we of the forsaken world... Read online

  Copyright @ 2019 Kiran Bhat

  Iguana Books

  720 Bathurst Street, Suite 303

  Toronto, ON M5S 2R4

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise (except brief passages for purposes of review) without the prior permission of the author or a licence from The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For an Access Copyright licence, visit www.accesscopyright.ca or call toll free to 1-800-893-5777.

  Publisher: Meghan Behse

  Editor: Lee Parpart

  Front cover design: Meghan Behse

  Map design: Kyle Poirier (thepeartree.com)

  Issued in print and electronic formats.

  ISBN 978-1-77180-366-3 (paperback). 978-1-77180-367-0 (epub). 978-1-77180-368-7 (Kindle).

  This is the original electronic edition of we of the forsaken world....

  Introduction

  Dear reader,

  I believe that we are at the precipice of a new historic era, during which the internet and digital communication systems are allowing us to enter a new stage of planetary consciousness. In our current global state, humans are able to connect, collaborate, and interact with other humans, regardless of where in the world they are or to what nation state they belong. We are also facing greater collective problems, including climate change, world wars, dictatorships and genocides, that threaten our species as a whole. Such problems are arguably not new, but we are reaching a breaking point. We will need to unite as a species, as one planet, to come anywhere close to solving them. Digital communication brings us one step forward to reaching such a state.

  In an ideal world, as connectivity progresses, each human of our world would function the way a cell functions in a human body. We would see each other in the context of our individuality but realise how our individual actions both directly and indirectly affect the greater Earth. It would be as if our Atmans (our individual spirits) could merge into a Brahmin (a cosmic unity) on Earth, with the spirit of the universe being the actual space of our planet, its trees and rivers, its various animal species, including the seven billion humans who call it home. If we were to think of ourselves as part of a greater Earth collective, I am sure we would spend more time caring about the suffering of others, eliminate a lot of the excess and unnecessary consumerism that causes environmental catastrophes, and act for the sake of each other, act in the context of One.

  We are nowhere near the full actualisation of such a consciousness, but we see it in smaller ways. When I am virtually calling a relative in Bangalore or a friend living in a fishing village of Java, I have the capacity to enter their ontological space despite being nowhere close to them physically, and they enter mine. Thanks to the media, I can glean information about events based in Syria or Brazil without having a single connection to anyone in those countries. People from Tegucigalpa or Nairobi randomly add people on social media from Katmandu or Toronto and build friendships that last a lifetime. Slowly, we are seeing humans start to build connections with each other and immerse themselves in the world through the internet. This is unlike anything we have seen in the history of humanity.

  Ultimately, all art aspires to capture the aesthetic consequences of a particular period and set it in stone for the generations to come. In writing this novel, I wanted to imagine what it would be like to create a narrative where people unrelated to each other physically begin to work indirectly as beings connected by virtue of being part of this very Earth. Within the context of this book, I chose to represent a multitude of unrelated characters, each focusing on a moment of their life but indirectly witnessing or intersecting with their regional or national storyline. The stories do take place linearly, but are structured to jump from region to region, much like the internet is jumping through the billions of nodes on this planet as we speak. Throughout the novel, four storylines are delineated. I expect the individual reader to first be consumed by the vignettes of each individual’s story, but over the course of the novel to realise that four greater storylines are being told, and to become swept into these greater worlds. The reader is expected to handle this balancing act of individualising the narrators, constructing the stories of each world, and most importantly, being tossed back and forth through four localities the way technology is currently transcending our definitions of place.

  You are free to take all of this into consideration as you read my novel or enter into its world without any introduction. Although this book does make a lot of aesthetic demands on the reader, I hope that those demands are justified by its larger aims. I want to throw out our pre-twenty-first century assumptions about how a place can be narrated, and guide readers to think globally. This includes attention to the narratives of those who are so far unable to participate in global culture, societies set in the parts of the world written off as backwards, which happen to also be the nations where innovation and our new humanity will be at its ripest and most capable of flourishing. Although the geographic locations described in this novel are fictitious, readers will notice some similarities to existing regions of the world, from the villages and metropolitan centres of the so-called developing world to those few remote places on Earth where societies have flourished without contact with the rest of humanity until recent years. Without referencing any specific nations or peoples, this novel nevertheless sets up resonances with the populations of many different parts of the world where whole groups of people are living full lives. This fictional world is designed to evoke those lives and pull those people out of obscurity in a way that honours the fullness of their being. By rendering fictional worlds of my imagination, I also wanted to make it clear that I did not want to speak for anyone who wasn’t myself. Whether they belong to isolated tribes in the middle of Papua or the highest skyscrapers of Moscow, people have a fundamental right to speak for themselves. I wanted to imagine a world of my own, an alternative version of our globe, that allowed me to tell the stories of people who resemble those who reside on our own topography, without running the risk of pretending a story of theirs happens to be mine.

