Six Acres and a Third

-Fakir Mohan Senapati

“The nationalist search for the identity of a community is often preceded by a
construction of knowledge and consciousness of that identity.”

Before deciphering the actual essence of Six acres and a third by Fakir Mohan Senapati, I will try to present a brief scenario of Odisha before the British colonization.

History:

With the decline of the Mughal administration in India, Odisha came under the control of 2 extreme powers – the Nizams of Bengal and the Bhonsles of Nagpur. Where on one side the Maratha Marauders, having no intention of staying in Odisha, made it their exile land, the Nizams started sub-colonizing parts of Odisha. There was a phase in history when Odia was about to get registered as one of the dialects of Bengali.
And then started the famous event of English Colonization in Odisha.

Feudalism in Odisha:

“the insertion of India into colonialism is generally defined as a
change from semi-feudalism into capitalist subjection”

Pre-colonial Feudal system in India — Pre-Colonial Feudal System in India

Feudalism in India was characterized by a class of landlords and by a class of subject peasantry, both living in a predominantly agrarian economy marked by a decline in trade and urbanism and by a drastic reduction in metal currency.
Interestingly, these zamindars plotted day and night to devour the helpless peasants and they succeeded in their devious schemes. They are the bourgeois who grew huge by looting the proletarians out of their physical strength and property. But what happens ultimately is that these zamindars got trapped unexpectedly by a superior force, The English, men who flew swiftly and robbed the toil of their whole life. The English entered just to trade but finally mastered encroaching upon all the riches of the colony.
Not only the colonizers from the outer world but also the insiders, like the Brahmins, fed from the pond. The Brahmins without doing any physical endeavor acquired a great deal of property by simply blessing the Maratha Subedars.
When the political and economical conditions in Odisha are analyzed, it is clear that British rule came as a liberating force for many. The Indians welcomed the British rule to free themselves from their previous colonizers, the Brahmins, the Marathas, and the Mughals. It became a metaphysical compulsion for the natives to await and to accept a better superior force.

Fakir Mohan Senapati and Colonization of Odisha:

Six Acres and a Third novel was
conceived as an answer to a social need and the needs of a specific mode of production. While Fakirmohan, trying to locate the ultimate cause of such a process, transcends history and time to speculate on human nature and the workings of fate, his immediate interest concerned the fifty years of political instability.
The circumstances under which colonialism came to Odisha were peculiar. The British did not grab power from the hands of the
indigenous rulers of Odisha. For a long time, the center of power that ruled Odisha was outside Odisha, either at Nagpur or at Murshidabad, and in many circles, the coming of the British was perceived as deliverance from misrule. The insidiousness of the colonial structures of power and culture could not be perceived by the common folk who had already been reeling under oppressive and exploitative systems of rule for quite some time.

The reaction of a native in Six Acres and a Third sums up the mood of the
people:

“Oh, horse, what difference does it make to you if you are stolen by
a thief? You do not get much to eat here; you will not get much to eat there.
No matter who becomes the next master, we will remain his slaves. We must look after our own interests” (205-206).

Six Acres and a Third record the political and the economic situation immediately after the occupation of the coastal districts of Odisha by the British East India Company. It highlights the consequences of the greed of the British rulers and their attempt to impose an alien economic and land revenue system. On the one hand, the British saved the common people from the violence and extortion of Maratha marauders, but, on the other, they ruined the traditional society in such a manner that the common people were disinherited from all their traditional occupations and professions. They were tied down to just one profession, i.e., agriculture. Soon, they were even disinherited from their lands by the Bengali sub-colonizers and were reduced to the status of farmhands. While the people in common were losing the moorings in their own land, a new privileged class got consolidated. This new feudal class consisted of the Bengali officers of the Company, the landlords from Bengal, and the few manipulative Odias who used their access to British education and their proximity to power to rise economically and socially. These neo-feudal were aping their colonial masters and were much more oppressive towards the common people, at whose cost they had risen socially.

Tragedy in Satire: Six Acres and A Third:

The dehumanizing effect of colonialism can be seen in the figures of Ramachandra Mangaraj, the protagonist of Six Acres and a Third. Mangaraj’s rise and fall can only be visualized in a colonial setup. By leveling traditional hierarchies and discrediting social norms, colonialism had spawned unnatural ambitions and easy means of fulfilling them. In the absence of the social safety valves that are available in a traditional society,
Mangaraj spends his childhood in a state of uncertainty and deprivation. In the absence of traditional social and moral reprimands, he uninhibitedly pursues his design of upward mobility through unworthy means.

