Book reading: Multiple perspectives from the Indian Ocean - Ananda Devi
Abstract
- Abstract
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In July 2022 the Cluster's department „Internationalisation and Public Engagement“ organised a book reading with renowned author Ananda Devi.
Born in 1957 in Mauritius, Ananda Devi began to be noticed at the age of 15 when she won a prize in an international short-story. She published her first collection of short-stories at the age of 19. Over the next nearly five decades, she has become one of the major literary voices of the Indian Ocean.
Published by the French publishers Gallimard and Grasset, she has won numerous literary prizes. Her writing is characterised by an inner violence and a harsh outlook on modern society, especially with regard to the status of women. Her characters are trapped by the contrary forces of society, religion, human cruelty and the seismic faults of history. Their only recourse, in their solitary quest, is their lucidity and humanity. Despite the harshness of her themes, Ananda Devi brings to her writing a poetry and sensuality that shines a light in the midst of the darkness she explores.
She has been translated in several languages and has received decorations from Mauritius, and also from France, with the title of Officier des Arts et des Lettres. In 2014 she received a major award from the Académie Française. The University of Silesia, Poland, conferred upon her a Honoris Causa doctorate.
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- Transcript
- good evening everybody here at cultural and help for reading and discussion with Ananda Devi which was made possible also by Africa multiple cluster of Excellence at the University of peroit I'm very happy and very glad that Ananda Devi came finally to bairoit we have been in contact for quite a while it was never possible because she's always invited somewhere else and she's always very busy but finally she came to byroid in spite of all the problems that we have at the moment with traveling I mean Lufthansa the airport in Frankfurt used to be something else so it was quite difficult so we are particularly happy that you really made it to byroid thank you for coming and so we are very happy tonight that we can discuss or first of all that you will read from two of your novels riordananda Devi is a busy personally writer who stands really for mauritian mauritian literature and this is also because she has published her she she has been writing from from being from I mean from a very early age um and has been publishing from from 77 to today I think 26 novels uh poems essays and so on so if you look at this Rhythm so every almost every two two three years a book and not just a novel but very a very dense books and very poetic in a very poetic language and also with very complex uh topics that she approaches so it's really a very big over um she has received quite a lot of awards and in June last June you got the title of the doctor doctor nurse causa by the University of Philadelphia okay how do you pronounce this correctly Silesia in polon um unfortunately we cannot we don't have any award tonight but we are still very happy that you're with us maybe we have to create one for this kind of uh very impressive verse so the books that we will approach tonight she's she writes in French will do it first in English um because there might also be some public who doesn't understand French and the title was also between Mauritius and India and I just brought two two books like this one for example uh the green sorry uh so playing in in Mauritius and the first novel we'll talk about tonight also have to see the combo will also be from let's say placed in Mauritius and the second one um who just came out last year de dias um which um uh takes place let's say takes place in deals with persons Destinies let's say and I don't want to reveal so much now Destiny's in India so there's a um her work is also not only from Mauritius but with a universal Outreach I would say and also about the Indian Indian Ocean um yeah but before starting to listen to readings and also to uh having some questions then about the books I have talked too much already good evening welcome again [Applause] sorry I was listening to you so I didn't think about talking but thank you for the for all that introduction it's wonderful and thank you for inviting me to byroid and keeping on inviting me after all this time uh I'm so happy uh really really happy to be here and uh I was saying earlier on that in this sort of context I I feel as if I'm back in my student days at the school of Oriental and African studies in London but many many many many years ago where everybody was really steeped into multiculturalism in different languages every Professor every lecturer spoke either an African language or an Asian language so I I feel that this is the same kind of Vibes that we get here and uh it's uh well as you said I'm invited in different many different places and I travel a lot but in some places you feel as if you've you kind of belong in a diff in a strange way so I sort of feel as if I belong and okay hopefully not in a strange way but in a good way in a good way so thank you for for having me and thank you all for for being here yeah thank you very much and I mean by Russians it would solve I mean fabulous um the comparison between London and by Royal right this is a very good start for us tonight thank you very much um yeah then maybe we can um but we can start with the First with the first novel yeah you have to see the combo maybe I think as maybe not everybody tonight might have read the the novel maybe you could give us a short introduction so that we can contextualize better the the parts that we will be listening to afterwards yes so it's true that this novel was published in 2006 I wrote it in 2005. but I always say that it's the novel that keeps on living maybe keeps on giving to me also because it has continue to be in a way revived in different ways first of all by translations because it's been translated in about 10 different languages but at different times also it's been made into a film and also it's because it's been in on the program reading program for French literature in in many uh well Lee says in in France but also now in Mauritius it means that I'm very often asked to to talk about this novel and and I see its impact for example in in the um in France or elsewhere many teachers have told me that when the their their pupils the students read this novel they feel really engaged because the the main protagonists of four 17 years olds kids from from Mauritius but although it's set in Mauritius it's it's something that it's a novel that finally is very Universal because they are living in in a kind of Slum of the capital city of Mauritius which is Port Louis and it starts out with this four voices two girls and and two boys the girls uh Eve who gives the title to the novel uh Savita and the boys are Sadiq and clelio and each one is facing terrible odds in their life because they're living in in a kind of well as I said in in a kind of Slum where the the parents are mostly unemployed but they also feel abandoned by the rest of society and of course even at that time in 2005 2006 Mauritius was sort of engaged in a kind of Economic Development because of Tourism because of industry and everything where you could see the disparity between in the society between those who were getting rich very very fast and those who were sort of held back by their circumstances and by their history the history of Mauritius maybe we'll talk about that a bit later but the idea of having these this story told by four kids who are each who each one says I so at the different chapters is uh sort of entitled with the name of who's speaking and then each one says I and when I was writing it I thought it's very difficult to put yourself in the place of a of a 17 years old if you're an adult also from a context which is completely different from yours and some of the questions that I was asking myself was should I use a language which is a kind of a useful language should I use a jargon like the French in the French Monument or in a mauritian context and then I realized that what I wanted to hear or to express was the uh inner thoughts of the protagonist and inner thoughts have no barriers so they can these inner thoughts can be poetic they can be philosophical they can be crude they can be rude but uh there's no limit to what they can say within that inner voice so I chose in a way or maybe the novel truth in a way to speak in a poetic voice which is what mostly is what attracts me with with writing from the stylistic point of view and and these voices are poetic but also very heartfelt because they're speaking from that from their heart and from their emotions and each one has a strategy to survive how do they survive in a society where they feel that they have no future where the the rest of society is turning its back on them uh and the the main character Eve is the one who's mostly sort of uh abandoned in a way by her parents by the rest of society and who only has her body as her main sort of Monet discharge I mean her Main how you'd say it a way of buying things if you like but at the same time she's someone who who feels that even if she's selling her body she's preserving the essential part of her so that they're not touching her the real her the inner her they're touching the body but who she is she's preserving very very closely so she doesn't present herself as a victim but of course she is a victim she's a victim of society so there's this ambiguity about this character and all the characters which maybe sometimes it's difficult for for young people to when they're reading it they sometimes say well we don't understand her that well but this is what it's about it's to sort of provoke thought provoke any any reader to sort of think why is this happening and how is this happening and why can't we do something about it and this is probably another way I showed the the uh after my novels before that this is the one where I showed the Dark Side of Mauritius um because it starts out in in the night it starts it's it's very dark and people who hear about Mauritius it's like this sort of Sunny Tropical Island beaches sea sand sun whatever it is and actually it's quite funny because at that time sometimes I was going into a to a Book Festival and people were coming for a book signing and they said oh we're going for our holidays on to Mauritius so we'd like to buy your book and I