  Maps

  THE TRIBE OF THE SILT: A giant river flows through one of the biggest rainforests in the world. Before the government ordered that large expanses of the rainforest be cut down for the sake of industrialisation of the nearby provinces, the land was known to be one of the most biodiverse of the world. Various types of monkeys, sloths, parrots, frogs, fish, river dolphins, turtles, and insects live in the forests, rivers, and mangroves. As of late, media attention has focused on the disappearance of the bodies of several workers who are said to have been taken from the site where magnolia is being logged. Far beyond the reach of current public information, there exists beyond this site another enclave, where a tribe not yet discovered by the rest of humanity lives. They are said to be ancestor-worshippers who live together on one side of the river, in big huts held up by logs under twigged roofs. They sleep, often one man with several wives and their children, over the bones of their deceased. The chief of the tribe is said to have the biggest hut of them all. Due to conquests and wars between the tribes, the Tribe of the Silt has become an amalgamation of all the tribes that once populated the entire rainforest. There are about fifty or so members of the tribe left, and they live deep within the dense canopies of the forest, so far untouched by industry. It is for this reason that, in the eyes of the outside world, people consider the rainforest to be entirely extinct of its indigenous people.

  A GLOBAL VILLAGE: There is a bend in the grasslands where only one road leads to the rest of the world. Large expanses of the land are empty, but once one crosses a sma
ll creek and travels further through the dust, one can see the occasional man or woman walking on what they call the main road. All along this road, small shops have grown like polyps. In the morning, the inhabitants of the village stay at home, eat breakfast, and exchange gossip. During the day, they commute barefoot or in sandals to the road, to sell each other a wide range of goods, from mobiles and cabbages to sugar cane and various snacks. Cell phone technology has reached this community in relatively recent years, and the community is suffering growing pains as a result of this change. Many people spend their days inside their stores, hemmed in by their goods, playing random games on their phones. Each community has about twenty houses. Only one of the dwellings was built recently: an apartment complex made by the government, with grey brick walls that have yet to be painted. Others live in the mud huts that pimple the grasslands. These are mostly one-storey dwellings, each with two rooms and a thatched roof. Regardless of their small size, each house usually consists of a room with a television and a cot and another room with a cot for sleeping, and an outside expanse with a toilet and cooking area. Housewives band together to cook various meals and look after the children, while the children spend their time playing games with each other or alone on their phones. The most famous (or infamous) man of the village was once the richest, known for having the biggest cow estate in the greater area. He is no longer in this world, but his daughter tends to his cows and delivers their milk to the entire community to this day.

  THE LAKE OF THE SACRED SALT: There was once a small city known as one of the great cultural centres of its country. This small city was famed for its lake, which held special healing powers. One dip in its waters was said to cure almost any illness. The area housed many important writers and artists, and was frequented by tourists for its chocolate, beer, and distinctive style of blown glass. As of late, the lake has dominated world headlines due to an industrial spill that killed 2,386 people. The catastrophe occurred when a water cooler at a poorly managed pesticide plant malfunctioned, funneling a cloud of cumin-coloured gas into a residential area of this important industrial hub in the middle of the night. For weeks, entire streets were shrouded with plastic bags covering the bodies of the dead, and the trees were stained yellow for years. The damage extended from the suburbs to downtown, affecting stores, bars, fruit markets, and the small brick houses behind and between them. Five weeks after this environmental catastrophe, the CEO of the pesticide company, who had always claimed that the industrial spill was out of their hands, diminished the event by referring to it as “just an incident.” That phrase spiraled around the fire at a vigil, until it became the name of the tragedy, the Incident. News reporters and journalists from inside the country and abroad poured into the lakeside community in the interest of highlighting a tragedy very few had learned about.

  BLACK CITY: There is a capital like any other of the rising world. From an aerial view, one sees apartment complexes and skyscrapers in all directions. It is only when one zooms in closer that one sees slums between the buildings, tin hovels with the occasional blanket or bed sheet for a wall. There are parts of the city where the slums cover the ground like the giant folds of an umbrella punctured at its side. In those holes are usually houses from a different era, painted red or yellow, baby blue, or eggshell green. Black City boasts the Great Founder’s Plaza, which is famous for having the first statue of the country’s first president. Most people visit this area to take a picture of the biggest cathedral in the region and the colonial buildings around it. Some also visit the market in the city’s north end to buy cheap electronics and clothes. The people of the city journey to its modern side to shop in the commercial malls, work in the skyscrapers, and eat in fast food chains that are generally avoided by the tourists who visit the historic area. Very rarely do people visit the slums or the attractions inside of it. There is a superstition that every homeless person of the city believes: if one crosses to the other side of the statue of the Great Founder and does not cover the path behind them with a thin line of salt, their soul will be ripe for the taking from a one-armed shadow who works for the Devil himself.