Mangaraj manipulates the loopholes in the colonial legal system quite easily and establishes himself within a new feudal order where wealth and proximity to the rulers were the only qualifications for prominence. Mangaraj pays for his unnatural ambition and upward mobility through his alienation from the community. The signs of his dehumanization can be seen in the ruination of his family and the way he
has turned his house into a virtual brothel:

“Like birds of different feathers
seeking shelter in a large tree, [women] had flocked to Mangaraj’s house.
They kept arriving and leaving; it was impossible to keep track of their
movements” (54).

Mangaraj’s monomania for property not only transforms him into a commodity but also dehumanizes the entire world around him. Fakir Mohan seems to ascertain that not only greed but also the pursuit of wealth too could cause dehumanization. The colonial economic instrument is in this sense doubly corrosive: while allowing a few to arrogate power unto them and to enrich themselves disproportionately, it plunges the majority into a state of penury and disempowerment. Extreme poverty and disempowered, Fakirmohan rightly visualized, could be a source of moral degeneration and dehumanization.

For all its comic vitality, Chha Mana Atha Guntha is a poignantly tragic novel. Senapati’s world, that of nineteenth-century Odia society, had been transformed beyond recognition by the utilitarian ideas imported through “enlightened” British civil servants. A predominantly communal-rural-oral life started disintegrating under the pressure of a body of written laws and the alien values of English education. To the British,
this form of life had come to represent an anachronism, a crude form of socialism,
paralyzing the growth of individual energies and all their consequences.
The continuation of such a state of society, they felt, was “radically inconsistent with our rule both in theory and practice.”
Chha Mana Atha Guntha can be read as a passionate and moving rejoinder to the attitudes and programs of action enshrined in these remarks. For its characters, paralyzed by the “flood-like onrush” of English civilization, the utilitarian agenda practically meant the harsh imposition of unfeeling authority.

The action of the novel concerns a series of displacements affecting owners of the land, with the nature of ownership subjected to constant definition and redefinition. To take the one central example of the zamindari of Fatepur Sarasandha, we note that it was initially in the hands of the traditional Odia military aristocracy.
Senapati uses Sanskritized Oriya, a kind of Latinate diction, in describing them, thereby establishing the link between language and a way of life. This aristocracy loses its title to the land because it fails to cope with the new utilitarian dispensation which renders its benevolent paternalism and belief in personal valor obsolete. Over time, the zamindari passes into the hands of a Muslim trader (the ruling language is now Persian), who had bought it at an auction in Calcutta. This estate is then seen passing to an upstart Odia moneylender (the protagonist of the novel). In trying to defraud a poor weaver couple of a small parcel of land, (six acres and thirty-two decimals, to be precise), this moneylender-cum-zamindar gets into trouble with the law and loses his estate to his English-educated urban lawyer.

Faced with the law-enforcing agents of a colonial state (who take down every word that is uttered), the villagers of Gobindpur lapse into incoherence and silence. These are the same people who had a little while ago shown such remarkable resilience, pluck, and resourcefulness when they made the story of Mangaraja’s crime circulate with a lightning-like rapidity through the word of mouth. The very same people cower in fear because their depositions are “pen-imprisoned” or “Kalambandh” by the investigating officer. Writing is a source of power for those like Mangaraja, the protagonist of the novel, who can effectively control it. Mangaraja can dispose of the weaver couple through, among other things, his control over the written word. In the end, however, he loses out to an even more coherent, English-speaking/writing urban lawyer (Ram Ram Lala), a more finished product of the colonial/utilitarian order, who might be compared with Bitzer of Hard Times by Dickens. The shift from Mangaraja’s Oriya to Ram Ram Lala’s legal English denotes a transition from country to the city.

Chha Manna Atha Guntha is not, however, only an elegy on the gradual disappearance of a communal-rural-oral tradition. It also vigorously mobilizes resistance to the fact-based, rational order by raiding the resources of the same tradition.

On the day of the trial of Mangaraja, everything in the courtroom has been
“Englished”, as the novelist archly remarks. English law, in this instance, has turned English, thereby completing the alienation of the native Odias from a legal system designed to give justice to the individual members of an open, competitive society. Even the novelist is obliged to step into the role of a translator here, for the court proceedings on this day are conducted entirely in the English language in deference to the British civil surgeon who is present in the courtroom to give his testimony. Thus, the entire trial becomes an awesome display of colonial might, aimed at intimidating the native witnesses into submission.
Mr. H.R. Jackson, the white judge, at one point, threatens the Oriya defense lawyer with the cancellation of his lawyer’s license if the latter does not come to the point. Coming to the point, itself a thoroughly utilitarian prescription, means, in this instance, an unquestioned and unreserved acceptance of the authority of the British civil surgeon, A.B.C.D. Douglas (the son of, as the novelist playfully remarks, E.F.G.H. Douglas).
The irreverent wordplay on the English name here is part of Senapati’s wider purpose to defeat the language of power by the power of language. Senapati’s language derives much of its power from its allusive and allegorical qualities, the two main attributes of a rich and vibrant oral tradition.