would tell them well maybe you should go first and then buy the book later but at the same time it's it was a it is necessary to say it because it's there's a culture of silence as in many of the societies and maybe artists writers are those who can actually break that barrier of Silence well maybe that's the moment with that we would like to get into the novel okay you're right so then we can maybe after that we can have a first round of questions questions or comments about about the reading before we meet you and then to the to the second novel yeah so I'm going to stand because it's somehow easier to read standing so as I said before the each chapter is entitled with the name of the person speaking so in this these two extracts the first one Speaking is is sad or Sadiq uh who's the the young man who's perhaps starting this whole story we don't know and then after that it's eve speaking sad I am Sadiq everybody calls me sad between Despair and cruelty the line is thin Eve is my fate but she claims not to know it when she bumps into me her gaze passes through me without stopping I disappear I am in a great place or rather a yellowish Brown which better suits its name is sort of funnel where all the islands waste Waters ultimately flow here is where the Cyclone refugees are rehomed those rendered homeless by tropical storms and who 2 or 5 or 10 or 20 years later still have their toes in the water and their eyes pale as rain I've always lived here I was born a refugee like everyone else who's grown up in the yellow Shadows of these buildings I've never understood their monstrous edges I never saw the gaps born beneath our feet separating us from the world I played with Eve we call her the skeleton because she was so thin but also to mask and unspoken affection we played at wall until we found ourselves at all we are at the bottom of the Signal Mountain Port Louis clutches our feet but does not pull us out city turns its back on us its muted magma stops at our borders the mountain blocks our view of other things between the city and the stone are our buildings our Rubble our trash the eczema of paint and the tar beneath our feet a children's playground has become a Battleground teeming with needles shards of broken glass hopes snaking into nothing here boys clenched their fists for the first time and girls cried out for the first time here everybody has faced their reality their realities one day we wake up and the future has disappeared the sky hides the windows night makes its way into our bodies and refuses to leave night and our homewoods Gone Wild as boys are ravenous we start following girls to the shuttered factory that devoured our mother's dreams maybe that's what's also waiting for them there's nothing left of the factory but an empty metal shell and hundreds of sewing machines which carved into their shoulders that curve of Despair and into their hands there's Nicks and cuts like tattoos the remnants of every woman who worked here Linger on we see they tried to bestow some Humanity on this desolation beside each machine there's a move plastic flower yellowing Family Photos postcards from Europe and even a forgotten red Barrette a strand of hair still caught in it and religious symbols crucifixes quranic versus Buddha statues Krishna figures that would allow us to guess which Community they belong to if we wanted to play Such guessing games when the Factory closed down they weren't even allowed to retrieve their things it was that abrupt that unexpected but I realized later that they hadn't wanted to see any of it I wonder what you saw this piety was to them in any case all of it was left to rust and to our perverse games Behind The Moldy curtains these are our traces and this tale dingy rooms stains of so many virginities lost here sometimes when the neighborhood is quiet the Island Sound seem different other kinds of music less funeral tones the clang of cash registers The Dazzle of development the tourists scorn us without realizing it money has made them naive achieved them out of a few rupees until they begin to mistrust our Pleasant false faces the country puts on its sky blue dress better to seduce them a marine perfume wafts from its crotch from here we can't see the island all dolled up and their eyes dazzled by the sun can't see us as things should be mothers disappear in a resigned Haze fathers finding alcohol the virtue of authority but they don't have that anymore authority authority that's us the boys we have recruited our troops like military leaders we've carved out our portions of the neighborhood once our parents stopped working we became the Masters everybody knows we can't be ordered around and now body can look in our eyes without shivering from that moment each of us began to live as if you wanted to to be free from everything free from Rules we make the rules but something else has slipped into my dreams lately I Mark the walls in my room with my questions I bloody them with the juice of words I learned to be quiet I learned to talk to myself I learned to put myself together and to take myself apart I suppose we're all like that we go with the flow like the others but inside each of us withdraws into himself and harbors his secrets I follow in their steps and I act like I belong as a matter of form as a matter of survival Eve doesn't understand that Eve walks back by her hair like foamy night in her skin-tied jeans and the others [ __ ] and suck their teeth with lust but I I want to kneel down she doesn't look at us she isn't afraid of us she has her Solitude for armor at night my whole moons sees on her face and describe it in Long arcs of Desire when I can't bear it anymore I go out with the gang our noisy mopeds tormenting the Sleep yield for Folk in the morning the others sink into the stupa of drugs and rage but I go take a shower I shave and I go to class this double life sucks me dry yet nothing in the world could keep me from seeing Eve's profile in the morning at the bus stop a sliver of sunlight playing on her ear and then I swear I love words I slip a poetry book into her bag later she bumps into me and her eyes bore through me it drives me insane to her I dedicate all the sentences that have been darkening my walls to her I dedicate all my bitter Sons our city is our kingdom our city in the city our town in the town pottery has changed shape it has grown long teeth and buildings taller than its mountains but our neighborhood hasn't changed its last Bastion here we let our identities happen we are those who do not belong we call ourselves the true moronis as if we were yet another kind of people on this island filled with so many kinds already maybe we actually are our lair our playground our Battleground our Cemetery everything is there we don't need anything else one day we'll be invincible and the world will tremble that's our ambition Eve pencil eraser ruler paper gum I played Blind Man's Bluff with the things I wanted I was a child but not entirely I was 12 years old I shut my eyes and held out my hand my fingers closed on air I shivered in my thin clothes I thought everything was Within Reach I made Moonlight shine in the boy's eyes I believed I believed I had powers pencil eraser ruler I held out my hand because in my back there was nothing I went to school completely and totally empty I felt some kind of pride in not having anything people can be richer than other things because I was small because I was thin because my arms and my legs was as straight as a child's drawing the bigger boys protected me they gave me what I wanted they thought a gust of wind would tip me over like a paper boat with a leak in its side I was a paper boat water seeped into my sides my stomach my legs my arms I didn't know it I thought I was strong I weighed up my chances assessed every moment I knew how to ask without seeming to pencil eraser ruler what did it matter the boys gave me things their faces softened slightly and that changed everything and made them look human and then one day when I asked without seeming to they asked me for something in return I thought it would be simple it would be easy what could they want in return I was the smallest one the least important one everyone knew I had nothing for once they were saying I had something my bag held many nothings the nothingness of my apartment smaller and more bare than everybody else the empty nothingness of our wardrobes even those of our trash cans there was the nothing in my father's eye which alcohol had turned oily the nothing that was my mother's mouth and eyelids both of them stapled shut I had nothing nothing at all to give but I was mistaken he wanted a piece of me he dragged me off to a corner of the playground behind a huge almond tree he pinned me against the trees trunk and he slipped his hand under my t-shirt I was wearing a red t-shirt with a soccer player's name on it I don't remember who anymore his hand stopped at my breasts slowly moved up and down just over the small black points there was hardly anything there I heard other children shouting and playing they seemed far away it was another world the boy had slipped his other hand in his skin turned blotchy his cheek was hot he took his time even though he was scared I didn't feel anything I was out of my body it was a part from me that day he didn't ask me for anything else he gave me an eraser or a pencil or a notebook I don't remember his lips came close to my ear next time he said we'll try something else I Shrugged but I stared with some curiosity at his eyes they had a silver sheen like melted sugar as if he had been erased now he only existed through his hands now he only existed through me for the first time my bag was no longer empty I had something I could pay with myself I could buy exchange myself for what I needed exchange morsels bits various parts of my body I looked brazenly at the tall boys when school was out you want to see something I asked them they laughed and said go away there's nothing to see but then they looked at me a long while and my eyes told them something else I knew how to how to do it I am in permanent negotiation my body is a stopover entire sections have been explored over time they blossom with Burns and cracks everyone leaves some Trace marks his territory I'm 17 years old and I don't give a [ __ ] I'm buying my future I am transparent the boys look at me like they can see me inside out the girls avoid me like a sickness my reputations been sealed [Applause] well coming back from the other world is always a bit difficult though maybe I'll just say that this is a