Although this video artifact was filmed
in 2008, The small boats you see, shikaras, are still much the same as
they were in 1915 on the morning when the valley punched Aadam Aziz
on the nose, and Tai the boatman set “history into motion” by
delivering the message that brings Aadam and Ghani the Landowner's
daughter, together, only to be divided by a perforated sheet.
As you watch this video try to imagine
that you are the boatman Tai, standing in your particular and
peculiar hunched position plying the oldest boat in Kashmiri memory
across the “Dal and Nageen Lakes...forever” (9). Look pass the
motor boat, “Rolls Royce” (at 1:18) scaring the ancient lake Dal
and imagine the “ 'floating gardens' lilting on the surface of the
spring and summer water”(9). The oars the men use in this video are
nearly identical to the oars, Tai and other shikara owners would have
used nearly one hundred years (of solitude?) ago! Note how their
“wooden heart on a yellow stick, drives jerkily through the
weeds”(7). Can you see Ilse Lubin's tragedy in the blonde woman
leisurely stroking the tide in her yellow shikara at 2:13? Upon
seeing the lotus flower floating along lake Dal at 3:47, are you
reminded of Saleem's precious (dung) lotus, Padma?
This artifact is particularly
significant to the text because it takes the mystical scenery, and
lurid landscapes of Aadam Aziz's Kashmiri mornings and makes them
real. The beauty of the images in this video is there literal
timelessness, and Taiji's ability to reflect them in his own story.
“Nobody could remember when Tai had been young”(9) He had watched
mountains being born and Emperors die. At 1:38 you even get a glimpse
of the mountains Tai witnessed take on life and a taste of the ever
so crucial blue of the Kashmir sky.
Saleem's life may start in Bombay but,
his story begins on the shores of lake Dal, with the tussock of earth
which created the first hole in his story. The hole is created when
the man, Aadam Aziz, that would later become Saleem's grandfather by
happenstance, after his long winded courting of a perforated sheet,
hits his gargantuan nose upon the earth during a ritual of prayer. It
is at this moment that Aadam resolves to never again kiss earth for
any god or man, a decision which Saleem says, created a hole in him;
“a vacancy in a vital inner chamber; leaving him vulnerable to
women and history”(4). Although we come to find out that Aadam Aziz
is no more related to Saleem then Tai the Boatman or The Brass
Monkey, the many things that created the initial hole in Saleem's
story are somehow inherited in him from Aadam Aziz.
Saleem is not only afflicted with “a
cyranose” as Ilse Lubin called Aadam's gargantuan trunk, but he too
is plagued by holes, history, and a weakness for women. Saleem
though, likely not having any genealogical link to the Kashmiri
country side has also magically inherited another one of his
“grandfather's” traits: Eyes of Kashmiri blue. “A clear blue,
the astonishing blue of mountain sky, which has a habit of dripping
into the pupils of Kashmiri men”(7), which brings us back to the
beginning. Our peaceful shikara ride through the Srinagar country
side, in which we can allow time to settle down. As we watch this
video we can focus on a scenery masterfully crystallized throughout
history, literature, and all of the instances that take place in our
absence, preserved like pickles on the ancient Kashmir lake.
Curated by Aubrey Helm
Wow, Aubrey, this is great! This video is a really good artifact and it definitely goes with the text. It's always refreshing to finally get a clear concise image of something that we read through. You talked about the oars used and about holes, there's a lot to be said within this novel about holes and gaps (and cracks!), and I can't help but draw the two together. There is some definite lines to be drawn between the two, and I'm getting the image of the water being pushed away by the oars only to have the hole immediately filled by its surroundings, ripples spreading from the center. It reminds me of the stories within the text, how they swerve around each other and help fill the gaps from each bit, with Saleem (and his "oar") constantly interjecting, creating a break in them. And even when he's gone, there's still hundreds and thousands of other "oars" breaking the water's surface and creating ripples throughout the lake.
ReplyDeleteAnd even though you've asked us to put aside the image of the "Rolls Royce" and it's motor, I think it also accentuates the text in this context. Which is the themes of progress and the intrinsic weaving of past present future. As we clearly see in the in the video we have to motor boats and the oar powered boats all sitting across the same plane, all sharing the same water. This relates very closely to the way the text of "Midnight’s Children" is presented and how it weaves the past present future upon the same plane, all sharing the same page.
-Paula Febles Bustillo
Excellent work here Aubrey, I loved watching your artifact! You got me thinking about the very beginning of the novel, and it felt nostalgic like visiting an old friend. Something about Aadam Aziz's youth as a doctor coming back to Tai's domain and confronting the jarring disconnect between old and new stayed with me the entire time I read this novel. These first chapters feel so peaceful compared to the rest of the book, like an unsuspecting shikara ride. Something Aadam's mother says in the first chapter stuck out to me when I was revisiting it for this project: "how life does turn out. For so many years even my ankles were a secret, and now I must be stared at by strange persons who are not even my family members" (13). This imagery of the old versus new that Tai's story embodies is carried throughout the book. India's road to a new identity is told through Saleem who embodies many identities through his life time. He 'collects' parents, he becomes a citizen of Pakistan, he loses his memory, he becomes Buddha! All the while though he remains Saleem, and isn't that how life is? It's always said "in with the new, out with the old" but it rarely ever happens like that. The old is never truly lost, or completely taken over by the new, it's layered. In a tale so heavily laden with questions of identity, with Saleem either asserting the importance of or questioning his, I think this concept is significant. I agree with Aadam's mother in this case, as she ponders the peculiarities of life. As she reflects on her exposed ankles, she is not making a necessarily moralistic judgment regarding them. The new sneaks in quiet as a mouse, and before we know it everything has changed.
ReplyDelete-Rosie Stump