Conclusion:

Senapati’s novel is a realistic portrayal of colonial rule. He balances the two realities of the Western Empire. The British colonial one on the one hand oppressed, enslaved, and exploited but on the other hand, it helped. Senapati says, “Today in the nineteenth century the sciences enjoy great prestige, for
they form the basis of all progress. See, the British are white-skinned, whereas Odias are dark in complexion. This is because the former have studied the sciences, whereas the latter does not know of these”.

British shaped India through its scientific inventions, a form of government and
enlightened many people. It was the missionaries who liberated the native people from their superstitious beliefs and provided education to the downtrodden natives. This is visible in the words of Senapati, “Ask a new babu his grandfather’s father’s name and he will hem and haw, but the names of the ancestors of England’s Charles the Third will readily roll off his tongue”. The British colonial rule was truly helping India by educating the lowly and deprived society. The downtrodden, illiterate people now became ‘babus’ because they have
mastered knowledge from their colonial masters. In other words, the natives were assimilated into the colonizers’ culture. The narrator is highly ironic in his words in conveying the realities.

Senapati’s every move in the novel is a critique of colonial rule. Every minute detail mirrors the consequentialism of British colonial rule in India.

The Mountains Sing

|| @nguyen_p_quemai #TheMountainsSing #bookreview #comingofage #VietnamWar #historicalfiction #familysaga #warfiction #theGreatFamine #theLandReform #booksbypoc #readingasiapacific #stopasianhate

TW: War, Lynch, Massacre, Post-War PTSD.

The Vietnam war isn’t something new to me, but I needed a reason to talk about it. Since we are doing this to #stopasianhate , I wouldn’t miss this perfect opportunity to explain it. Read The Mountains Sing for #readingasiapacific that covers a vast timeline. I will part it into two,

Part I : The Vietnam colonialism and wartime and Part II: My take on the book.

Part I: The Vietnam War. Timeline: 1940 – 1975

Type: Conflict between Communist North Viet Nam and South Viet Nam plus allies.

Roots: French colonialism has been ruling since the 19th century. And during WWII, the Japanese invaded Viet Nam. Ho Chi Minh(Born as Nguyen Sinh Cung) was expelled for protesting against Emperor Bao Dai and French rule in Indochina. Inspired by Vladimir Lenin’s Bolshevik Revolution and Soviet communism, he started recruiting members for the Indochinese Communist Party.

Viet Minh: When Germany defeated France in WWII(1940), Minh along with his allies formed Viet Minh or League for the Independence of Vietnam. This was the time when Vietnam was under the drastic effects of “The Great Hunger” or The Vietnam Famine whose direct factors were French colonization, WWII, and the ongoing Natural disasters. When Japanese forces withdrew from Vietnam, leaving the French-educated Emperor Bao Dai in control of an independent Vietnam, led by Vo Nguyen Giap, Viet Minh forces seized the northern city of Hanoi and declared a Democratic State of Vietnam (known commonly as North Vietnam, or the Democratic Republic of Vietnam) with Ho as president. In a vision of a Unified Vietnam but with their respective concepts, Ho and Bao stood against each other tearing the country into two parts, The Soviet Supported North Vietnam of Minh and the US-backed South Vietnam of Bao.

Viet Cong or NLF: National Liberation Front was the guerrilla force of South Vietnam that supported North communist Vietnam in the Tet Offensive. Any sympathizer of communist Vietnam was included in it and together was dubbed as Viet Cong.

Agent Orange: From 1961 to 1971, the US Army executed a herbicidal warfare program (along with the bombing campaigns) called the “Operation Ranch Hand” where military troops in aircraft drenched roads, rivers, canals, rice paddies, and farmland with powerful mixtures of harmful herbicides, called the agent orange that caused severe health issues. (Know more about Agent Orange here)

Tet Offensive: January 1968, a crusade of surprise attack was executed in 100 cities of South Vietnam by the NLF and PAVN army against the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) and US troops leading to the Battle of Hue that resulted in one of the bloodiest Massacre of Vietnam, The Massacre of Hue that not only harmed the US soldiers but also the civilians. This created disbelief for the US govt among Americans and stunned by this, Republican Nixon called out for Vietnamization- a movement where the US troops were withdrawn from the site and the aerial and artillery bombardment were increased giving the South Vietnamese the training and weapons needed to effectively control the ground war.

