9 Diasporic Novel; Anita Rao Badami: Can You Hear the Nightbird Call

Dr. Swagata Bhattacharya

Content

• A brief biography of Anita Rau Badami
• The background of the novel Can You Hear the Nightbird Call?
• The summary of the novel Can You Hear the Nightbird Call?
• The main characters in the novel.
• The historical events associated with the main plot

1.   About the author: Anita Rau Badami is a first generation immigrant writer of Indian origin  in Canada. She was born on September 24, 1961 in the town of Rourkela, Odisha, India. Her father worked as a mechanical engineer in the Indian Railways. Because of her father’s transferable job, the family moved every 2-3 years. She grew up nurtured by stories told by her extended family.   Since her childhood she  was  an avid reader  and  attended Catholic schools in India. Even at home, English was her primary language. She wrote her first story at the age of  18 and sold it to a local newspaper for seventy-five rupees. After her schooling, she studied Journalism in Sophia College, Bombay and later she received her Bachelor’s degree in English at the University of Madras. She worked as a copywriter for advertising agencies in Bombay, Bangalore and Madras and also wrote for various newspapers and magazines. Before moving to Canada, Badami had been a regular contributor to many children’s magazines in Bombay. In 1984, she got married and in 1991, and by her own admission “simply followed” her husband to Canada. She earned a Master’s degree in English at the University of Calgary. Her first novel, Tamarind Mem (1997), grew out of her Master’s thesis. It is considered to be semi- autobiographical by the author herself. The novel was a huge success and received great critical acclamation. She has since then published three novels – The Hero’s Walk (2001), Can You  Hear the Nightbird Call? (2006) and Tell It To The Trees (2011). Her short story “The Foreigners” has been anthologized in Nurjehan Aziz ed. Her Mother’s Ashes III. At present, Anita Rau Badami is regarded as one of the most prominent South Asian-Canadian writers.

2.   South Asian Diaspora in Canadian Literature: South Asians started migrating to Canada since the 1960s when the Canadian government was contemplating the introduction of multiculturalism as a state policy. The Canadian Immigration Acts of 1962 and 1967 respectively saw a large influx of South Asian migrants into the nation. The emergence of literature written by the South Asian diaspora was witnessed in the 1970s but it remained in the formative stages for a long time. There has been a consistent problem of situating this body of texts vis-à-vis the corpus of Canadian literature. It has remained outside the “mainstream” and has been referred to as SACLIT (South Asian Canadian Literature). In the initial years, when the need for a nurturing ground was essential, the term SACLIT had proved to be a blanket term. The concerned writers had themselves wanted to foster this sense of homogeneity and to forge their identity as a group, defining themselves against the hostile host culture. The publication of collections of critical essays such as Arun Mukherjee ed. An Aesthetics of Opposition, MG Vassanji ed. A Meeting of Streams, and of anthologies such as Diane McGifford ed. The Geography of Voice: An Anthology of South Asian Canadian Literature has drawn attention to the formation and significant presence of this literary community. Anita Rau Badami’s novels are a continuation of that literary tradition. They have made mainstream culture aware of an alternative approach to literature and have made them reckon with the fact that the South Asian diaspora is a formidable presence in the present Canadian literary and cultural scenario.

3.   Background: The novel spreads across a huge span of time, covering the major incidents in Sikh history in both India and Canada. It refers to the Komagata Maru incident of 1914 which acts as a catalyst in the course of actions which subsequently take place in Sikh history. The resentment which had initiated from the Komagata Maru incident reached its peak during the brutal violence in 1947 and continued up to the struggle for the existence of Khalistan, a separate land for the Sikhs. The extremist measures taken up by the Sikhs were thwarted by the Indira Gandhi government which led to more extremist activities. The point of culmination was the Golden Temple episode when the government had to call in the army to massacre the extremists. The revenge killings and misgivings between the Sikhs and the government of India continued up to the Air India tragedy in 1985. Rau Badami insists on addressing the silence that surrounds the entire Air India episode. In her interviews, she has lamented the unwillingness in current Canadian public culture to remember the tragedy as a Canadian one. Historically, it has also been disowned by India. With this well-researched and well-crafted story, Rau Badami strives to connect both the worlds and the historical events from a Canadian-Indian/diasporic perspective. The novel situates Badami as a Canadian writer in her choice and presentation of the material which is based on the global Sikh community. It suggests that the Sikhs in India and those in Canada have a strong sense of shared history. Finally, the novel charts a continuous history of the Sikh diaspora in Canada from the early days of working in the paper mills of British Columbia through Komagata Maru, partition, the scars of 1984, and the 1985 air crash. Despite its tone of sympathy for the ‘homeless immigrants’, the novel is nonetheless critical of a section of the diaspora who support separatist politics and fund militant activities back home. There is also a claim that the diaspora has a duty towards its motherland and is responsible for her well being to a certain extent.

