Selangor Club, Bukit Kiara
Tuesday, 12th September 2017
It is indeed an honour to be here, among friends, to celebrate the
publication of JK Asher’s novel, The
Inverted Banyan Tree and the Way Thither.
It was Datin Paduka Suhaimi Baba who spoke to me about her
friend who had just published a novel. “She would like to get in touch with you,”
Suhaimi said. I googled the novel, which had recently come out in Australia,and
the author but there was very little about both. Asher and I got in touch via
email and later WhatsApp. We met briefly over a cup of cappuccino and a pot of Earl
Grey tea. And my fate was sealed. I am
to launch this novel of hers. Her first.
This is no ordinary novel. It is dense, challenging and pleasantly
confusing. Wait a minute, let me explain. Those three words are enough to
describe some of the toughest yet best works of literature in history – from Don Quixote to Moby Dick, from Ulysses
to The Name of the Rose, from Brothers Karamazov to One Hundred Years of Solitude.
Some say these works are impenetrable classics. They have complex
structures, their allusions are diverse and the linguistic styles are unique.
In short, they are not your Jeffrey Archer. Don’t get me wrong. I find Jeffrey
Archer interesting, so too Stephen King and JK Rowling. You cannot fault
best-selling novelists, can you?
Some say the quality of a novel is inversely proportional to the
number of its readers. Wait till you read the original version of Don Quixote, The Name of the Rose, Doctor Zhivago
or even The Lord of the Rings. We are
made to believe, thanks to filmmakers and the state-of-art of today’s
film making, that these works of literature are episodic and easily adaptable to
movies. They are not.
They are “difficult” novels. Some are even least read but much
talked about. Daniel S Burt came out with The
Novel 100: A Ranking of the Greatest Novels of All Time. Not everyone will
agree with the ratings, but then again, no one agrees on all things literary
anyway! Let me read you the top 10 according to this ranking:Don Quixote, War and Peace, Ulysses, In
Search of Lost Time, The Brothers Karamazov, Moby Dick, Madame Bovary,
Middlemarch, The Magic Mountain and The
Tale of Genji. Yes, in that order.
I can bet that most of you in this room have read Madame Bovary at best or not at all at
worst. Yet, we all, at least most of us, claim that we love literature, with
the capital “L”.
Take the case of Ulysses,
always in the list of one the world’s best novels, top of the Literary 100 List, number 3 in fact in The Novel 100 list. Yet it is probably
one of the least understood novels the world has known.There is a cottage
industry trying to make sense of this supposedly classic. Marilyn French was
probably right when she wrote that Ulysses
by James Joyce is more than just a novel, it is a world in itself. She wrote a
book about the novel, succinctly titled, The
Book As World. It was published in 1982, 50 years after the publication of Ulysses.
“After 50 years of intelligent and dedicated exploration, the huge
subcontinent of James Joyce’s Ulysses
still contains unclassified flora and fauna, untraced streams,” she concludes.
God forbid that Asher’s work would fall into this category. Based
on my reading of the book, I can testify, as a reader and a lover of novels,
that The Inverted Banyan Tree is not
an impenetrable novel. It is, in fact, readable but with all the trappings of
some of the finest literary works I have come across. It is in a class of its
own, a book that demands attention. It is a classy novel.
I have reasons to be curious initially. Here she is, a Malaysian
who is like Si Tanggang, who had spent years abroad, 17 to be exact, who then balik kampung and writes about a place
that had helped define her, a little enclave in Port Dickson, Negeri Sembilan.
This Tanggang, “an exile” as she called herself, was away far too long.
But she could not resist the temptation of writing about the days
growing up in Malaya/Malaysia. Her formative years came rushing back. Even as a
“displaced person” (again her own words) thousands of kilometres away, she could
not forget her childhood and the people around her that had affected her so
much.
And interestingly, it is the sound of the azan, the call for the Muslim prayer, which has had an impact upon
her in more ways than one. She grew up listening to the azan. Loving it. The azan
is a call by the muezzin at a designated time. It is very much part of a Muslim
community. For Asher, a non-Muslim, the azan
took on a special meaning. Perhaps it was about acceptance, about
diversity, about tolerance, and more. Anyone living in a Malay village back in
the 1950's and 1960's would be drawn to the simplicity of village life, where
social norms were observed and religion, alongside culture, played an important
role.