My Lai Massacre: Then occurred the most shocking war crime of Viet Nam in march 1968, The My Lai Massacre. Unarmed men were slain, women were raped, mothers were shot, children were slaughtered and the village was burned down. This act was tried to cover up and took around 20 months to come into the light.

Leaving you to find out how the war ended and which side was primarily responsible for results, I will take the time to talk about the aftermaths,

The Post-War PTSD of the Veterans: In 1983, the National Vietnam Veterans Readjustment Study (NVVRS)1 was conducted by the U.S. government to better understand the development of PTSD from the Vietnam War, and the results were alarming. The reasons were War-Trauma, loss of near ones, friends from troops, self-medication during wartime, and misperception due to frequent failures. And most of these had long-term impacts.

What’s Left?: After years of warfare, an estimated 2 million Vietnamese were killed, while 3 million were wounded and another 12 million became refugees. Warfare had demolished the country’s infrastructure and economy.

Part II: The Mountains sing

Author: Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai. Publisher: Simon and Schuster, 2020. Length: 255 pages. Original Published Language: English Genres: Historical Fiction, War story, Coming-of-age story, Domestic Fiction

Blurb: {With the epic sweep of Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko or Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing and the lyrical beauty of Vaddey Ratner’s In the Shadow of the Banyan, The Mountains Sing tells an enveloping, multigenerational tale of the Tran family, set against the backdrop of the Viet Nam War. Tran Dieu Lan, who was born in 1920, was forced to flee her family farm with her six children during the Land Reform as the Communist government rose in the North. Years later in Hà Noi, her young granddaughter, Hương, comes of age as her parents and uncles head off down the Ho Chí Minh Trail to fight in a conflict that will tear not just her beloved country but her family apart. Vivid, gripping, and steeped in the language and traditions of Viet Nam, The Mountains Sing brings to life the human costs of this conflict from the point of view of the Vietnamese people themselves, while showing us the true power of kindness and hope. This is celebrated Vietnamese poet Nguyen Phan Que Mai’s first novel in English.}

I was excited enough to listen to all her interviews and got to know that the details were inspired by her own experiences and also those around her. (Must check the interview with 2020 quarantine book club here.)

This is for the author: Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai, please tell me why both Trấn Diệu Lan and Hủỏng sound so similar while explaining their POVs? Was it intentional? If it was, it worked for me.

If you have read everything above, you might have gone through the dark phase of the Vietnam war. Now would you believe if I tell you that Quế Mai taught us to find lights in the most impossible places? Two powerful Protagonists, two intersecting timelines, a beautiful portrayal of Viet Nam culture, introduction to age-old proverbs, food culture, love, and pride. This story has everything. Quế Mai has covered quite a span in such a small book. If you are a thicc book addict and believe that history can be told in voluminous projects only, I have something for you. Simple words, flowy lines, additional detailings, and less complicated characters weaved beautifully giving me a fable-like experience. No wonder Quế Mai is being appreciated for her debut English novel, she understands her target audience, she did it for us to realize, she introduced us to the traditions and beliefs of Vietnam.

Now to the bitter part, it shattered my heart and glue together, again and again. This is not a war book. It is a book about a country that faced atrocities, broke into pieces, and rose again like a phoenix.

This is a book of survival.

At no point, I found any biased opinions of the author. She questioned each flank impartially. (You might want to learn how to pronounce the Vietnamese names and words after this. It helps to understand the story better.)

As the grandma narrates her life, you dive into the brutally devastating history of Vietnam that suffered The Japanese Occupation, The French Colonization, The Great Hunger, and The Land Reforms. When the story jumps to the POV of the granddaughter, the brutality continues but now it’s Vietnam’s people shriveling each other in the Viet Nam War, backed up with forces that do not belong to them.

You can see the authenticity of the history at each part of the piece since the author is a native, she is familiar with the customs, culture, and food(oh, the Vietnamese food! Okay now focus).

Here’s something from the book I would like to share,

“For my grandmother, who perished in the Great Hunger; for my grandfather, who died because of the Land Reform; and for my uncle, whose youth the Vietnam War consumed.”

At this point, I want you to go back to the previous post and read about the events. And then you can understand her anguish.

Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai, you are a survivor too. You gave life to a forgotten story that the world needs to remember. You changed the general Americanized perspective of the Vietnam war. You showed them the true Viet Nam.

If this review has convinced you enough, then find your copies at the links below

1. Listen to the audiobook on Audible 2. Get your Amazon copy here. 3. Listen to it free on Spotify

If you are still not over the book, here’s something more for you.

* Some beautiful quotes from the book.

* Other amazing works by Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai

* Author Que Mai reading out a part of The Mountains Sing for you.

(If you like my work, like & share this page and follow me on Instagram @ Utkirtana )

Life and Death in Shanghai by Nien Cheng.

