature, and arts through which she would express her abstracted thoughts was never promoted by her father. She was encouraged by other younger members of the house, from whom she learned to smoke tobacco. To her, tobacco smoking elevated the sense of agency, just to compensate for the safety-void that her family always had. She carried the trauma of losing her brother, who seemed rebellious (at least symbolically) against her father's way of raising kids. She smoked tobacco till her fingers turned 'yellow', which already adds to her vulnerability of having a certain illness that used to manifest as immense pain in her joints.

Traumatised Child, Nature and Abstract Thoughts (Existentialism)

At some point, she said, "I wanted to cry and laugh at the same time". Let me begin with her side of situatedness. She was growing up as a child who did not have a mother and did not find her home as a safe space - a space to return and get emotional consolation from a motherly figure - that could be her father. She experienced such a situation throughout her childhood. She sometimes went to an aunt's house just to get a glimpse of motherly love - a temporary refuge. As an innocent child, she sought to spend hours and hours under trunks of the trees, the tapped water, mostly in the quiet natural spaces as pure as her mother's love.  Not any entity scolded her, even if she chose to do things that she liked. As a coping mechanism and as an ultimate inspiration for keeping the hope of living, she grew abstract thoughts about nature and natural elements. She was more involved with nature, even if other kids were also with her, while collecting fern stems for piercing ears or other occasions. She used to collect flowers and do things as if she were spending precious moments with 'mother' (nature). The trauma that she would have gone through in her childhood was so strong, and the existential reality was so permanent that she related the natural flow of monsoon showers in sync with her own emotions. That would make her outburst in tears, in her bed. And even if it made her cry so badly, she loved monsoon season.

Identity Crisis and (Post)colonial World

Children of Nepali identity in the northeastern hills of India, including herself, are portrayed as living in more organic engagement with the local nature, set against the backdrop of the (post)imperial reality of the 1940s through 1950s. In this book, this atmosphere during her childhood is symbolically reflected through imagery such as imperial soldiers on horseback, whose presence is associated with the lived fears and vulnerabilities of marginalized children. The question of who would advocate for the welfare of the oppressed is also implicitly raised, pointing toward the historical limitations of imperial power in addressing the social and human needs of colonized populations, as explored in the writings of Parijat. On the other hand, the non-clarity of her own father's personal stances and ultimate alignment with the powerful colonisers were taken by her as submitting to the cultural supremacy of the imperialists' architecture, killing their own cultural realms. While growing up as a child who would think more before saying or deciding anything, this gave her an immense sense of loss and damage. This would again add to the trauma that she had been carrying.

I hope that readers of this book-talk provide constructive insights as comments, should you have also read this book.