That was then. Religiosity has yet to rear its ugly head. Today,
as the Malays become more Muslim, they become less Malay, discarding even the
best values their race have to offer. I call it the Arabisation of the Malay
race.
How things have changed from the era depicted by the novel. We are
a troubled nation now. Our people are drifting apart. Notions like muhibbah (harmony) and perpaduan (unity) are taken for granted.
Even multiculturalism, the very foundation of our existence and the bedrock of
the characters in this novel, is frowned upon.
It is within such a construct that Asher has created her
characters – men and women who had lived during the period, when innocence was
not yet lost, humility the rule of the day and decorum was observed to the letter.
Asher’s keen attention to history’s bitter hold on the present is remarkable.
She knows what history means. She uses history as backdrop, skilfully weaving
it into a tapestry of happenings, big and small. The tapestry provides the
setting for her novel’s love story, which is both complex and riveting.
More so because it involves the various races in pre-Independence
Malaya. And what a love story it is, replete with suspense and intrigue, with a
minefield full of clear and present dangers and, more importantly, a forbidden
one. I shall not divulge details of the story line for it will not do justice
to the author and the readers for now. Suffice to say, the love story itself is
worth a movie.
But I am drawn to the discourse in The Inverted Banyan Tree, particularly one pertaining to the
concept of “cultural appropriation” that is taking a new dimension, especially
in the West. There is a lot of debate about cultural appropriation during a
time when racism is taking centre stage in the American psyche. The concept in
itself is interesting – “the adoption or use of the elements of one culture by
members of another culture.” In fact, such adoption (there are others who are
labelling it as plundering) is not new.
While there are some who look at cultural appropriation or misappropriation
with a negative connotation, I would like to take it positively. After all,
culture is dynamic. Culture evolves. Trans-cultural diffusion is an integral
part of cultural transformation. Therefore, cultural appropriation should be
viewed as inevitable and contributes to diversity and free expression.
Asher’s judicious and clever use of the Malay culture and infusing
it with her own is commendable. The very strength of this novel is in the
audacious use of different cultures and, with it,their worldviews and
perspectives. I would suggest serious readers and scholars among you to look
into the discourse on cultural appropriation when you study this novel.
Asher has treatedhistory differently. In the tradition of story-writing
by “native” Chinua Achebe, history is merely a backdrop. But The Inverted Banyan Treetakes history to
a new level. After all, Asher is an immigrant, though once a native, who has
lived in a faraway land.
I salute Asher who, despite her immigrant status, still writes
about her roots in Port Dickson. Many of the so-labelled “immigrant novelists”
writing in English and based in the UK, such as Arundhati Roy and JhumpaLahiri,
are obsessed about non-resident Indian characters or NRIs. They look at
themselves as part of the immigrant issues in foreign lands. Their characters
are metaphorical renderings of immigrants coming to terms with their existence.
But Asher is looking back with lots of nostalgia, emotions and
psychological references. In this first novel, she is more concerned about a
Serani Roman Catholic girl and two Malay gentlemen who are in love with her.
Perhaps, in Australia, Asher feels unreal, outside her skin. Thus her novel is
about love, sacrifices, understanding and a reconciliation of sorts. It could
even be autobiographical; who knows.
The
Inverted Banyan Tree is
a long, erudite novel, with a post-modernist tendency, reminding me of Garbriel
Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude and
our very own ASamad Said’s Hujan Pagi.
Both are modern fables shrouded in the chronicle of memory.
Asher opens her novel with a prologue, “1956: Year of the
Inquisition”, not unlike Marquez and Samad who borrowed the traditional
story-telling style in their works. There is a lot of “memory” involved in the
grand tradition of post-modernist writers. I am not saying Asher should be categorised
as such, at least not yet, but this much I can say, The Inverted Banyan Tree, using memory (selection of events) and
chronicle (order of events),is framed in a unique narrative structure. Living
history is satirised into “magical realism” in The Inverted Banyan Tree. Even the “tree” – a symbol that appears
in all major religions – has a special meaning in this novel. But not as a tree
per se or a religious symbol as such, but as a literary totem pole of faith,
even hope.