When Nien Cheng said

“Justice? What is justice? It’s a mere word. It’s an abstract word with no universal meaning. To different classes of people, justice means different things”,

I felt that.

Ananya’s post had a question, ” why is hate an easy emotion?”. It’s because of the fear of the unknown and the desire for a scapegoat to funnel their negative energy.

#qotd : Have you ever noticed that it’s always easier for people to hate a community rather than hating an individual? Do you know why?

China’s cultural revolution was anything but cultural. Anyone not praising the Communist Party or the leader Mao Tse-tung (who was trying to purge political rivals and reassert his authority) was considered to be “uncultured”. To ensure his position, Mao appointed a special committee to conduct the Cultural Revolution in the name of ” The Great Leap”.

This committee called the Gang of Four was led by Mao’s wife and 3 other women who were barbarously ambitious and controlled the entire revolution abducting people, forcing them to confess for something they didn’t commit, persecuting them in the name of “Enemy of the state” and killing them in the hands of their so-called revolutionaries. She had the army of Red Guards who were mostly teens with rushing hormones with no knowledge about anything and would even kill their families if aggravated. The mission of the Red Guards was to rid the country of the “Four Olds”: old culture, old customs, old habits, and old ways of thinking. Mao’s “The Great leap forward” that was supposed to be economically revolutionary resulted in The Great Chinese Famine killing thousands of people.

Nien Cheng was the wealthy widow of Kang-chi Cheng who worked for Kuomintang. She was Western-educated, “Read Books by foreign authors” and herself worked in Shell oil. Red guards ransacked her home, arrested her on suspicion, and kept her in solitary confinement for 6.5 years. In these years, she was brutally tortured, kept in a cell too small to even lie down, handcuffed so tightly that she feared losing her hands, and even forced to confess being a foreign spy (just as they did to hundreds of other citizens, but they confessed and Cheng didn’t). She conquered every allegation thrown at her. She even used Mao’s teachings successfully against her interrogators, frequently turning the tide of the struggle sessions against the interrogators. During her term, Cheng lost her teeth, caught pneumonia, and had hemorrhages yet she defused the misery by laughing at her accusers.
After her years in custody, she was told on March 27, 1973, that she was being released because of an “improvement in her way of thinking and an attitude of repentance.” She refused to accept that statement and vowed to remain in detention until prison officials officially declared her innocent and published an apology in Shanghai and Beijing. Yes, she single-handedly defeated Mao’s army.

I am not going to describe the life of Cheng after her release or what made her move to another country. That’s for you to find out. And this book is not just an autobiography, it’s the history in itself.

#stopasianhate #readingasiapacific #utkirtanawrites #china #hongkong

Mythos: The Greek myths retold

What’s common between Greek and Hindu myths? Zeus and Indra, Icarus and Sampati, Hermes and Narada, Trojan War and Ramayan, even the concept of gay, transgender, or impotent Gods. And the difference? We got Gods and became blind, they got Gods and opened their eyes. We don’t even question their actions and they never saw them as just and merciful and dared to challenge their authority. Gods can be really weird with their own logic that doesn’t apply to us nor would they want to(if present). And Stephen Fry perfectly understands this brutal queerness of Greek Gods like the birth of Aphrodite( I wouldn’t get into the ball cutting part as that can be a spoiler).

Read this book as a part of #folkloredecember with @whatsshwereading and I wish I would have heard the audiobook first as reading the book and listening to Stephen Fry are two different experiences. I heard it yesterday after Swetha’s reco. So I will talk about the good and bad aspects of the reading part.

The title tag, “Greek Myths retold”, can be misleading. It’s not retelling, it’s what we already know and have been among us for quite some time. He talks about a small group of Gods that doesn’t include the bigger ones just like talking about Mahabharata and excluding Bharata and Shantanu. (But I understand that I have to read the next book.) If you are someone new to Greek mythology, you need to gather your knowledge before hopping on to Fry’s space. Relying on it for everything is like relying on modern retellings of Mahabharata for actual incidental information. It’s hard to impress with a retelling to someone who has gone through the actual scripts. At times I found the writing chaotic and started missing the ” who’s who” with so many elements romping all around the book. I started losing the track of it and had to go back and forth.

But would I recommend it? Yes! Read it for Fry, his wit, his wicked humor & his absolute love for this subject. Fry was unusually delicate about Gay Gods and his pleasing way of characterizing things kept me hooked up.

Fry absolutely has a grip over his love for language. He shows us how these myths gave us our modern-day expressions and how strong an impact they have on us. As you go deeper you realize that his goal was not to interpret or clarify things rather only to tell them, breathing new life into these well-known characters and making stories outright funny.