translation of course which yeah it's a very good translation and and a translator is a young American young man called Jeffrey Zuckerman and we've worked together and he's really wonderful and I feel as if when I'm reading it as if I feel as if I'm reading my own words some comments or questions if that is uh wanted by the public but um we forgot to talk about this with those who organize the light and everything is it possible that we could have some light and have some questions now and then go back to the reading and come back to the questions and comments again yes so can we have some light for the other mic that is there for no okay but I can give so if someone is there and would like to have uh to make a question or a comment I could just hand over also the mic um to a person that I don't see at the moment otherwise I can also start yeah but yeah okay that's that's still fine so but you would have to raise your hand because I really I can't see anything I see some Silhouettes that there are some people in the room but that's that's it but um actually the film also has done the the title The Children of turmero and it also appears in in the part that you have just been reading and it's maybe you can say something about the the meaning of of the name of the place because yeah because and then I'll continue yeah that's one of the uh maybe the problems I'm a translator myself so one of the problems with translation is that there's certain words or Expressions that are actually untranslatable and this place name is is actually not a real place name in in Mauritius and uh I think I I did I just say it earlier on I can't because we have we've had many conversations so I can't remember I've already said it about tomorrow so it's uh based on uh I didn't want to use a real place name There Are Places there are places in Mauritius which are exactly what I'm trying describing one of them is called and there are many others but if I had used that name that place name the darkness of the story the the harshness the violence might have seemed to the people living there like kind of uh I don't know like like sort of condemning them to to something or or maybe stigmatizing them and I didn't want it to be seen that way so from the beginning I thought I'm not going to use a real place name now in Mauritius there they have lots of uh there are lots of place names with the word true which mean ho which means holes and uh so you have two beers between holes of uh a bit strange but so I sort of thought of of using that kind of structure of the the place names with the two which the whole which is literally where these these kids live is a whole and my home is is first of all the name it means Brown in in English so it's sort of trans expresses the the brownness the murkiness the murkishness of of that place and um so it's sort of brought together the idea that it it's a whole and it's excuse me the the language but like a [ __ ] basically which is how people sort of look at these places but at the same time the word Maho has it has a meaning which goes back to the history of Mauritius because it's a history of of slavery and uh during that time when when slaves were escaping from from the plantations from the sugarcane plantations there were they would go and live within the forests or on the mountains and these escaped slaves were called Mahon and the whole process was called that word brought back the history of Mauritius in into the into the story even if it's not expressed uh openly and at one point one one of the characters does say that we're still slaves I mean they're slaves in my ancestry and we are still in Chains so in fact this this untranslatable name did sort of does have a lot of of significance which won't be sort of come out to a to an English reader um but um these are the the vagaries of translation that you you really can't translate everything but I think even in the the passage that you write from um uh Eve Eve talking uh when she says she's nothing and nothingness but now I have something I will sell my I can buy something for myself because I sell my body or parts of my body which links directly to enslaved people yeah in this I mean in a certain way then there were other passages where it's also about the machines that they leave also um signs on the body then I mean that sounds nice if you say to tools but actually it's more like scarves yeah and so the whole so let's say the the body as a as a place of remembrance which is also and and as you just said it's a whole so you imprisoned and so you have this very small place where they live which seems to be to reflect also or to represent the whole island and then the island also again like a large like one piece of a larger history in in the Indian Ocean yeah exactly and I think that maybe the major prison in the island for the society is that Silence about that history because it's a history that's fairly recently it's not that that old but at the same time it's something that's not spoken about and that that's been like a kind of Unsolved and unresolved issue because today still the descendants of the of the French colonizers which are about six families are still the ones who earn about 30 percent of of the land in Mauritius which is it's a small island but they still hold the economic power and there's been a kind of collusion with the political power which is mainly from I'm going to be I don't want to generalize but mainly sort of the Indian origin majority those who came from India also as laborers in difficulty conditions but they sort of had a kind of social Mobility which was much faster because they were not they were in a difficult situation in a hard situation but they were not slaves in the sense that their identity wasn't uh wasn't erased the history wasn't erased the languages were not erased so in a way they managed to keep all that as a kind of strength behind them whereas in the system of slavery the first part of that system is to erase the identity of the people who were who were transported because they were seen as objects so the the clans were sort of separated the tribes were separated people speaking the language same language were separated and children were separated from the parents so that erasing of of history and memory is something that is a is a kind of the whole of identity that's in the midst of that Island which people still haven't confronted still haven't accepted and still haven't repaired in in in a way so for the of course the Indian laborers who were brought after the abolition of slavery were also in a very difficult situation because they couldn't go back they were sort of in a way imprisoned on the plantations they hadn't the right to go out otherwise they were imprisoned uh they were indebted for life for the passage so Mo I'm from that sort of kind of of ancestry and and I don't have any kind of I can't retrace who I could retrace who my ancestors were but in a way there's been no contact with these ancestors once my great-grandparents went to Mauritius but they had a kind of strength because they could cohere they could come together as a society they could speak their languages which was completely forbidden for for slaves and their descendants so I think that this whole in history and memory and identity is something that mauritians are not prepared to to face and as long as they're not prepared to face it this silence is going to be the the sort of fault line on which that Society is built and it's a fault line which is very fragile and one day it will explode I mean this this connects very well with which which uh what you read really in the very beginning when the sad says something about the very small line between sadness and cruelty um linking to his I mean his own individual Destiny and isolation but then also opening up of course yeah a window to the larger to the larger context but uh also as we're talking about literature and not only about the history of Mauritius yeah I mean we just had two voices um but as you explained there are four main main characters in in this book and they speak after one another so I think even the structure of the book reflects this kind of isolation each person speaks as if this as if the person would speak to him or herself but as if there's no connection no communication possible with with with the with a neighbor or with a friend they are completely isolated um so I think even in the structure this um I mean if I say this is a very good choice it sounds that sounds very odd but I think um but if you read so I just invite you to read the novel because you you have to you step from one I mean you follow one character to the other but like as if going from one small cell to the next and you listen you confront it with another destiny it's true because it's uh I think it's probably characteristic of all my books that the the protagonists are people who are not heard not listened to uh sometimes invisible sometimes extremely visible but completely sort of uh erased from from any kind of use the word agency which I know I don't like too much but in a way it says what it says so it's it's that kind of uh um sort of the the idea that all these the in this novel all these kids have no one to speak to so they're speaking to the reader and the reader is the one listening to to their story and how they try to survive and each one of them has a different strategy so if the only sort of ways you can get something is through her body at the same time she says she's preserving an essential part of herself which she feels nobody can touch and and she says at some point I'm the Predator because you feel that she's using man to get what she wants but of course we know as sort of external observers that that she is a victim to um and and sad is speaking also to to somebody some unknown person about his love for Eve but she's been so burnt and scarred by by men that she can't even accept his his love and at one point the only person who's the the other girl Savita who's when she says well I'm called the good girl but uh I don't like being called a good girl and I must say here as an aside that each each one rep presents in a wave through their names different communities so Sadiq is is the sort of from a Muslim Community Savita from a Hindu but they all sort of linked by poverty and that they're all living in Truman so it's not as if it's only one Community who's poor there at one point one of them says our identities that we're poor and that's all the identity we have but when uh even Savita come together that's the only time when Eve