4.   Plot: Can You Hear the Nightbird Call? is set against the tumultuous backdrop of violence in India, particularly in Punjab. The novel spans across both India and Canada and touches upon the tragic milestones of the Komagata Maru incident, the partition, the assassination of Indira Gandhi and the subsequent riots throughout the country, and finally the Air India tragedy. Tragedy looms large throughout the novel where nostalgia, violence and dislocation become the key words.

The story unfolds itself in subsequent movements, back and forth. Bibi-ji recounts the story of her life since she was a little girl playing in the fields of Punjab. Born as Sharanjeet Kaur, she was a witness to the reminiscences of her disillusioned father who had been onboard the Komagata Maru and had been shooed away from the shores of Canada like a ‘pariah dog’. She had heard stories of Canada from her father and had dreamt of it as the golden land, the land of opportunities. When an alliance was brought for her elder sister Kanwar with a man settled in Canada, Sharanjeet was determined to grab the opportunity. Overwhelmed by the beauty of the younger sister, the marriage was settled between Sharanjeet and her husband who came to be known as Pa-ji. They went to Vancouver where Pa-ji opened an Indian restaurant called Delhi Junction and soon Bibi-ji and Pa-ji settled in a life of luxury.

However, there was a glitch in the paradise. Bibi-ji was unable to bear any children and that grief haunted her throughout her life. She came to consider it a curse since Kanwar was married off to a poor man and suffered tremendously during the partition violence. In Vancouver Bibi-ji had received the news of Kanwar’s disappearance silently.

The story of Bibi-ji merges with the lives of two other women- Leela and Nimmo. Leela is her neighbour in Canada. Born of a German mother and a Hindu father, Leela’s stay in India had been uncomfortable to say the least. Finding herself unacceptable in her Hindu family, Leela had married Balu Bhat and fled away to Canada to start a new life afresh. In Canada, to Leela’s surprise she found that the immigrant’s life is not much easy than it has been for her back in India. This is when she meets Satpal by chance and comes to know that he was looking for a Sharanjeet Kaur, the supposed aunt of his wife Nimmo. Leela helps in uniting Nimmo and Sharanjeet but the scheming Bibi-ji decides to adopt Nimmo’s eight-year old son Jasbeer. Contrary to her belief, Jasbeer finds it difficult to adjust in a new life in Canada and grows up resenting his life of comfort and luxury. By this time Delhi Junction had become a meeting place of intellectuals of Indian origin in Canada, and much to the dismay of Pa-ji, it was slowly being turned into a hub of political activities. By public demand, Dr.Randhawa was brought in to give lectures on his standpoint on extremist politics going on in Punjab at that point of time. As a guest in Pa-ji’s house, Dr.Randhawa successfully managed to brainwash Jasbeer and soon he became an active member of the group fighting for the creation of Khalistan, the land of the Khalsas. With the assassination of Mrs.Gandhi in India in 1984, the activities of the group reached to a height and Jasbeer was one of those who actually took part in planting the bomb in Emperor Kanishka. The novel ends with Jasbeer’s acquittal for lack of evidence against him. When Bibi-ji asks him to return home with her he replies, “Home, but which one?” This rhetorical question sums up the position and the psychology of all diasporic writers as well as the characters – they belong nowhere. Throughout the novel Badami refers again and again to the story of the mythical king Trishanku who had remained suspended in-between. From Bibi-ji to Jasbeer, all the three generations of ‘Canadians’ in Canada had remained in-between, suspended in mid air. As if to provide a solution to this problem, the adopted child Jasbeer refuses Bibi-ji and Canada and decides to return to his grieving biological mother in India. ‘The return of the native’ can be seen as a gesture of repentance by the diaspora for sympathizing with fundamentalist politics. Despite the trauma and the gloom, the novel leaves the readers on a note of hope that all diasporic involvements are not detrimental to the interests of the homeland and that there are still some who dream of a better homeland.

