Words, Words

'It never bored them to hear words, words; they breathed them with the cool night air'
                                                                            - E M Forster, A Passage to India

India is one of those places that has etched itself into the imagination of western culture. It seems exotic, brooding, filled with the unknown, the unexpected and the unexplainable. Forster encapsulated this in his 1924 novel, A Passage to India, which encoded the race and gender relations thrown up by colonial encounter.

How easy it is for misunderstandings to occur when the cultural signposts are ambiguous, assumed. Or simply ignored. Foster's Adela Quested (what a great name for a character!) becomes disoriented by the words she hears echoing in the caves, and an Indian, Dr Aziz, is incorrectly assumed to have assaulted her.

Dr Aziz is well educated but no match for the colonial orthodoxy that discounted his version of events, favouring an account that presumed to value the virtue of a British female.

Even if the reader is convinced that Quested could become confused by an echo (not direct words - just words bouncing around like a breathe in the air), it is not surprising, given the period in which the novel was written, that she is shipped off home and the denouement deals with the affections and relationships between Aziz and his male (colonial) contemporaries.

I first read this novel as a teenager and couldn't help making connections about the treatment of female characters in this, and other period novels like Joan Lindsey's 1967 Picnic at Hanging Rock set in colonial Australia, or Henry James' 1898 The Turn of the Screw, dealing with the emotional state of a young, confused woman. I am also struck by the gothic overtones of all of these works and the degree to which the heroine succumbs to female hysteria.

So where does this leave me with India? It's the interstices of cultural, colonial, race and gender relations that offer opportunities to create female characters. India ticks the box on all of those. Disorientation is useful as a device for exploring character vulnerabilities as well as social norms and expectations. The character arc pivots around this moment of disorientation and potentially opens a journey (not to the colonial heartland) but to the nub of self reflexion. Now to stand in Mumbai and soak up the experience.

India Reaches Out

It's a long way from Mullumbimby to Mumbai - most of a lifetime and more than 10 000 km, give or take a few detours.

As I contemplate the world's largest democracy I wonder how I've missed out on the Indian experience for so long. It's not just that my waking hours are full of travel preparations (although they are). It's more that my dreams are filled with India in busy, blaring, Bollywood technicolour.

I wake with an urgency that has me recording ideas in a notebook at 2am.

This blog is the story of how a story has begun.

Already India reaches out.

Join me as I grab hold of her fingers and explore the highs and hangnails of travel, inspiration and writing.