feels that she's received a kind of of generous love that that that's not possessive that's not trying to pull a bit something from her body or scar her body or leave marks so that's when she feels as if she's heard and seen and and um so that between the two girls there's there's a very precious relationship which emerges and which might sort of give it kind of hope that something will happen to help them get out of this situation but then I I said in a different context that the story was is written like a Greek tragedy that in a way the choices that Eve makes to get out to escape are the choices that will actually trigger the whole tragic sequence of the story so in my mind I was a little bit thinking of the that the the the the tragedy with the uh a tribes like I don't know if you say like a Dippers and all that where every action Oedipus his life is a sequence of a tragic sequence through Destiny and through chance so if you like so in a way that story is a bit like a Greek tragedy because every action that every decision that Eve makes in a way we land with the tragedy which is I mean I don't even know I should have maybe he has to have a look at because there's a third I think you also have prepared the mic the third voice yeah um maybe we could hear the third voice and then come back to the okay to the discussion or discussion I as I told you please make some noise or something I know if someone wants to speak I mean at least something like like this maybe okay voices but I'll probably I mean not to hire you too much I'll just read from the one of the remaining voices which is uh clelio and then perhaps back back to Saturn are you tired of the reading okay there's a reaction finally sometimes readings are hard hiring okay good morning okay so the third character to read from is clelio who's like a little uh you know he thinks he's a strong man but he's actually probably the most fragile of all of them so Krill you I'm krillio I'm at War fighting everybody and nobody I can't get away from my rage someday I know it I'll kill someone Donovan maybe my parents or some boss or one of my guys or a girl of myself I don't know I'm crazy you know who I am so don't you mess with me I've got enough anger to fill 10 leaking lives I've done all sorts of jobs the only one left is to kill someone and then sometimes I sing when I sing people listen well at least they stop they stop their lives and their hearts my voice pierces Infinity sad told me he doesn't talk like anybody else here my voice makes metal shiver apparently the buildings stop crushing man's cement loosens its grape walls turn nostalgic girls go Rosy but I don't [ __ ] sing for [ __ ] a couple of times they asked me to sing at a wedding everyone just stares at me beaming like idiots and I want to punch their faces in to sit and see them standing around in their nice clothes their shoes so tight their two toes look ready to pop out like horns and they are like acting like nothing's wrong stuffing their mouths and boozing like they're not miserable and skinned it makes me want to shove their smiles down their throats I tell myself that if one more old lady asked me to sing marinela I'm kicking her straight to hell I'm no good when I drink too much one beer and I'll knock over the tables and the bride one time I even jumped on the bride to pull off her veil because I knew it was a mask if they hadn't held me back I'd have pulled away her dress too and all the Oaths she'd taken I must have been bored that way I must have seen the future and decided I didn't like it so when I see nails I feel like swallowing them or forcing someone else to swallow them I've been through prison for assault and battery many times I wasn't ever there for long because I'm a minor next year when I'm 18 the punishments will be worse the judges if their men lecture me if they're women they go weak when they see how my eyes look like a kids they go soft and try to tell me implore me to do better I know I won't change though I'm a little snot a little [ __ ] I'm clear you dirt poor bastard solo of everyone else's Rusty Nails what can you do nobody changes just like that said they tell me I'll succeed but success doesn't mean the same thing for everyone it's a slippery word in my case it simply means that locked doors could open just a bit and I could if I sucked in my stomach slip through and escaped everybody knows poverty is the harshest of jailers still the teachers say everything is possible they tell me how they too once learned their lessons by candlelight but I can see in their eyes just how dim their minds are as a result they insist Seize Your opportunities don't hold back your country but who do they mean by your stereotypes are made for us we fill them all We Are The Champions the teachers allude to success as if they were talking to me without entirely believing what they are saying they look at me as raptitiously you can make miracles happen it's true I have a good memory I'm a sponge I absorb everything and I'm a bladder I pour everything out apparently that helps for Success swallow and expel but I make good use of them I go to class I pass my tests I lead a double life night with the gang day with the Sages I will remember the day I split into two during French class the teacher a young woman with skin as jaundiced as her canary yellow blouse and who didn't stay for long and for that reason I say she was only there for me at that moment like Faith knocking on my sleepy head the teacher said we're going to read poems by someone of your age as soon as they heard the word poetry the boys pretended to wretch and covered up their ears while making rude noises but she read those poems anyway in the middle of this rookus and also these this boy's letters in her small trembling voice she started no one's serious at 17. at first I thought to myself his wrong for US 17 is very serious but then I heard instead of her feminine voice the harsh voice of a teenager talking about his hopes his Rebellion his wounds his wishes and even more than that he was talking about the world his and mind and suddenly I felt keenly that he was talking to me and only me yes directly to me he was saying I am your brother she read a poem where he was saying that vowels had colors and the truth of it made me sit built upright I too saw colors in words just as the island unfurled its blues and oranges so the words unfold still more vividly purple rages in my head when she was done she said 's name is Rambo I am your brother I am your double I am your single I have split completely and totally into I was sad sitting transfixed in my stiff chair and I was someone else unmoored observing things but pushing them away through his thoughts his Defiance his mortality that night lying in bed I took a marker and began writing on the wall by my head of course I wrote about Eve she alone occupied my thoughts I began talking to her directly saying you instead of she guessing where she was going what she's thinking what she's living she doesn't know that I've figured her out I've written so much about her that sometimes I think I'm actually writing her life another people's lives and all our lives I read in secret all the time I read in the toilet I read in the middle of the night I read as if books books could loosen the Noose tightening around my throat I read to understand that there is somewhere else a dimension where possibilities Shimmer [Applause] it's not something thank you very much um I think again this the um let's say the the the words like jail everything that is prison come come up again quite strongly um what I think is at least for me it's like one of one of the major tones that carries us through the through the text but that poetry can open this this this jail but let's say what what what's what this text also links to the to the to the first reading I think is also the absence kind of the absence okay in other parts there they are there but more or less the absence of adults as if they are also locked in their own world so there's not really the past not of that of the island not that of the parents they say repeatedly there's no future so you really are sort of like stuck in the in the present there's no way out not in a temporal sense not in a spatial sense not in there's no way to go which gives this I think a very this very strong feeling of again of imprisonment which is uh yeah but I I think that uh what is uh the the the main sort of uh direction in which I've I've been going all this time is that with all these imprisonments in which we all are it's not just uh in Mauritius or anywhere else we're imprisoned uh by uh by Society very often by rules of society by what is imposed on us as our roles our functions uh and how sometimes we're imprisoned by ourselves because sometimes we we uh are afraid of being of being you know simply and in all my books all these characters are alone that's true there's nobody else coming to their head but there's also not no sort of higher power coming to their health nobody is going to try to pray to get out of their situation so what I'm saying is that finally that strength of being able to free oneself is inside oneself and that all of them go through a sort of uh and a quest to find themselves and to find that strength to resist to be to be themselves and to find out who they are and I I think this is what I've been sort of progressively going towards which means that some of my earlier novels are very tragic but in some of the perhaps later one like Indian Tango at the end the the the protagonist sort of walks by and and feels as if she's sprouted Wings because she's divesting herself of all those familial sort of uh rules and and imprisonment and it that book doesn't always with her saying I feel as if I was sprouted wings and I I think maybe this this is what I do feel is that we we are so sort of in a way um subsume and subdued by all these social societal uh rules and and uh and and and and and sort of imprisonment that uh in the end we lose sight of who we are in reality that it's not somebody else's look on ourselves which makes us some who we are and in many of my novels who you know that people who are called monsters are are not monsters because it's the difference which make people think of them as monsters and in the end it's the other the eye of the other which is the Monstrous sort of aspect of of society and differences is very important in in all this that people who are different feel as if they are completely sort of marginalized set aside and and society makes Monsters of them but in