The
Inverted Banyan Tree
is unique in another way – the way it is written. The story itself takes place
in two parallel periods of time: 1950's Colonial Malaya and 1980's Post
Independent Malaysia. Both periods are woven artistically by. Asher to reflect
on the travails of time. Historical terrains matter in a novel like this, in
which history is not just a smoke screen that separates the characters’ lives
from reality itself. It is a necessity as a meta narrative. We are seeing images
being deconstructed and remodeled according to the grand paradigm of
postmodernist construct.
Which reminds me of John Fowles’The French Lieutenant’s Woman. This 1969 novel is labelled a
post-modernist historical fiction. What is interesting is the parallel lives of
characters living in a Victorian period and those living in contemporary time. In
that novel, Sarah Wood ruff is a complex and troubled woman who is discovered by
paleontologist Charles Smithson at Lyme Regis as she watches the brutal waves
smashing the cob. The modern Sarah is in the form of an American actress, Anna.
According to Fowles, his idea to write the novel came when he
envisioned a woman standing at the end of a deserted quay and staring at the
sea at Lyme Regis. It was 1966. The novel was published three years later and
made into a film by Karel Reisz in 1981 starring Meryl Streep and Jeromy Irons
as lead characters.
The
French Lieutenant’s Woman received
a lot of attention because of its treatment of the gender issue. I would like
to see such attention be given as well to The
Inverted Banyan Tree. Mariam is my idea of our very own literary Sarah –
perhaps troubled but emancipated, independent and beyond stereotypes.
I have warned you earlier that this is no easy novel to read, not
your typical novel, one that you can enjoy in one reading. You will need a
number of re-readings! Before I scare you, let me qualify by saying, it is
rich, fertile and seductive. It is one of the best novels that I have read in
many years.
That leads me to my next question: why now, why was this novel not
written 17 or 20 years ago? With such talent, I find it mind-boggling that I
have not read any of Asher’s works earlier. There must be a reason. As they
say, better late than never. Age matters little in penning a literary work.
Some writers are simply late bloomers. Or perhaps they can only find time to
write after the age of 50 or even 60. Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote her first
novel at the age of 64, Frank McCourt at 66 and Mary Wesley at 70.
Last year, I launched a novel by Sonia Mael. Don’t Forget to Rememberwas her first novel. She is in her late
60s. Perhaps one of the pleasures of increasing age is that one starts
reminiscing plentifully. Memories come cascading in fragments, in snippets or
in whole. Like The Inverted Banyan Tree, Don’t
Forget To Remember is also about forbidden love, in this case between a mat salleh(an English man) and a Malay
girl in the 1960s.
Again, I must congratulate Asher’s success in publishing this
novel. My wish is that it be published in the UK to qualify for the coveted
Booker Prize. Now, this is not about winning. I assume that Asher was not
thinking of the Booker Prize when she wrote the novel. But let me put this in
perspective. Less deserving novels have won the prize, so you can understand
what I mean. Let me say, it has all the trappings of an award winner – great
writing, wonderful characterization, marvelously written. You cannot ask for
more.
Asher, I hope this is not your first. Keep writing. You have the
flair and more. In the difficult circumstances that we are in now, we need
people like you to make sense of the turmoil, the trials and tribulations of
this beloved nation of ours.
Your characters, Mariam, Ummah and Ismael, despite their
imperfections and misgivings, have seen better days as part of a nation. This
is a nation that needs a lot of soul-searching. Thanks, Asher, for your intuitive
understanding in bridging the bridgeable – while it is not too late to do so.
You have given the characters hopedespite their hopelessness, and faith despite
their weaknesses.
We are like them – longing to see better days. You have expressed
humanity in a way that we have always wanted to. You cannot change the nation
single-handedly. Like your characters, we are merely simulacra of portraits and
images. But we have our strength in our
differences and our diversity.
And thanks, Asher, for bring back such memories with style and
finesse.
With that, I hereby humbly, but with great pride and honour,
launch The Inverted Banyan Tree and The
Way Thither by the incredibly talented JK Asher.
Thank you.
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