He has added notes littered all around for you to catch them. These are the soul of the book.

I loved Fry’s vibrant aura and would love to dig into more of his works before coming to any conclusions about my relationship with him. I recommend hearing the audiobook first for Fry made it irresistible.

Watch out, Mr. Neil Gaiman! I may fall for Mr.Fry

And Mr. Stephen Fry, you and I have one more date!

~~For more bookish contents and small talks,~~

Follow me on my Instagram handles,

@utkirtana and @puniija

|| The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus// The Biblioraptor Book Club

– Christopher Marlowe

“In these times I don’t, in a manner of speaking, know what I want; perhaps I don’t want what I know and want what I don’t know.”
Marsilio Ficino, The Letters of Marsilio

We, humans, are ambivalent. Duality in disposition interprets our true selves. Neither we have outstanding good characters nor the prominent evil ones. We keep wavering between them as long as we breathe. We sin, we bemoan, we ask for redemption. But when given chance, we sin again. There is this endless loop of going back to where it all began. But what changes, are the elements we confront in this loop. These elements are powerful enough to either make us hop into another loop for salvation or keep on running the same into our damnation. Do you know what’s crazy? We get to choose what spice we add to our curries. At every step of our life, we get options to choose that determines our fate.

Then why “Qué Será Será”?

Why it is said that what has to transpire will transpire?

If that is the case then why we need to do the right things at the right time? Why not live our lives with pride, ambitions, and arrogance? Are we deemed to have free will in our paths or is it all on fate? If you are confused then, mate, you are not alone in this, Doctor Faustus was equally disturbed.

Read Doctor Faustus, a play by Christopher Marlowe for the#spookitupanotch readathon conducted by our book club, The Biblioraptor BookClub. And guess what! I was amazed at how perfectly Marlowe understood the dual nature of humanity.

( No, this is not a review. This is completely my perception based on the play and the movie. If you disagree, kindly be polite about that and we can discuss it.)

*Connotation of Pride.

Many say that Doctor Faustus is the perfect portrayal of the inner struggle of the human mind. But I say, it’s so much more than that. The unmistakable point to notice was the portrayal of Pride and Ambition, not only of Faustus but also of one of the least interactive character, Lucifer. Who doesn’t know the biblical justification for the banishment of Lucifer? The pride that threw Lucifer out of heaven was the reason that took everything away from Faustus.

*The Duality resides in us.

There was a point when I screamed at Faustus.

A man who is in constant motion, mentally!

He fights between good and evil, between knowledge and greed, and even between God and the Renaissance. Being someone from the Medieval period but well-read, he is constantly wavering between Putting God as his central focus and longing for magic and necromancy.
His primary interest in the deal was to gain proficiency in the other world as he had completely gained all sorts of Earthly Knowledge. But it didn’t take much time to hop into the shoes of greed and lust.

And then he had so many characters around him to detract him. The good and evil angels popping up, ” tween tween” and dragging him both ways. Then there are his worthless opportunistic friends who are just waiting to bathe in the light of his fame. And of course our beloved Mephistopheles.

Leave him alone, guys!

(I would suggest people read Dawkins Theory after this. It’s bizarre but will blow your mind and you can find similarities between this play and the book.)

*The mythical junctions.

The story of this Doctor of Divinity has all the connections with the Greek Tragedy (it’s that obvious), structurally and thematically. The preliminary speeches, the protagonist falling into the hands of circumstances, the choral narratives, and the heart-wrenching mishaps.
I was amazed at the fact that this play had no particular narrator, either the characters are blabbering or the chorus just popping up out of nowhere to provide the background information about Faustus’ life, swelling pride, and how it led to his downfall. There was also this prominent indication of the popular tale of Icarus, the son of Daedalus.
The biblical reference was clear too with the Sin-redemption-damnation concept. And “Deal with the devil” part taken from European folklore.

(Honestly, though the genre was a tragedy, I couldn’t stop laughing at a few places. Like the prank in Pope’s assembly was funny. Even Robin clown ignoring Mephis’ threatenings.)

*Faustus wanted to be a Demi-God.

Within a few intervals, the craving for knowledge was flushed into the gutter and all that left was the desire to become a demi-god with immense supremacy that paved the way to greed, lust, arrogance, and blind heeding into the evilness.
He claimed to use the gained knowledge for greater researches but ends up using it for cheap tricks and dirty pranks.
Faustus not only accepts evilness into him but also influences his surroundings, like Wagner using magic to control Robin or Robin summoning Mephistopheles for his naughty tricks.