fact who are the monsters you know this is what I'm trying to sort of ask them to think oh the reader to think who who are the monsters yeah I think maybe this so if you if there are some questions or comments now we can arrange this so please otherwise we would move on to the next text and switch languages for a while I think there's a mic there yeah I don't see anything either okay hello hey yes thank you for the reading it was beautiful I'd like to say yes and I would like to ask you if the quality the sound quality of the words if they play a role when we are talking about the translation about your work because for me yes I don't know if you had theater lectures but your reading here was also very yes it's important to the the effect of the book so what kind of sonority quality the words play when we are talking about this Romans yeah thank you um well first of all uh in in my French writing of this year's uh the the sound sound is extremely important because I have a sort of uh my writing is very close to poetry uh so especially this novel you've have the Silicon I wrote it with a kind of poetic sort of mindset if you like and I worked also on on the language in the same way with the musicality with the sonority with words attracting another with because of alliteration because of the Cadence uh sometimes when I'm listening to music it translates into the guidance of of the sentence and I let it translate into it because it's important for me to have that that the writing experience and the reading appearance is it totality not just an intellectual exercise even for writing it's not in it for me it's not intellectual it's more like a sort of whole um emotional and and physical sensorial if you like that that everything goes in into that that text so I'm not thinking of the words before I write them down they're sort of dictating the the sounds and the patterns and The rhythms are dictating the writing so obviously um when it was being translated uh at first it's it's a bit strange because when you are reading it's it's not the same guidances it's not the same but I've been lucky in that this translator first of all uh he did all the first draft and then sent it to me and then on in some cases where the the meaning was very metaphorical and very difficult to to work out he said well what did you really mean by this and we worked hard together but I thought the important thing with translation is that when you read it you don't feel that it's a translation and this is the most important thing so I don't mind that they go a bit further or you know change a little bit just because it has to feel natural when I'm reading it I don't feel like it's it I don't know about all of you but uh you know it doesn't feel as if it's a translation so it's not the same music definitely if I had I don't have the book with me maybe I should have well I have it in my hotel room I should have brought it and maybe already pass it in French to see whether how it feels it's not the same music but it's there's a music in there and the Poetry is there so I think this is marvelous with languages is that we're able to not just to translate meaning but to translate all these sort of hidden hidden places hidden parts and and uh it's uh it's it's an enormous pleasure I love translation and I love reading a well-translated book when you don't feel that it's translated you know so but definitely music poetry are very important in in what I write and and uh I would say as important as as the story and uh yeah as I said it's it's an emotional and sensorial sort of feeling even when it's crude you know it's sort of uh in a way of clelio's part came to me because he because of who he is but at the same time even that crude part was was part of the Rhythm and the harshness of some of what he says um so yeah this this part of my way of writing basically yeah yeah um I thought there was another question yes although this question would have been the answer would have been the perfect transition to the French reading so I was a bit like could we ask this later on but no no please go ahead I mean we don't know when he's ending so it's also an opportunity to uh to to say something thank you very much for for these readings we are looking forward to tomorrow but I just wanted to to make a kind of a testimony as well because reading I mean listening to this novel in English is I mean it gives another feel to some of us students of francophone studies who had to I mean um it's a kind of testimony because my first semester I had to to to read a lot of novels from the from the Indian Ocean yeah and you had the pleasure to not you had to read it no I it's a testimony because I I mean it was quite interesting to to see that my first uh my first reading was on on the Indian Ocean I mean I have to mention it that way because coming I mean somebody has nothing to I mean I mean I I didn't even expect what I read actually so that's why I'm even putting it that way which is which is amazing because because this is how we got in contact with that with uh with uh with uh Indian Ocean literature um I could even mention who was also here and you talking even about the music the melody and everything we could see that in the book as well so so we are not bored to be useful so don't worry about that the other uh I mean my questions are maybe comments will be will be the on this particular novel which is uh which could also be read as um which I see as a trauma narrative which comes out with a lot of resilience tactics so when we look at um the the the the experience of the the characters and and even the passages that you read um we see how these characters are actually trying to deal with this trauma that the the kind of kind of can't speak about it if they say they can't we know the character we know the context we know uh the the environment where this character is growing and the other characters as well but the language she she uses the uh the way she looks at herself the the strong part the resilience and resistance part of uh reading herself not as a as somebody who's selling her body but really looking at her as uh as a fighter kind in a way makes it really interesting it's the same reading that we do with clelio who is also in in a way uh trying to go through this trauma of being imprisoned being not recognized and so on and so forth so I would like to hear you about that as well because even as a writer creating this true Maron and we know what uh this I don't know if it's a an oxymoron of true and Maron anyway because my home we also know of uh escaping from this traumatic experience and and condition so so yeah this is what really struck me at the beginning reading this and it comes back to I had to in the sense that it's really it's really traumatic reading it uh reading it from I mean this uh the condition the violent stay and condition of the people making it also I mean we feel it also in your you know in your writing I would I would even say in French uh it's I don't know if it's a Pity that I mean we couldn't even hear this in French as well because it's a very poetic language um which carries this music but of course also the part of I don't know if it's draining the tragic part of it into creating a language which helps to uh to to uh to overcome the unspeakability of of this tragic uh of this trauma I could stop here for now [Laughter] we have to go to India so can yeah yeah was there another question but maybe you know maybe I'll answer this one first yeah I'm sorry I forget sorry uh of course thank you and it's very important to me to to hear these these um and uh it's true that uh each one of them has a strategy for survival or tries to have a strategy for survival so that's why we hear these different voices but for Eve the the point is that she feels as if her body is something and herself inner self is something else and that they're two separate entities almost because this is the only way she can survive and which is the case actually in in many of my books about this dichotomy because between body and self because especially for women's bodies because it's not their own it's it's a body that is often [Music] um sort of possessed by I mean possessed in many different ways but by others by their functions by so they have to be daughter sister a wife a mother so that they have the body is sort of subject to different uh sort of uh roles and functions but inside the person the self is the same person is the same self who's going through all the these this sort of different stages of life but then but it's it's sort of merciles fragmented because of the expectations because of the look of others because of the way of these functions all the the way that the body has to be hidden and has to be denied you know so for all my life probably I've been writing about how to reconcile these two parts you know how to make that person become whole uh irrespective of who is looking and who's uh what function and and who they are which I I think is is extremely difficult because women are defined very often by the roles they're playing and uh so in Eve we have in EV we have this uh really she herself says that they take my body but they don't don't touch me so she's done this sort of Separation to preserve herself and in the at the end of the novel there's at one point where she's she's sort of it's she can't face this violence anymore and her she asked her mother to shave her head because her hair is the the what people hold her by her father pulls her hair tears her hair out and she feels it's a symbol of femininity but a symbol that that at the same time denies her Humanity denies who she is as a person and she asks her mother to to shave her head off which is a very powerful symbolical um sort of gesture so uh definitely each one of those those characters goes through the same I mean a different type of of path and Cleo who's that little sort of uh who violent wants to kill people and Etc in the end when he finds himself in prison for a crime he didn't commit uh suddenly becomes the most fragile and vulnerable of all of them and and I did sort of feel a kind of of terrible tenderness towards him because uh it was like my child who's in prison and he's sort of saying if I get out of this I will reform myself I'll become a priest if needs me you know any sort of and he he's waiting for a brother who's left Mauritius has gone to France he's waiting for his brother to come back so all of them have this kind of um you know going through through it a terrible terrible path and sad is is uh sort of trying to