The trees and rivers that talk of writing
From Virginia Woolf and John Berger to Mohandas Gandhi and Shiva Naipaul, Amitava Kumar tells us that great literature comes from observation. Kumar has repeated in his previous books, The Blue Book and The Yellow Book, that the first draft of great works of literature is recorded in the daily journals of the artist.
In The Green Book, he once again tells the reader that the origins of art are in patience and observation. For Kumar, art comes from observing nature—there is so much to look for sitting under a tree, touching grass, or going in search of a Gulmohur tree. Amitava Kumar’s The Green Book addresses a real need, filling a chasm in the canon of literature about climate, trees, and rivers. It is also a book about life that shows alternate ways of living.
I was reading the book in the year-end, which is accompanied by existential dread for me. Amitava Kumar’s The Green Book opened with a lesson and a soothing balm, words from May Sarton’s Journal, “Keep busy with survival. Imitate the trees. Learn to lose in order to recover, and remember that nothing stays the same for long, not even pain, psychic pain.”
Another quote from Louise Erdich resonated with me, “When it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.”
Notes on Journalism and Communalism
The Green Book is an account of the impactful discoveries Kumar makes while touring a museum or enjoying a boat ride through the Sunderbans. He learns about Shiva Naipaul’s writing at the museum. Naipaul is writing about the anti-Sikh riots in Delhi following the death of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. He compares Shiva Naipaul’s notes as he travels to Delhi with the actual newspaper clipping published,
‘‘The still smouldering wreck of an overturned lorry was abandoned on a grassy roundabout. A calm of sorts has descended after a night of riot and pillage and murder. But it was an eerie dawn. Delhi had become a city of rumour and dread.’’ In Naipaul’s notes, Kumar finds the sentence, ‘‘A sad, stunned city’’, which had been cut out from the final version.
He says that upon learning more about the massacre of Sikhs, Naipaul had rightly chosen to highlight the murder and mayhem instead of the grief. Kumar also observes in another instance where Naipaul had written: ‘‘Mainly men, a sense, I feel of suppressed violence, rather than of suppressed grief.’’
Kumar draws our attention back to this suppressed violence as he talks about the documentary All That Breathes and its message against growing communalism in India. Kumar wants to evoke a feeling of unity in caring for humans and animals alike. All That Breathes goes a step further in making a point, urging viewers to care for all humans indiscriminately as one would for animals. Against the backdrop of the 2020 citizenship protests, the documentary reminds us that we have to show the same kindness to all those who breathe.
Grief Rituals
Amitava Kumar reminisces about the loss of his father and the rituals that followed on the banks of the river Ganga. As he empties his father’s ashes into the river, though he is aware that he is polluting the waters, he also has a sense of connecting his father to something far bigger. The reader detects hints of regret in his grief. Kumar comes from the social generation to which my father also belongs.
Communication between father and son was sparse, and love not talked about. There was unmistakable love though, what else would you call it when a father parts with the little money he has to send his son to a big city for education and asks over the phone if he has eaten that day? Like my father, Kumar also lost a part of his connection- roots or routes- to Bihar as his parents passed away.
Making a Case for Immediate Climate Action
Kumar is writing about the many ways in which rivers enrich our life- such as the mighty Ganga at Rishikesh where it connects a couple of men having fun, dunking in the river (the dream of living), to mourners lighting a pyre at the river’s bank (the drama of dying).
These words by Zadie Smith capture the very essence of Kumar’s journal project (The Blue Book, The Yellow Book, and finally, The Green Book)– ‘‘every time your book came with something that helped or distracted or soothed or provided beauty.’’ The Green Book gives us a satisfying glimpse into Kumar’s rich imagination and his diligent observations. It is delightful to know that an acclaimed Indian writer feels so deeply about trees and the rivers and Sunderbans.