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It evoked a feeling in her—of silence and freedom, of riding a bicycle on a dirt track cutting through fields in the absence of her parents, Nanaki, a fiercely sensitive young woman, is brought up by her grandparents in a quaint Chandigarh neighbourhood. She grows up to be an artist and a Professor in an art college. As Nanaki goes through the motions of an idyllic childhood and a difficult teenage love, her experiences play out against a haunting backdrop of Partition and her beeji’s turbulent personal history. Nanaki is brought face to face with the dark underbelly of contemporary Punjab when she takes up the cause of a consummate embroidery artist against a corrupt system while also being privy to the heart-breaking stories of two women in her immediate vicinity. Through it all, it is her Sufi bearings that sustain her. Meanwhile, over many motorcycle jaunts to the tiny hill-town of ka SA ul I, Nanaki finds love in himmat, an architect with his own share of personal tragedy and a scarred childhood. Meditative, rooted in location yet filtered through nostalgia, in the land of the lovers is a masterfully woven fable with interlocking tales that explore struggle, loss, longing and love with brilliant insight and luminous prose.
From the Publisher
Q. Tell us a bit about yourself:
I am a Chandigarh girl. I did my schooling and college here before moving to JNU, New Delhi for my MA in English Literature. I went on a Fulbright fellowship and put in a year at University of Texas at Austin, US. I teach Literary theory and Cultural Studies at a Panjab University college in Chandigarh. Last year I was selected for a stint at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla. My area of research is Amitav Ghosh and Cultural Studies.
Q. Tell us about “In the Land of the Lovers.”
In the Land of the Lovers is a book about a woman artist, Nanaki, who has been brought up by her grandparents in a quaint Chandigarh neighbourhood. It is a classic bildungsroman, a story of her growth where she moves from naïve idealism to fierce sense of purpose. She struggles to help Subedar Joginder Singh, a World War II veteran, who makes beautiful, wall size exotic bird embroideries but is languishing in anonymity.
She takes on the bureaucracy in the Art College so that the old artist can get his due but is distressed with the level of political interference she has to deal with. It is also a revelation. She is disillusioned with the people in authority who she has hitherto held in high regard. Gradually she gathers the strength to take them on. Apart from that, it is a book that revisits the collective community experience of Partition of Punjab through mnemonic devices of nostalgia and family anecdotes. It touches on the harrowing experience of 1984 through the psyche of a teenage boy. Additionally, a vivid portrayal of contemporary Punjab where the vices of drug addiction, corruption and nepotism are rife.
Q. What inspired In the Land of the Lovers?
I wanted to tell the stories of urban Punjab: like any society there are unique experiences, life philosophy and stories which need to be told. It is extremely important for all cultures as an act of self-knowledge and self-validation.
But while one might start with that, one does not have to end there. And if viewed from another end, I feel literature is an act of empathy. It allows you to enter another’s experience without judgement. Let alone other races and cultures, we have had talking animals and machines in literature with precisely that reason—it being an act of heightened empathy. I feel that mine is the generation that can bring these disparate threads together: Memories of Partition, which is part of almost every family lore in Punjab, (my grandfather, otherwise a tough man, went teary-eyed each time he recounted the trauma of Partition), the experience of terrorism in Punjab and living through 1984 and now seeing the state of Punjab with its multiple problems. But over and above, is the spirit of Punjab, the land of the sufi saints, the land that nurtured Gurbani. So there has been a personal quest too.
There has to be something in this land, the book attempts to have an engagement with that ethos while highlighting the struggles happening today. I wanted to write a book that could bring together these threads, plus do it through the filter of a young perspective. I wanted to write a book that could capture many voices of this land from past and present. One trope I have used to that end is the dialogues between “Mirasis”, the traditional performance artists, tramp like figures, as a narrative device to inject irony and wit in the novel.
Q. Excerpt:
But then, this treachery is at the heart of love. That two people’s needs are never the same. That while it involves fulfilment through another, you understand more about sovereignty. That your desire will always be in an elusive chase with the other’s independence of will. That some might just be transiting through love because they are conditioned to do things in appropriate stages, like other life activities, while others might be totally transformed by it. That two in love might be looking in one direction but never at the same thing. This struggle to get the lover to see what you see is futile, and yet a deep desire remains. Much later, she would grow up and learn more. And even though Nanaki felt bereft of love, heartbroken and utterly abandoned, even someone seemingly seeped in love could experience heartbreak—when that basic urge to be understood by the lover remains unfulfilled. The desire to be understood is primeval too. It might be forgotten for a while in the euphoria of new love. But it resurfaces like a lost child come home. You can’t shut the door. You have to take it in. The tussle then begins.
And even though body has entwined with body, vows have been whispered into the lover’s ear in the throes of unimaginable passion, there’s a pang still. One has not felt understood by the lover. And that is a different quality of loneliness. A constant dull hammering. Like a static hum. Dissonance. Ultimately it translates into a plain inability to see the other’s view. We shout betrayal. We shift blame. We feel inadequate. When it is just plain inability. So the intimacy has a narrow gap running across, like a rift between two continents, and it’s only when you examine it from above that you really see it. You realize that the gap might have the breadth of a hairline, but it is deep. Its darkness stretches all the way down into a free-falling abyss.
Publisher : Rupa Publications India (10 April 2020); Rupa Publications India , New Delhi
Language : English
Paperback : 232 pages
ISBN-10 : 9389967031
ISBN-13 : 978-9389967036
Item Weight : 160 g
Dimensions : 13 x 1.47 x 19.7 cm
Country of Origin : India
Net Quantity : 1.00 count
Generic Name : book