  Translations

  A cloud of yellow gas from the pesticide plant had descended over the ring of houses around the lake and killed thousands of our people. My only son, his wife, and their daughter were sent to the hospital. A few days later, I received news from a nurse that they were dead. Shrouded corpses were piled along the streets. Friends had thrown out their dogs with the soil. The smell in town was of flesh and mould and pee. The journalist asked if my wife was religious. I had nothing to say.

  The journalist stopped looking up and down my face. He scribbled notes on the bottom of his page with an unlit cigarette in his mouth. He had chosen to conduct these interviews at one of the cafés by the lake. In the eighties, the golden facades of the lakeside buildings were the colour of caramel, and the homemade chocolate sold on the waterfront tasted better than rum. These days, the plastic outlines cleared of the bodies made the sidewalks look like the inside of a furniture store, and flies swarmed between the brick walls and the racks full of postcards. On the other side of the boardwalk area was the neighbourhood of run-down apartments my son and his family had chosen to move into. I had no reservations when they decided to move there. Our cottage was dilapidating, and I knew my son was often bored living in our tree-lined suburb. The apartment they found was barely the size of our second floor, but it was cheap, central, and close to their work. They said they would visit once a week. A weekly visit was more than enough.

  This side of the boardwalk at least was cleaned up. In my son’s new neighbourhood, the military was still checking for bodies in apartment buildings. These were not the soldiers from my days in the army. They were wearing the inflated garments of astronauts. They stared at the living as if they had come back from space. I had spent a lot of my last few days by the boardwalk. This was why I knew all this.

  This journalist did not look like the kind of man who would work for the paper, Our Nation. They were usually northerners of the tall and pale sort. He was a man of medium height. He had the features of someone from here, but his eyes were green, and he spoke none of our language. His hair was greying. His blazer, pants, socks, and shoes were all black. He always kept his back straight. I found this a very northerner thing to do. He repeated his question, slowly, like he was speaking to a child.

  “What … happened … to your … wife … during … the … Incident?”

  “Nothing … nothing much,” I responded. “Tragedy comes … people change. She become religion. I become smoking.”

  “I didn’t … understand,” the journalist said. I switched to my language.

  “We all change when tragedy strikes. My sweet dear darling used to pray once a week, now she goes to the church at six in the morning, even while the doors are closed. I go through a carton of cigarettes in a day. An entire carton, in one day. I used to only smoke when my brother visited town.”

  The journalist patted the dandruff out of his hair.

  “You answered in … again,” he said. “I think I … some words, but I won’t be able to … this if you don’t…”

  I did not know how to speak our national language. I used to listen well, but I did not have the energy to struggle. I even lacked the force to sigh. I lifted my cigarette pack from the table and showed it to him.

  “Do …. you … need … a lighter?” he asked. My wife told me once she never knew if I was staring at her these days or at something behind her. I must have given him one of these stares. He found his own lighter and pack of cigarettes in his briefcase.

  We paused to smoke. The black circles of his tape recorder rolled on. The fifty-year-old posters on the wall watched us. The server was cleaning the coffee table and switching TV channels. The coffee machine made the most noise out of us all. Our table was by a window facing the road. A few people passed the window. They were loud, built men, their arms stained with petrol. They must have come from store
s on the parallel streets where tires were sold and cars were repaired. Behind them came some women, heads covered with polka-dot or striped scarves, or with dark black ones. They all stared openly at the journalist. Tourists hadn’t come since the Incident.

  “My mother … she … told me … of this place … when I was a … child…”

  He went on using words bigger than any I knew. I would have loved to tell him there were many things to see in our city. It was famed for its precious blown glass. The most famous store of its kind was four storeys, at the centre of the intersection between the ring road and the main avenues leading up a hill. If people were not looking for souvenirs, they could eat our style of chocolate, or go to the saunas towards the north, as the lake was famed over centuries for healing problems of the back. The university on the other side of the lake was one of the best in the nation. Our textiles and products went all over the country, all over the world. We were so much more than our calamity. We were a vibrant town mentioned in many great novels, with a history of hundreds of years.

  These were all the things I could never express in the language he knew. He realised I understood little. His eyes skipped to the end of his thoughts. Silence came again, and I made a trip to the bathroom. The window next to the sink peered towards the lake. The sun kissed the cloud hats upon the green hills goodbye. It left warm flickers of orange around the water’s edge. It would have been pretty to reflect on, if the lake had not been powdered yellow and dotted with the bodies of dead fish.

  “There are few parts of our country as beautiful as the north side of this lake,” I reminded him when I returned. It was a good place to fish or to picnic with the family, if he had one. He sighed around his cigarette. I changed languages and repeated slowly, “North … lake … nice…”