5.  Characters:

Bibi-ji: Sharanjeet Kaur, better known as Bibi-ji, is the central character of the novel. Though born in a poor family, she was determined to take her destiny in her own hands and find success in life. Her father was haunted by a dream of stepping into the soil of Canada. Regarded as a worthless man by his family, the poor Harjot Singh had little idea how the infectious dream of setting foot on the Canadian soil has affected his little daughter since she was a mere baby. Defiant and resolute, Sharanjeet lost no time in grabbing the opportunity when it came. It was a marriage alliance brought for her elder sister in which she saw the golden opportunity of realizing her dream. She enticed the groom and thus stole her sister’s fortune. Settled in Vancouver she came to be known as Bibi-ji, the owner of a prosperous restaurant called Delhi Junction. Amidst a life of wealth and luxury, Bibi-ji was haunted by a curse- her inability to bear a child. She was aware of Kanwar’s disappearance during the partition violence and vaguely hoped to meet her one day but what actually drew her towards her sister was the fact that she had children whom Bibi-ji wanted to adopt. Years later when she happened to meet Nimmo by chance, she coaxed her into giving up her son Jasbeer to her. Till then Bibi-ji had become used to getting whatever she wanted from life and could not bear the fact that any of her dreams might remain unfulfilled. With the adoption of Jasbeer, her only unrealized dream now became realized and she considered herself to be complete. Little had she dreamt that this step would eventually lead her to a tremendous shock and a lifelong grief. Unable to adjust himself in Canada, Jasbeer grew up as a resentful young man thoroughly against the diasporic way of life. He hated everything Canadian and thus fell an easy victim in the scheme of extremist politics propagated by the shrewd politician Dr.Randhawa. It was to Bibi-ji’s utter shock and dismay that Jasbeer was one of the extremists charged with having planted the bomb in the Air India flight. After he was acquitted, she felt it to be her duty to bring home the wayward child. However, Jasbeer decided to leave Canada and Bibi-ji and seek refuge in the lap of his biological mother who had once given up in hope of a better future. Throughout the novel, Bibi-ji is projected as a selfish and self-centered woman who schemes her way through all obstacles and succeeds to find her own way. However underneath her scheming character, lies the heart of a woman who pines for love and fails to get it. Her devotion to her father was overlooked as a mere girlish fancy, her love for her husband mistaken as her desire for money and power. Finally, her attachment to Jasbeer is seen as that of a matriarch who tries to dominate and control others. Beneath the façade, the true character of Bibi-ji remains concealed and it is for the readers to unravel whether Bibi-ji is to be hated or pitied. Despite all her efforts to achieve success and control her destiny, Bibi-ji fails to do either. She is left an old woman, without a husband and a child, struggling to overcome the scars created by the child whom she had loved so dearly.

Leela: Leela is one of the three central characters in the novel whose destinies merge as the novel progresses. She is the neighbour of Bibi-ji in Vancouver, a fellow immigrant who had migrated from India to Canada. Born of a German mother and a Hindu father, Leela had considered her existence in Bangalore as an uncomfortable one. Her white skin, a gift from her pale German mother, was the prime deterrent in her way of finding herself one with the Hindu family on her father’s side. Unable to continue as an outsider, Leela had thought it prudent to break away by getting married. After her mother’s death, she persuaded her husband Balu to migrate to Canada where she hoped to be accepted warmly. It was the age of Trudeau’s policy  of multiculturalism, immigrants were being accepted cordially from all parts of the world. However, to Leela’s dismay, the situation was not much different from that in India. Leela found herself as unacceptable in Canada as she had been in India. One day, she happens to ride home from the airport in a taxi driven by Satpal and comes to know that he was looking for Sharanjeet Kaur, the estranged aunt of his wife Nimmo. Leela helps Bibi-ji to get united with her niece and thus their lives converge. Throughout the novel, we find Leela struggling with the stigma of being ‘a half-and-half’, the underlined theme of this novel.