emulate Rambo and uh so I think that um yeah it's a tragic story but at the same time if it makes the readers think about you know the absence of of uh possibilities and and hopes for for these kids and makes them think about you know why violence happens in this kind of situations when sad says uh it's not violence it's the the resistance of those who despair this violence there's no violence is a residence of those who are despairing which is true and and it's actually how the whole story started in my mind because in 2005 there were lots of riots in France on the in the sort of suburbs of Paris and all that and you could see images on the screens you know of what young people sort of burning cars you know breaking shop shop windows and all that and there was a lot of discourses about it you know you could hear politicians and the journalists maybe sometimes sociologists would not not that often you know all sorts of different discourses about them but you never heard them you never heard what they really were thinking of and what really provoked that so that this story was about getting into their heads and trying to see well where does it come from that balance and how does it you know it does it's not sort of it doesn't come out of nowhere it comes from something very deep inside and this is what basically what I was wanting to to find out is what's in their mind and how does it you know result in in this these tragedies and unfortunately uh as I said this book came out in 2006 in French and it's still valid today and it's still Universal in a way because what I was reading today it could have happened it could be happening anywhere I think when for those of you who come anywhere in the world actually you can you can you can relate to it and know that it could happen anywhere no I don't dare to Russia anymore but if I forget something was there another comment or question I'm sorry that I have to look at yeah we don't see anything from it otherwise this book might maybe be the moment to have a short reading also in French for the for the feeling and the Rhythm should I read from yeah borrow us the book please thank you very much so which one should I read now okay so I won't read something that I've already read in English but it doesn't matter I think you know it you know it's same story in the same voice and so it's eve speaking EV olution is foreign [Music] foreign metal City firstly kid is tomorrow is foreign [Music] foreign Bond age [Music] Samsung cell phone is foreign [Music] foreign [Applause] [Music] that maybe this reading uh the the sounds and also the rhythm of of this passage will maybe take us to to other Horizons um so that we can because time is running unfortunately um can talk about um uh the the most recent novel that came out last year I don't even know it's not translated yet the laughter of the goddesses um which would take us to India and to other monsters I mean other persons who are considered to I mean who are outcasts of of the society so we will find this Trope again in this in this novel even though it's really a very different different one from what we just um what we just heard and talked about but I will leave it to you up to you too maybe to give a little bit more of context before we can have the reading in French um yeah well please yes well it's a book that was inspired directly from an experience I made in in India a few years ago I was invited to a Book Festival in Calcutta although the book is not set in Calcutta but the organizers of the festival asked me if I would like to visit or to meet uh women who had an association that was helping children especially Daughters of prostitutes working in in the red District of Calcutta and we're trying to sort of get the daughters especially out of that sort of vicious cycle of poverty and and prostitution so of course I I said yes and uh I went there on the day I went there it was during the monsoon so that the rain will sort of heavy rains were falling and arrived in that and that Association was actually working in the middle of that red light district and that I arrived in in a sort of uh little road which was overflowing with with rain and all along that road you had little sort of rooms over three three stories and in front of each room a woman was sitting and waiting dressed in very beautiful colorful clothes with with flowers in their hair a lot of what fake jewelry but really dressed up and uh waiting for for clients and at the same time I saw children playing in in the sort of gutters in the rain and especially little girls and I sort of it got me thinking about you know what's happening to these kids while they're waiting for the for their mothers to work and I met this Association and they said that um that they're trying to actually take care of the children while the mothers work and and try to get them sort of into the educational system or to bring teachers to to teach them and especially the girls because that was their main focus because obviously once those little girls become you know our sort of 13 or 14 maybe even younger you can think of what's going to happen to them you know in in that situation and then they said something that was really sort of that made me sort of sit up in the midst of all this experience which was already very harsh they said we especially take care of of the the daughters the during the time of of uh the major religious festivals in India especially the pilgrimages towards the Ganges or to different places of worship because these pilgrimages sort of take a long time people on the roads and the prostitutes follow these pilgrimages because that's when they get the most work you know that that that's when the services are required during that time on the roads when men are on the road and they said it very matter of factly but to me so I sort of was sort of almost jumping thinking well these men are going on pilgrimages religious pilgrimages [Laughter] and these women on on you know have to sort of fulfill the the their needs but when these men reach the Ganges and plunge into it and wash themselves they are sort of uh you know they wash themselves of their whatever sins you know they've committed but these women have no possibility of whether it's a sin I mean sin is a very charged world but they have no possibility of any kind of redemption or change of their status once that in that status they they are condemned to that status they can't get out you know basically they can't get out there's no way out of it and that sort of you know hypocrisy was was so uh shocking although I know of these things you know of course I know that that it's a hypocritical society and everything but just that that sort of just a position of the the religious pilgrimages and using the the women's bodies uh it really then sort of immediately sort of made me think I must write about this it's it's not possible because India is sort of considered such a sort of spiritual society and all that but uh in a way we know it's a it's such a patriarchal society and with these sort of hierarchies a hierarchical society and those who are at the bottom really have no choice and no way of getting out of it so I started thinking about about that novel but I also also started thinking about the little girls whom I saw playing in in the gutters and so finally this story started to go here around one prostitute who has a daughter and who in a way rejects a daughter because it's too much of a of uh you know if she accepts her daughter and and allows herself to love her it's like too much guilt because she's condemning her to the same time of life so in a way from the beginning the mother puts her child behind a kind of of partition reject her and the child grows up behind the politicians but watching what's happening in that brothel and and the child becomes the sort of main heart of of the novel what is going to happen to the child and so I introduce a religious man with Swami you know who has a temple and who's a sort of high who has all the powers he's a brahmana which is the highest cost he's a man he's also he has money because people you know pay for his services and he's almost he wants to be almost a Divinity because he has his own statue in his Temple so that people come and pray to his statue to his uh well in front of him and he comes and uses well you know also asks for the services of the prostitutes but when he sees that little girl he falls in love with her and and then he decides to kidnap her basically and uh so that that story was very clear in my mind but when I started writing it uh I thought I would write it in the third person or the very often I write in the first person and I thought I'd write it in third person because I don't know who I'm identifying with out of these three main characters whom I was thinking about but slowly as I was writing it I started feeling that there was somebody who was there saying I we and who wanted to be part of that story and I wasn't the one telling the story and but while thinking of the whole environment of that little Street I thought about another category of of people who are like the prostitutes extremely visible physically and extremely invisible uh sort of inside you know mentally and emotionally and everything and that part is is a community in India which are called the the hijras which are women born in men's bodies and it's a very ancient Community I mean it's even in the mythologies and all that they talk about them but these men dresses as women and sometimes go through a a ritual of castration but they're also completely marginalized so that at the same time a bit um mythical because they're considered they can bring their blessing during a ceremony a religious ceremony at the same time the rest of the time they they have to beg for their life for for to live or they have to prostitute themselves and they don't even have an identity I mean they didn't have a um they didn't have the right to have an ID card until since until about 2014 when some associations sort of meditated for for them to have it because without an ID card you can't work you can't you can't do anything because so um when this idea came to me I thought well maybe one of them is telling the story and I got this character called sadhana who was a young as a young child won't like to dress up as a girl and dance and then his family sort of push the same away and it becomes part of this Hijra community so they were both like sort of extremely visible and at the same time extremely invisible sort of groups of people and they all sort of