I have a theory here, Faustus summons Mephistopheles and razes all links with God. But when Mephis arrives, he gets scared of his appearance and orders him to change his face and come back. And Mephis returns disguised as a saint. It clearly shows the hypocrisy that lies within us. We mask our evil traits with brighter and calmer faces and expect the other person to do the same. We believe that anyone wearing a mask of a saint is trustable, even if we realize that the person is disguised.
Isn’t it what happening around us with all those self-proclaimed Gurus?
Another point is, we humans cannot bear the burden of ugly truth, hence, we always prefer fabricated lies.
This point is cleverly portrayed in the part where Faustus orders Mephistopheles to bring him an illusional spirit of Helen Of Troy (*steamy *steamy) in Act 5, twice. Even in his last moments, he yearns for the physical love of Helena but not the forgiveness of God.

*Homo Fuge.

The good and the evil angels very well represent the two states of mind but at various points, the emotions get intermingled. There is a lot of confusion between what is wrong and what is right in Faustus’ mind. Though it’s quite clear for the audience. (As expected)

The second appearance of the angels shows that humans always get second chances to rectify their deeds. It’s then the choices they make that changes their fate forever.

Even the blood getting clot indicates that as if the blood didn’t want him to sign the pact. It shows how at every step your mind and soul question your actions.

“Homo Fuge”, which means “Fly, man!”, shows that instead of flying into righteousness, Faustus chose to sell his soul to the Devil. A warning from God to fly away from this path for it will bring him no peace. Evil ways will always lure you to embrace them, but it’s you who decides the way your term ends.

*Mephistopheles, the star of the story.

The way Marlowe has given dialogues to Mephis is impeccable. Even for a moment, I wanted to sign that pact. It’s so seductive and persuasive that it feels so right at that moment. I can’t blame Faustus at that moment.

I loved the part where he explained that hell has no limits since it is not just any particular physical space. Any place away from your conscience is hell.

” Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscribed In one self place, for where we are is hell, And where hell is there must we ever be. -Mephistopheles”

“Hell is just a frame of mind“

The cunning creature, that he had to be, told Faustus the stories of Lucifer’s banishment, of heaven and hell but cleverly ignores the most crucial question, “who created the universe?” Wickedness avoids confrontation with eternal verities.

To distract Faustus from his quest for truth, Lucifer shows him a pageant of seven deadly sins.

How easy it is to manipulate us!

The path to damnation is always full of glory and grandiose. But the path to redemption tests you at every notch. Faustus cheats everyone, plays dirty pranks, and tortures people that came his way digging up his own grave.

A peculiar point that struck me was the point where Faustus ordered Mephis to torture the old man for warning him. According to the then applied theory, Mephis could only have tortured his body and not the soul, for his soul belongs to God. (He has not sold it to the devil) (correct me if I am wrong).

Even Robin’s part confused me. Was he turned into an animal? Let me know in the comments below.

*Ciao, Faustus.

All these for nothing? Noone helped Faustus in those last moments. His friends found his body brutally tortured and left alone.
I remember reading these kinds of stories where the once glorious life ends with loneliness and murder. Why does it remind me of The Great Gatsby?
Now to answer my question, it was never fate that dragged Faustus into his damnation. No one ever pressured him. (Although seduced) But he chose his own path. At every step, he was given the option to choose between the good and the bad. But he was so in lust for supremacy, that he couldn’t choose to struggle in the path of righteousness.

For Faustus, everything was out of the free will. Even summoning Mephistopheles.

“Fools that will laugh on earth, most weep in hell.“

I can go on writing about this marvelous piece of art. And you may even get another post about it. So don’t blame me.

Wanna know why am I so obsessed with this? Try reading Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe. And if all these confused you, that’s because I tried to jink it up and not to spill the specific facts.

💕💕Utkirtana

The Mysterious Hamlet of Sleepy Hollow

When you are all set to dive into the shaded pool of Halloween, what else can spook you up to other than an all armed, handsomely dressed man holding his head in his hands? Whoooo!

Watched the Johnny Depp starring movie fortuitously long back and almost forgot about it. And then we decided to have a spooky Halloween themed readathon for our club, The Biblioraptor BookClub. The first book that came to my mind was “The legend of sleepy hollow”. The movie was something and wanted to read the book since then. But the crazy-lazy soul in me kept on hindering everything and eventually, it slipped into the junkyard section of my mind.

I pulled it out, wiped it clean and began skimming it last week. To make my experience more breathtaking, I decided to watch the movie again along with the famous Disney two-part animated movie. Trust me, the experience was unprecedented. So here’s what I went through the entire week.

**“The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” by Washington Irving**

“…ducks and geese are foolish things and must be looked after, but girls can take care of themselves.”