Nimmo: Nimmo is the six-year-old child whose mother Kanwar Kaur disappears in the aftermath of the violence that ensued during the partition of India in 1947. She grew up knowing that she had an aunt called Sharanjeet Kaur who is settled in Vancouver, Canada. Not unlike her mother, Nimmo had been subjected to poverty since her childhood and was married off to Satpal in her youth. They have children and unlike her aunt, Nimmo found satisfaction in whatever fate gifted her. However, Satpal decides to migrate to Canada in search of a better fortune and ends up being a taxi driver. It was while taking a passenger from the airport, he learnt that she was the neighbour of Sharanjeet Kaur, the woman who was indeed Nimmo’s closest relative. Through the mediation of Leela, Sharanjeet meets Satpal and travels to Punjab where she manages to coax the couple in giving up their son Jasbeer to her. Nimmo had dreamt of a bright future for her son and decided to agree to her aunt’s proposal for the sake of his future. She spends the rest of her life in the agony of having lost her son and of her helplessness in finding no way to bring him back. Years later, as she lay on her deathbed in the dark gloomy room where she had spent most of her life, the joyous memories of her husband and her son came back to her. When Jasbeer was acquitted, he had two mothers waiting for his return, ultimately Nimmo won. The long-lost son decided to come back to his homeland and to his biological mother. In other words, Nimmo is the motherland who is often forced to give up her children but always weeps silently for them. Just like India, Nimmo bore all the scars that had ravaged the Sikh history since the days of the partition. With the return of her child, there was the return of hope for the mother. Nimmo had suffered the most because of the rash activities of the diaspora and the novel ends with the hope of restoring some peace and security to her.

Jasbeer: Jasbeer comes to Canada as an eight-year-old boy. His parents, Satpal and Nimmo, had entrusted him to the care of Bibi-ji, Nimmo’s affluent aunt living in Vancouver. Even as a child Jasbeer had resented the idea of growing up in a country where he considered himself a misfit. He grew up as a resentful young man who hated everything Canadian. He found pleasure in disobeying Bibi-ji’s orders and soon found himself getting mixed up with separatist politics going on back home. Bibi-ji’s custom of visiting the Golden Temple in Amritsar every year led Jasbeer to mix with the Khalistanis. Even in Canada, rebellion was in the air and a strong propaganda for the separate land of Khalistan was a talking point in Delhi Junction itself. The nail in the coffin was the arrival of the vociferous speaker Dr. Randhawa who cast an immediate spell on the young, disillusioned Jasbeer. Thoroughly in awe of the man, Jasbeer blindly followed his speeches and considered himself lucky enough to be able to serve his motherland. The revenge killings of the Sikhs post Mrs. Gandhi’s assassination fueled the anger of the extremists who decided on to their next course of action – to plant a bomb in the Air India flight, Emperor Kanishka. Jasbeer was one of the prime accused but he was eventually let off for lack of evidence. On the day of his acquittal, Bibi-ji went to fetch him home but Jasbeer denied stating that Canada was not his home. He decided to return to India and pay the penalty for his crime. He had wanted to serve his country without ever thinking that his rash act would do more harm than actual service. It was only after the crime had been committed that he came to realize its magnitude and decided to spend the rest of his life trying to undo what he had done. His gesture of repentance also unites him with his biological mother whom he had misunderstood as a child. The inability of both his mother and his motherland in raising him had troubled Jasbeer since his childhood. At last he comes to realize his own fault and feels that it is not always the responsibility of the mother to look after the child, it is also the responsibility of the child to provide for the mother. With Jasbeer, it becomes established that the hopes of the motherland are the responsibility of the diaspora.

6.  Events:

i.   The Komagata Maru Incident: The Komagata Maru was a Japanese ship that was chartered from Hong Kong by an affluent businessman called Gurdit Singh in 1914. There were approximately 376 passengers onboard, out of which 24 were Muslims, 12 Hindus and the rest Sikhs. 150 passengers boarded from Hong Kong and 111 from Shanghai. On April 14, 1914, 86 passengers boarded at the port of Moji and finally, 14 passengers at the Yokohoma port. The British press picked up the news and it spread to its Canadian counterpart. A Vancouver daily called Province published the headline ‘Boat-loads of Hindus on way to Vancouver’ and soon, public protests, fueled by the Asiatic Exclusion League, spread like wildfire. It discouraged the Asians from setting foot on Canadian soil. The officials were backed by the Canadian military and navy. It was regarded as the brown invasion of Canada. The Punjabi community welcomed the Sikhs but prevented the others from disembarking. The ship was held captive for two  months. After much negotiation, 18-20 passengers actually managed to step into the mainland of Canada. The rest remained on the ship without food and adequate water. Finally, on July 23 it was sent back to where it came from. On September 26, the ship reached Budge Budge where it was again denied entry at the port. A scuffle took place between the agitated passengers and the police which ultimately led to the loss of 20 innocent lives. The entire episode is remembered in history as a selfless massacre of Indians who had merely dreamt of leading a secure life under  the British governance in Canada. The well-known play The Komagata Maru Incident (1976) by Sharon Pollock is a historical documentation of this incident.