um go here around that this little girl because once she gets uh kidnapped by that man they decide they have to go and you know save her so then they have they go they go with the pilgrimage because the the the Swami decides to take on a pilgrimage and wants to say she's in a Reincarnation of Kali or something like that so the women actually follow that that pilgrimage as they do but this time it's not too it's actually to get back the daughter and and take revenge on on this man so and as an aside um I had started the story before the pandemic but during the pandemic since I was at home I sort of was really writing it to finish it but the world was such a uh uh I mean there was so much anxiety in all this especially in at the beginning in 2020 during the lockdowns and all that and I thought how am I going to finish that story because in reality that little girl um um realistically nothing would save her once that man had taken her but because it was during the pandemic and and everything was going so badly for the world I thought I can't have a tragic ending to that story so in a way because of the pandemic it had a happy ending and I saw also that laughter came back all the time that sometimes they were laughing together out of uh sometimes after vanguards the laughter vanga sometimes they'll have the complicity between the women sometimes it's the laughter of Despair but at the end it becomes a laughter of Hope because that little girl becomes the the focus of their hope so this is why in the end the title was the laughter the goddesses because in the midst of all this spirituality it is uh this mythology of Hinduism and everything the real goddesses were these women who were who were actually the most the sort of most The Untouchables or downcast of that Society so that's a story of the dead yes very complex story if I put it on the program for my students so one will be forced to read it yeah yeah they will suffer because then I think they come to a class of African literatures I mean the Indian Ocean and then they are taken to the to India and to a whole I mean to another universe but actually which is very I mean everything is very linked um maybe just the the little girl who's like the main character everything is turning around around her yeah I find it also interesting because her name her mother doesn't give her a name yeah and then she's looking for a name for herself and she calls herself for me shinti what I found really aren't yeah actually because in fact of course there's this kind of of uh or confrontation between the patriarchy and and these women but at the same time I didn't want to sort of to to become sort of you know a sort of uh polarization between men and women so the mother is a very flawed character as well as I was saying at the beginning she she rejects the the child to the point that she doesn't give her a name so she puts her behind a wall and she hardly feeds her and it's only when the child is in danger that she will actually discover what it is to to how what a mother's love is and that's when she discovers it but she has this path also which she has to follow so the child grows up without without a name and at some point when she's about nine years old she she thinks well I need a name and she's trying to think of names whether she'll have Bollywood actress name or but she says no these women are so beautiful they belong to another Universe you know I can't take this thing and then finally she thinks of the little ants that sort of go through the corners and and holes and nobody sees them but they see everything and so she decides to call herself chinti which in Hindi means the aunt you know that for me and so this is how she has her to sort of give herself her an identity in fact uh yeah so uh yeah so I think it's we will be listening to the French text but I know that there are quite some people in the here with us who also understand uh French so that we could also have questions and comments in both languages afterwards yeah so I won't get up because it's getting tiring is foreign [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] Maria is [Music] the Memoir distribution is [Music] dispensable foreign normal absolutely reflections [Music] foreign foreign Dell is in the Christmas is let me see fatigue foreign [Music] [Applause] yes I was saying I think in this reading I think I mean even if you might not understand the the Rhythm and the the melody um is very how do you know it would take you would take you the listener away it takes you into this but it seems to be like a very very it sounds very nice but what it's talking about is not that nice actually but I mean you find very poetic images to describe this uh yeah this this this life between absolute Despair and some glimpses of Hope yeah okay what I found interesting that I mean chinti as we were just talking about her that they find it as a consolation as well that she's there and she is watching them all the time and she knows everything about them as if so while we talked about this the the uh the Gaze of the society that might isolate them but here we have a completely different gaze which which sees them sorry which which more which uh what's this different gaze of this uh this child which is just curious about very open as well we just see the women and just also accept everything what they are doing and then they create this kind of yeah they're very getting very close and there was something about the [Music] tenderness that can can can appear in in the middle of of this despair so changing gazes I found this very interesting that's true I I I didn't think about it uh actually uh really really but because I thought that they were seeing and had a possibility of a different life a different future for them but it's true what you're saying is she's the only one who sees them for who they are and who admires them who loves them who who looks at them with a kind of of Enchantment because of their their beauty and the in an external beauty and it's true that in a way that gaze gives them something back to to themselves and to come back to one of the questions before it's true that um again it wasn't deliberate but from the start this poetic writing uh I realized later on helped to make the violence of the of of the stories more sort of acceptable in a way not acceptable but it sort of helps bring the reader into the book books and and uh in a way maybe sort of entraps them into reading the flow of the of the language and then suddenly they realize that these stories are really horrible to read but uh that uh in a way that the Poetry helps um you know sort of uh is a consolation against that violence of of the world that's being told and that's being created and I think it's again it's not deliberate it's something that came through what I wanted to what I did from the start but I realized afterwards that it is true that it's kind of a healing part of the of the books is that some of them are really very harsh to the stories are very harsh but the writing helps to uh it helps in in a way yes we can open up if there are also reactions towards this really feeling pretty strange but yeah and while we are waiting for the comments so those who don't speak French maybe this gives you the idea to enroll for intensive French class during the summer I mean just to get into this yeah I mean there are a lot of other languages but as we're talking about French today do you have some forms of enrollment outside [Music] I think um this is amazing I think we could spend another at least that's how I feel I could spend another three hours listening to you and I'm not saying this out of politeness because I think it's very um you said Enchantment enchanting so I'm wondering if there is an audio version of um either in English or in French because you also have a very beautiful way of reading but that's not my question my question is and and I think it relates probably to both books because um what I what I find um quite pertinent is how you start a bit concerning the first book how you were considering um the language question right so the 17 years old um which kind of slang do you then adopt yeah and in a sense you didn't but but still um yeah I mean it's this Rambo uh kind of verse of not taking the 17 year old seriously but at the same time I think um you are taking these 17 years old very seriously and and one can really um see the kind of the thuggishness of the the particular well the male and I think as well as the female character so the kind of um yeah um the boastfulness in in even the kind of ideas of a 17 year old Adolescent and at the same time time that disband the tragedy which I think and probably it's the same in the girl character um and I'm wondering so now here comes the question so so how do you put yourself into these shoes because I mean you you have um in the first book so you have four different perspectives and and you on the one hand they are as utter said they are isolated but of course they are also interlinked because you have different perspectives on a similar not only the Truman but also the similar characters and but then you have very particular kind voices so I'm wondering how you kind of is that a music that helps you to kind of do you have a kind of a do you have a soundtrack for each for each character and as well for the girl child um now in in your second novel as well as I think because you are working through very different well here we are in a case system so it's a very different social class but also gender wise and also in terms of social milieu so I'm I'm quite struck by the challenge of actually taking these very very different perspectives thank you and and and while we saw we I think we we heard how the Poetry carries you through the text and how it carries us I think through the text as well but I'm wondering how that works then taking very different um very different perspectives and thank you once again okay well thank you for that that question which has uh two parts I I'll try to to remember how to address both parts one is about the observation and maybe my anthropological background and cultural different cultural backgrounds also so that's one of well the other part about putting yourself in in the different uh characters I mean this is something that I've done since I was very very young and my first collection of short stories which uh you know I wrote between the ages of 17 and 19. in each one I was saying I but the eyes were com every time different different characters and some of them were one of them was in a 40 