The Western literary canon that seems an indestructible pillar of the Indian syllabi is Eurocentric, flawed, and so incomplete that it is a pity. It misses the voices of global literary eminence, a collection of South American poets and thinkers, whose thought towers over much of the world’s imagination. We discover them mostly as a private mission: Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Jorge Luis Borges, Mario Vargas Llosa, Pablo Neruda, or Roberto Bolano. And Octavio Paz, the subject of Indranil Chakravarty’s The Tree Within: The Mexican Nobel Laureate Octavio Paz’s Years in India, is one such entity, a literary giant we know little about. The book presents a rather unique biography of the poet. Not only is it thorough enough to sketch out his life in painstaking detail, but it also delves into background philosophies and movements that shaped Paz’s mind. Yet the most unique element of this biography is that it traces his links to Indian thought and culture, especially his stint in India as a foreign dignitary.
Is some of it forced? Was India one of the many minor influences that make up the poet’s world, but is blown up in the author’s imagination? “In India, when the night sky was brilliantly lit up with fireworks and all houses joyously decorated with lamps on Diwali night, they would remind him of Mixcoac.” Though here, the author almost ventures into fanfiction. Yet it does not detract from the book; it is legitimate to posit a hypothesis and research of such a subject. And the book does justice to this quest.
India and Indology played a huge role in the fabric of the society in which Paz grew up. Francisco I. Madero, who spearheaded the Mexican Revolution and later became President, was inspired by the Bhagavad Gita; except, he took it to mean that true winning came from bloodshed and revolution. Paz’s father-in-law, Garro, was both an Indologist and a Theosophist, learned in the Upanishads, and was introduced to Jiddu Krishnamurthy. Both Frida Kahlo and Garro were profoundly influenced by this new-age philosopher and mystic, and felt the way forward was to bypass the teachings of the West for a new interchange among other cultures and ancient thought systems. Lawyer and philosopher Vasconcelos sought a bridge between the Western and Eastern traditions. He admired Buddhism and Hinduism, the Upanishads and Advaita Vedanta. His influence extended to many writers and thinkers exploring Indian philosophy and thought, a kind of Hispanic Orientalism. There is also La China Poblana, a kidnapped Mughal princess whose clothes became symbolic of Mexican identity—the name being a misnomer.
This is an accidental book; the author was researching for a film on the same topic. Funding fell through, and cinema’s loss became literature’s gain. The book is definitely one put together by a researcher: detailed, exhaustive, and very exacting, even if somewhat dry. In preparation for the visual medium, the book has a plethora of unbelievable photographs and illustrations that really have not translated well into a paperback. Though that is the constraint of publishing, because an art book would have to be priced unreasonably high. But despite this, the grainy reproductions convey a thousand interesting stories.
Perhaps the greatest element in The Tree Within, one that makes it shine and validates its place among books of note, is that the Chakravarty copiously quotes from the Paz’s work. For each poem quoted, he presents the backdrop and, in a sense, explains the mindset behind the poem. It is easy to see a Nobel Laureate at work here; the poems are unreal, almost divine in origin. “I was there/ I don’t know where/ I am here/ I don’t know is where/ time/ holds me in its empty hands – Balcony”.
The progress towards his best-known work, The Labyrinth of Solitude, is organic. It is a total of his anguish and his art, carving a way through where none existed. “I begin and begin again. And do not move forward. When I reach the fatal letters, my pen falls back: an implacable prohibition blocks the way….”
“Eyes speak,/ words look,/looks think./ To hear/ thoughts,/ see/ what we say,/ touch/ the body of an idea. –Entre lo que veo y digo.” A great part of Paz’s time in India is told through Satish Gujral, the great artiste and muralist. An accident left him with hearing and verbal challenges, and it was through Paz that he found his way to Mexico to intern with the maestro Diego Rivera. That experience made him one of India’s foremost muralists. And the same art breathes through Paz’s poetry. “…the red walls of San Ildefenso/ are black, and they breathe:/ sun turned to time,/ time turned to stone,/ stone turned to body…/We walk through galleries of echoes,/ past broken images:/ our history./ Hushed nation of stones.”