HISTORY IS OPEN ENDED

Fruits of the Barren Tree (Phoolange) by Lekhnath Chettri. Translated from Nepali to English by Anurag Basnet. Penguin India (2023). pp. 189; ISBN: 9780143472452

Phoolange was published in Nepali by Lekhnath Chhetri in 2021. Along with Fatsung (2019), it pioneered the growing literature on the Gorkhaland movement.   These literary creations, more than three decades later, on the Gorkhaland movement, fill the lacuna in the documentation of the  movement. These books highlight how these events changed the course of history of the people of Darjeeling Hills.  It took three decades for writers to take up the pen to examine the troubled events that have so deeply affected the ways of comprehending the confusion and pain that the movement also gave birth to. This delay can also be indicative of dire political conditions, which have for all these years  curtailed the freedom of expression in the hills. 

The novel is set in Relling, with the Basnet family at its center, during the andolan (agitation) of 1986. Basnet is the village Shaman, who was taken under the tutelage of a Banjhakri (forest-shaman) for seven months in a cave. An avowed celibate, he eloped with Basnetni, sparking rumors that “Basnet has cast a love-spell on his disciple” (pg. 8). Relling is   a feudal society where Basnet works as a sharecropper  of the Mandal, the village head who owns all the land.   Basnet’s journey highlights the  poverty and the competitive structure of a feudal society: “the more his tenants quarrelled and competed among themselves, the more the Mandal stood to gain” (pg. 15). The third member of the Basnet family is Jhuppay, the protagonist and the village troublemaker, as untameable as a bull that shares his name. “When he couldn’t tame his bull despite his best efforts, Basnet buda gave it his son’s name— Jhuppay” (pg. 30). 

Fruits of the Barren Tree was recommended to me as an original and unique work, it offers a “magical realist” portrayal of the 1986 Gorkhaland movement. The novel narrates “magical happenings in a realist matter-of-fact tone” (Bowers, 2004, pg. 2),  for example when Basnetni, known for accurately measuring  grains in handfuls, made an error while boiling rice, only to be visited by an unexpected guest to eat it, as if their arrival was invoked by her mistake. Or perhaps it was never a mistake to begin with. Salman Rushdie describes this style of writing as the “commingling of the improbable and the mundane” (Bowers, 2004, pg. 3).

The novel   introduces a range of unusual characters, with their specific idiosyncrasies: Subedi, who laughs more than is required, exclaiming “Jhwaayiin”; Bukkay, the village thief and Jhuppay’s partner-in-crime,  always reeks of urine; Canon Kailan and Bomb Kancha, newly christened revolutionaries; Chhyatar, the cunning ex-army chief of the Gorkha Voluntary Cell (GVC) in Relling,  plays Hanuman in the  annual Ramleela; and Gentleman Baje who taught Basnet masonry and the importance of literacy. After Baje's death, Basnet never wore slippers or shoes again. “Stones are like alphabets. When you put together alphabets, they form sturdy and beautiful sentences. We can tell stories using those sentences, just as this wall will tell the story of our labour for a very long time” (pg. 23). This metaphor touches the core of the crisis of belonging and the demand for Gorkhaland, illustrating how the construction of the space into a place called Darjeeling hills itself underscores the story of Nepali labourers, and how these people are paradoxically labelled as ‘foreigners’ in their own land. 

The story does not follow a chronological order. Initially the chapters are short and playful. However, around the 12^th chapter, one can sense a slight break in its rhythm, as if suggesting the writing was paused for a while and then resumed again. This is also the chapter when the Gorkhaland Movement flared up under the leadership of the “philosopher-leader” (pg. 88), Subhash Ghising, and the people are captivated by all that Gorkhaland promised. The green flag makes its first appearance in the novel, and brings with it the “sweet dreams”(pg. 57) that Basnet cannot tire of hearing. 

Shifting from its magical realist lens, the novel confronts the grim reality of violence at the heart of the Gorkhaland movement: the violence that was perpetrated on those dreaming the sweet dreams (Gorkhaland), and the violence perpetrated by those dreaming the sweet dreams. Chettri wordplays on the colours “red” and “green”, representing the two factions at war, the Communist Party of India (Marxist), the party in power, and the Gorkha National Liberation Front (GNLF), “colours red and green wafted from their gun barrels” (pg. 100). He recounts the horrors which every grandchild in Darjeeling Hills grew up listening to, of houses burnt, women raped, men buried alive in graves they dug themselves, and empty houses with the people in flight, hiding in jungles. 

Fruits of the Barren Tree  highlights the personal nature of violence that was perpetrated in the name of ‘Jaati’(people). The slogan ‘Kranti banduk ko naal bata suru huncha’ (Revolution begins from the barrel of a gun) (pg. 85) encapsulates this.   Jhuppay, who, after being   made a  representative of Jaatiya (popular) nationalism, concludes: “This war was intensely personal” (pg. 92). People were set against each other along party divisions, where entire villages took turns in pillaging their neighbours. Rather than acting as an impartial arbiter, the state equipped one faction with police authority and unbridled licence to massacre the other. The masses were rendered powerless, living in a constant state of terror of both the state and the revolutionaries. The  fratricide committed in the name of ‘Jaati’ is ironic, echoing the prose atmahatya (suicide) by Samiran Chettri ‘Priyadarshi’, which conveys the point that killing one’s own brothers (jaati)  is akin to committing suicide.

Having  read the novel in both Nepali and English, Anurag Basnet has translated it masterfully, remaining faithful in style and content, while making it accessible to a wider audience without substantially compromising the original. However, I contest and disagree with Basnet on the title — Fruits of the Barren Tree. Phoolange are trees with the same potential as any other tree, but which fail to bear fruit, and only yield flowers, and are called bhaley rukh (male tree). There can be no phoolange seeds, but only trees, for one cannot be a phoolange without the inherent potential to bear fruit. The movement was not a failure from the very beginning, which the translation of a barren tree would otherwise imply. The comparison of the movement to a barren tree would do a disservice to all the aspirations, revolutionary spirit, and political consciousness that the movement gave rise to, and the sacrifices that were made. The movement empowered the people of Darjeeling Hills to emerge as ‘political agents’, i.e., as ‘Gorkhas’, although their agency remains limited. Further, one can be deemed a phoolange only in hindsight. This  reverse reading of history may change in the years to come when Gorkhaland ceases to be a mere aspiration and the 1986 andolan is commemorated as  that seed that culminated into a bountiful tree. 

To this end, even the author, Lekhnath Chettri, recalls being jestfully teased by his father as a phoolange: “our son has also become a phoolange” (pg. 188). For all its worth, neither the author nor the movement, despite being labelled a failure, is a phoolange.

Reference

Bowers, M. A. (2004). Magic (al) realism. Routledge.