Publisher: HarperCollins
No. of Pages: 491
Price: Rs 799
“I’m a white dwarf, I tell myself. A dead star. Exhausted of everything life-giving, heavy not just with the weight of the past, but also the sense that nothing lies beyond, no further evolution. I’m lost and hollow. What to stand in the sun for now? Nothing, I tell myself gloomily.”
Meghalaya’s award-winning author Janice Pariat’s, Everything The Light Touches, published in October 2022, is an exhilarating and extraordinary journey towards self-contemplation and soul-searching. She weaves a magical diaspora for those willing to listen as the author rightly puts it in her book, “Let us wait, let us listen. When we gather, we gather as though for the last time. Who knows when the hearth will glow with welcoming fire, and when it might expire? We gather as we always have. We gather safe, we gather warm.”
Pariat has beautifully penned down her perspective, vividly bringing to life the journeys of four travellers on different paths; bound by one common phenomenon, an evocative symphony of connection – the story flows freely, like a waterfall after a fresh spell of rain.
Interestingly, amidst captivating tales of the four wanderers, namely, Shai, Evelyn, Johann Philipp Möller (Goethe), and Carl (Linnaeus), Everything The Light Touches does not disappoint one bit, given the authenticity the author has created through their stories in a palindrome format, as if an enduring bond that transpires between the eternity of human emotions and timelessness of nature.
The author subtly romanticises nature yet contradicts the percussions of the natural world, a delicate balance achieved with great maturity.
The novel plunges into a whirl of ever-expanding themes, and contrasts between modern India and its colonial past; urban life and the countryside; capitalism and centuries-old traditions of generosity and gratitude; script and “song and stone” – an attempt to capture gripping realities of connections with things other than people.
The novel opens with Shai, a young woman who hails from Shillong and returns to her humble abode without a reason much to the surprise of her desi mother who questions the decision, and further exclaims, “You’ve been fired?”
Her story is a treat for readers from the city. That Pariat takes pride in her Khasi roots is depicted in the use of her mother tongue.
Phi dei Khasi, asks a lady in a food stall as Shai beckons for tea and jingbam.
Hooid (“Yes, I’m Khasi”), responds Shai.
The use of Khasi may come across as peculiar for some, yet this is what makes the novel special as readers get to meet the characters. Shai asks, Mano ba lah khlad? (“Who has died?”)
As we delve deeper into Shai’s story, a mesmerising narrative unfolds.
There is the beauty of geriatric relationships, exquisitely portrayed through the versatilities of nature – both good and bad. She struggles through a long journey, treads broken roads, and battles the atrocities of nature to reach Mawmalang only to be with Oin, her ailing nanny.
Although the book offers a deep understanding of the prerequisites of a bustling life, Pariat, through Shai, exposes the juxtapositions of a quiet one – she justifies the need for calm amid the chaos. The author shatters the illusions of perfect harmony, amplifying the need to contemplate, if not all, a few choices.
The stories celebrate the beauty of human connection – the need to nurture and love relationships as well as nature. Shai’s heartfelt connection with Oin invokes a feeling of oneness, of gratitude to nature that provides a space to co-exist. As Shai begins to live with Oin, she is accustomed to a feeling of estrangement, but is that not evident?
Phi Biang em? asks Oin.
“She’s asked not if I’m happy, or if everything is all right, but whether I am enough. And this is difficult to answer.”
The next section portrays Evelyn, an Edwardian England student who takes a trip to India, taking readers along on an enchanting voyage to the Himalayan forests, in a bid to escape the trenches of societal void and inequality that surrounds women in a competitive world of science and technology. On her trip, she stumbles across the riveting North East hills, and meets Kong Bathsheba who educates her… “Ka Mei Ramew is our name for Mother Earth.”
Pariat is a bold writer; she does not let bias get in the way of her loyal storytelling.
Through Shai and Evelyn, the author traces at length a few barriers in the state, using words to draw the reader’s undivided attention towards illegal mining in the state, the controversial ‘yellowcake’ (uranium), atrocities hurled upon the mystic greens, and the myths surrounding abandoned villages, Nongjri and Nongkulang.
Evelyn’s trip to Shillong becomes a platform to highlight barren and treeless slopes in Sohra (British named as Cherrapunjee) when an expectant Evelyn asks, “Aren’t we in the wettest place on Earth?”
She is told, “All the topsoil has been washed away. Nothing grows. Except in the folds of the mountains, where thickets of the forest burst forth in sudden profusion, and in the deep valleys carved by roaring rivers.”
The author chronicles Carl’s story through an irresistibly appealing set of poems – Travelling To Lapland, How To Find North, How To Be A True Botanist, Red Herring, Sestina For The Lost, Traces Of Fire, and Harbour, to name a few. The author describes the voyage to Lapland in the most creative and poetic manner.
The gripping narrative is evident in her writing, as though a florist lost in a botanical garden. “When you pick a favourite flower, as you must, pick this, with its trailing roots, verdant leaves, and pink blossoms, perfectly symmetrical.”
Pariat experiments further with textures – her poem Lady Of The Snows is structured like a tree, while another Church Going is structured like a cross.
The character of Johann discloses a rather surreal experience as he heads out of Rome, encountering an unfamiliar vegetation. “I could scarcely believe my eyes,” he exclaims, “Prickly pears pushing their large fleshy leaves amid the grey-green of dwarf myrtles, the yellowish green of the pomegranate, and the pale silvery green of the olive. In the meadows, the narcissus and the Adonis were in flower.”
Through him, we come to terms with various facts, even terminologies, about features we never batted an eyelid for… “What if all of its lateral outgrowths were simply variations of a single structure – the leaf?”
Have you ever read a book with such intricate details?
The book is a fine walk in the woods on a warm day, as clouds hover over tall pine trees enveloped by birds on their branches, the quiet slightly disturbed by muddy footsteps and the rumbling flow of a stream nearby.
Everything The Light Touches exposes, almost literally, enlightenment, a remarkable desire to beat around the bush but eventually reconciles with Ka Mei Ramew.
Pariat wonderfully spins a narrative that concerns the lush greenery of our state, and the world as a whole through her characters who seek solace, contradictory to our very busy life, and the pangs of pollution. Where full-fledged discussions and debates on climate change take a bow, Shai, Evelyn, Carl and Johanne escort different worldviews as they seek pleasure in a walk amidst nature more than a drink in a club, or a fancy meal in an elite restaurant.
“Where do we turn to if not towards the light? Here the darkness, here the sight – bound together, like song and story. How to live but lightly? How to learn but gently? All the while journeying through life after life after life. Gather, gather, around the fire, listen, listen, Breathe.”
‘Find magic in the little things’ they say, and the author respectfully obliges through the mystical pages of her marvellous novel.