year old man and one you know I was still an adolescent one of them was an old woman one of them were some of them were younger characters so it's been part of of the fascination with writing to me who who was a an extremely shy child of a village in in Mauritius where we the world was was actually only in the imagination because well I mean at that time we didn't have television we didn't have much contact with the outside world except for reading so the world of books created my universe in a way definitely this this was the origin story of myths sort of stories uh books whether the the sort of trigger probably and silence also of my sort of inner nature being contemplative so I had to bring the world to me through my writing and I that was the way I sort of traveled through the world or created the world by becoming other people and saying I so this was something which was probably subconscious or I don't know how it happened but it it happened and uh it's something that's followed me because whenever I write I have an idea about a book a novel until I found the voice of the narrator I I can't write the book and the in particular the book The lisari ver which you you have here it's a story that I had probably since childhood in my mind and when I was started writing seriously I thought I must tell that story and I wrote it three times from different points of view saying I and the first two times I wrote the first hour of the whole novel and then left it the second time started it and left it because I realized it wasn't what I wanted and it's many many years later that suddenly I thought I could write it from that particular point of view and then it came very easily so it had to be the voice first and the story was there it had to be The Voice once I found the voice it was I could write it very very easily so in a way for this this um well FD silicon also I had started writing it thinking maybe I'll write it in the third person and then again it was something I had I felt I had to get into the mind and in a way be inhabited by this guy factors and inhabits inhabit them as well uh but then once I had the the character Eve she she couldn't be alone in that story she had people around her and I had to have these other voices um and uh and also at one point when she's talking about herself I realized that she's talking about herself as the Predator the one who chooses the one who's not a victim and somewhere inside my mind was saying but you are a victim in a way and and I realized that there was another voice needed which were the passages in italics where someone else is saying but you know this is what's happening to you and this so there was a sort of fifth voice in in that book um but again yeah this is um I wouldn't have been able to write it in a language sort of slang of of today whether in French or Creole you know I wouldn't know this enough and at the same time slang tends to date a book because they change languages these kinds of daily day-to-day language change very quickly and then suddenly you find that these words these terms are not used anymore so in a way by trying to sort of Express the language of their subconscious I was going to I could use any any kind of that poetic language or philosophical or or very violent so in fact it's sort of all fitted together even saying I for each one of them and I must say for clelio it's one character that I didn't really think of before and that sort of came we were talking about it this morning I was saying that sometimes you start writing a novel and when you something happens that that you didn't expect a character appears that you didn't expect or it the novel pulls you into a place that you didn't think of then you feel that it's living it's alive you know there's something Beyond you as a writer that's happening there and that's a bit magical in a way that's the fascination and beauty of writing and for me this when that happens I really feel okay this novel is is living because there are many I wrote which didn't leave enough that I left in my drawers so Cleo was a character I didn't expect when when he came he came with his language with his uh voice with his uh this kind of violence and all that so and for the Indian the novel published last year again I was telling about the story The Inspiration but again I had to find the the heart of the novel which of course it's chinti but who's telling the story and when I found this uh Hijra that the transsexual telling the story it cohered it came together and I know India I mean I'm sort of my great-grandparents came from from India but I didn't I haven't lived there for a long time but culturally I've been seeped into that culture and I've lived there I've been there several times but the problem that we now face as writers what I'm talking about this magical aspect you can be anybody and and everybody in fact today we're finding ourselves more and more hemmed in by identities by the questioning of identities and as a an example this novels my publisher well sent it to different Publishers around the world and an American publisher replied to her saying we love the novel but the narrator is a transsexual and the author isn't and uh it's a it could be problematic for us to publish this so I was talking about it this this morning that uh in a way being an artist means you are without identity in a way I mean of course you have your identity but you can be the other you can understand the other you can make that step out of yourself now we are being hand in and and censored because of who we are because of our identity and this is very very dangerous I think that this is a very bad path we're going through and I'm glad I didn't start writing now because that would have been a problem maybe just to add quickly to this um uh we talked also about this a little bit this morning there's a another book that was published last was also last year um two suitcases and one cooking pot um which is a mix I would say in between with biographic biograph sort of biography but also about thinking about writing and how writing accompanies or is part of your life and your experiences and in this in this essay novel biography you you you coined the word vivekir in one word so living living writing pointing I'm making one word of it and also it come it comes up several times this to become someone else so this is also something that come what you were just talking about as an artist or as a writer so are you looking for this voice and then it becomes this living I mean you you step into this other person or you become this voice and this is why you can then tell this story which also I also recommend you by the way but this has not been translated yeah I mean just to add on that I think that all the Arts and and literature and the novel people often said the death of the novel and all that uh these are voices which are necessary because we are sort of inundated with with with voices uh with uh I think with the social networks and all that it's liberated the kind of of freedom of maybe freedom of expression is a positive thing but if you're writing without even thinking you know when you think a writer is thinking of a word for you know over hours and then in social media whatever you think you're you're writing and very often it's a violent type of of freedom of sometimes language language of hate a language of violence uh these uh this kind of expression is is uh to me uh goes counter against everything that that for us writers or artists who are thinking about things you you you want to think about what you're saying which will stay you don't want to to sort of throw everything you want to write and so at least for within novels you're forcing not forcing but bringing the reader into a world that is unfamiliar but making them think and live with these characters and be these characters even for one hour or one week or or you know whatever which we don't have if we're listening to the news or well we don't even listen to the news now it's I don't know how you get news you know with your on your telephone screen or something like that but this is very fugitive and superficial you know uh so okay Bond bomb has exploded somewhere killing 100 people does it say something to you emotionally it doesn't okay you you are you're concerned but you don't feel it whereas if you are in in a book and you are being the the child covering under on the wall and hearing the noise of the bomb coming or you are the man who is going to you know push the button to explode the bomb you're going to be with that person and know where that person has come from even the person pushing the button to explode the bomb has is a person is a human being so you have to know what brought him to that and the only way to have any kind of answers to these questions is to understand what brought somebody to a particular situation and I think the novel novels when we do manage to to do that even though it's fiction which all the news 24-hour news we have do not do not help us understand the others do not help us to understand the other and this is very important so if something is preventing us from doing that it's it's very very dangerous because it's only one type of voice which will come out you know they can just remind you that in the beginning I said she wrote 26 novels so this is a very big universe with with others and voices that they are there to to follow and to discover um questions maybe can come to a last round or if there are still some questions or comments really I feel like on a boat um no not I think no so I think we can come to an end now so another thank you very much again thank you thank you this is almost like for the stage that one more one more but then maybe it gives you there's a small be your entrance um I brought also this which is in three languages so in French in English and also in Creole poems um yeah uh you can have a look at it but so this can also be I mean three languages it's easy to learn then and to switch from one language to the other okay but yeah thank you very much thank you and I think we might have a moment for exchange and you might have a look at my books but please leave them here still need them for the next classes thank you very much and thank you for coming and yeah [Applause] foreign
Origins & context
- Title
- Book reading: Multiple perspectives from the Indian Ocean - Ananda Devi
- Language
- English
- YouTube playlist
- Readings, Concerts and other events
- Date
- June 9, 2023
Identifiers & sources
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