Written in the time when women were seen as mere arm candies, this line was the “Awww” moment for me. But, But, But, Ichabod Crane is a douche canoe. Don’t fall for the movies and series version, Irving’s Ichabod is a lanky, irritating and pant-pooping filthy teacher who wants to marry Katrina Van Tassel(who is also one of his music students) because she is rich, beautiful and has large… tracts of lands. That’s the horrible man!

Ichabod, being from Connecticut which could only generate school teachers then, was someone who couldn’t rely on his looks to woo the women of Sleepy Hollow. So, he used his knowledge to show his superior tastes to most people from Sleepy Hollow. For someone who makes almost no money from his classes, his perpetual poverty makes him drool over the fruits from Mr. Van Tassel’s land and the only way to rise above his own standards is to marry Katrina.

Brom Bones is our regular evil bully whose only interest lies in scaring off Katrina’s suitors. But shaking Ichabod’s position was hard, hence he turned into his best skill to humiliate Ichabod – Pranks.

Ichabod from the book is someone who would believe the strangest of the tales that goes around for he has read a lot of them. He is, in other words, completely naïve and suggestible. The local tale of the Galloping Hessian who rides headless through the woods of Sleepy Hollow particularly alarms him.
For those who couldn’t read further, the real excitement starts after the headless horseman arrives. The classic description, the logical reasoning of the horseman and the enduring mystery made the story quite fascinating. Ichabod being followed by the headless horseman in the eerie night tries to rush as fast as he can on his horse chased by the headless man. Being not a skilled rider, Ichabod gets dodged by something near the church. And the very next day the horse Crane was riding returns back to his farm owner and the village never heard of Ichabod Crane ever again.

**Disney’s The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr Toad : (1949)**

♪ When the ghosts have a midnight jamboree ♪♪ They break it up with fiendish glee ♪♪ Ghosts are bad, but the one that’s cursed ♪♪ Is the Headless Horseman; he’s the worst! ♪

It’s actually a two-segmented movie where the first part is the story of Mr Toad from “The winds in the willows” by Kenneth Grahame and the second part is about Ichabod Crane from “The legend of sleepy hollows” by Irving. And I have to agree that Walt Disney gave the perfect look to Ichabod Crane. The total ambience of the movie was quite similar to that of the Scooby-Doo series. Funny character stretches that face the evil ones. Those accurate expressions. The dialogues. Oh my God! Those were days when watching cartoons was an experience of another level.

(Haven’t read “The winds in the willows” to comment on the first part. )

And Now to my favourite part.

“When Tim Burton asks you to do a film, do it” – Johnny Depp

The brilliant Gothic colour that takes you to another world, the entire team so much into their characters, the precise dialogues and stunning references throughout the movie. If you didn’t like the movie, I suggest you watch it again and focus on minor details.

Initially, I thought it to be a satirical movie. When I rewatched it after reading the book, I realized that they both were so different. Ichabod from the book was a jerk, but Ichabod of the movie was, umm! – A doormat. Yet he tries to step into the sludge for something he desires. He has his own justifications for being the way he is.

It shows fragments of memories of Ichabod showing his mother from young Ichabod’s perspective. When his mother is on screen, everything is in bright colours, soft, filled with compassion. But when he glimpses his father, the screen transitions into dark ambience with intense and alarming music to show the brutal side of him. The brilliant part is the absence of dialogues in the dreaming parts that allows you to focus on the environment. He contradicts his father with the headless man when he sees his father exit.

And for the parts where Ichabod isn’t dreaming, Tim Burton and Emmanuel Lubezki created a place with such distinctive features that doesn’t feel like a real place, rather something happening in someone’s imagination. The Sleepy Hollow is a grim place, the houses stooping together for support, the shutters slammed against visitors. There is never a sunny day here. The faces of the village fathers are perpetually settled into displeasure.

This may fascinate you that the movie resembles a lot to the Hammer movies with its colour distinctions, the settings, the creepy gooey bodies and the character parities. Everything looks so fake, yet you believe them. And all that was intentional, trust me.

Ichabod crane believes all to be superstition and starts his investigations with his set of bizarre instruments. The rough rides between the headless horseman and Ichabod take a traditional path towards the end to match the generic effects of the previous adaptations. The horseman has its own way of delivering justice to those who deserve it, hence, has a particular choice of people to be punished which kind of feel logical.

This movie isn’t the story what Washington Irving gave us. This is exactly the retelling we needed. I am not so instilled by Irving’s book now. I need an edition with this story in it. There are a lot more in this than I have jotted down. And you need to watch it.

Tell me I have convinced you to watch it. Else I have to write another article for it. But before that, I suggest you read the book. It’s a short one and you can finish it in a day or two. I am adding the link to buy the book and the movie is on Netflix.

The Legend Of Sleepy Hollow And Other Stories

Thank you !

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