ii. Khalistan: Khalistan was to be a utopic land of the Khalsa community. The Sikh religion was founded by Guru Nanak Dev in the 15th century and the community was known as ‘Khalsa’ which means the pure. In 1947, the British divided Punjab into two halves- the Eastern half with the Hindu majority remained in India and the Western half with the Muslim majority went to Pakistan. This division and the great dislocation of people that followed caused massive loss of lives, ancestral land, history and memory. It created severe wounds and resentment. In the 1980s, due to differences in between the Indian government and the Sikhs over land and water rights, Punjab was transformed into a fractured battleground. The violence reached its peak in June 1984 when the then-Prime Minister Mrs. Indira Gandhi ordered the army to enter the Golden Temple at Amritsar in an attempt to rid it of groups of armed militants who had taken shelter within the temple. In the ensuing battle, the temple was damaged and many militants, soldiers and several hundreds of ordinary pilgrims were killed. The anger generated by the invasion of the temple resulted in the assassination of Mrs. Gandhi by her two Sikh bodyguards in October 1984. This in turn, precipitated the systematic revenge killings of innocent Sikhs throughout India.

iii.  Air India Tragedy: Less than one year after the invasion of the Golden Temple, in June 1985, Air India Flight-182 (Emperor Kanishka), en route from Canada to India via London, exploded over the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of Ireland. All 329 passengers onboard were killed. Fifteen years later, in October 2000, two Canadian-Sikhs were charged with having planted the bomb. In March 2005, both were acquitted for lack of sufficient evidence.

iv. Partition of India: The partition of India was a historical event that took place in August 1947 when the geographical landmass of India was politically divided into two halves. The northern portion of Punjab with a Muslim majority came to be known as West Pakistan and the eastern portion of Bengal, better known as East Bengal, came to be regarded as East Pakistan. It was known as East Pakistan till 1971 when it was liberated and became a separate nation called Bangladesh. The event had caused tremendous loss of lives, land and property throughout the country but it had affected Punjab and Bengal the most. The bifurcation of the land of Punjab and the communal riots that preceded it had led to disruption and dislocation of thousands of people. In the aftermath of the violence, property and land were ransacked, human beings looted and killed and women brutally raped and violated. It is an episode of history whose shadow looms large even today throughout the country. The history of Punjab and its entire discourse thereafter has been changed and shaped by this event.

To sum up

• The biography of Anita Rau Badami
• The significance of the South Asian diaspora in Canadian literature
• The background of Can You Hear the Nightbird Call? and the historical events referred to in the novel
• The plot of the novel
• The main characters such as Bibi-ji, Nimmo, Leela and Jasbeer
  

References:

• Badam, Anita Rau. Tamarind Mem. New Delhi: Penguin. 2002.
• The Hero’s Walk. Toronto: Knopf. 2000.
• Tell It To The Trees. Toronto: Knopf. 2011.
• Chakraborty, Paulomi. “Disasters Canadian and Indian” in Canadian Literature # 196 (Spring 2008)
• McGifford, Diane ed. The Geography of Voice: An Anthology of South Asian Canadian Literature. Toronto: TESAR, 1992.
• Mukherjee, Arun Prabha ed. Towards an Aesthetic of Opposition: Essays on Literature, Criticsm and Cultural Imperialism. Ontario: William Wallace. 1988.
• Mukherjee, Bharati and Clarke Blaise. The Sorrow and the Terror: The Haunting Legacy of the Air India Tragedy. Ontario: Penguin Canada. 1987.
• Mukherjee, Bharati. “The Management of Grief” in The Middleman and Other Stories. London: Virgo Press. 1989.
• Vassanji, MG ed. A Meeting of Streams: South Asian Canadian Literature. Toronto: TESAR. 1985.