With Joyce Carol Oates - The First Day Workshop

 First Day With Joyce Carol Oates Workshop

Yesterday was that special night I had been counting for days, The first workshop eve with Joyce Carol Oates.
When the librarian, Kathi told me about this workshop and encouraged me to submit thirty pages of my unpublished book "Shadow Birds" I was quite skeptic.  She told me "There is nothing to lose, Dita, it is free, and if you are one of the ten selected ones you get an enormous gift." 

Yes.  I submitted at the very last minute.  And lo and behold - the next week got an email that my piece was selected!  

This was an enormous gift to me and the nine other emerging Bay Area writers like me.  We couldn't thank enough for the generosity. 

When I reached the Lafayette library at our designated meeting room, it was not quite 6 pm. Three other ladies were standing in front of that room with folders in hands, a smile on their faces. As our eyes met one of them, an attractive lady with short dirty blond hair grinned.

“Is this the Joyce Carol…”  I asked. 

“Yes.” She replied. “I am Shanti.” 

“Shanti! So nice to meet you. Your hippy parents gave you this Indian name! I am Dita. I really enjoyed reading your memoir piece.” I stretched my hand.  

She simpered, “ Khukumoni?” 

It felt interesting that we knew each other so well, especially in memoirs you really open up to your readers, yet we didn’t know who the creator is. Not yet.” In a short while, we introduced each other. More and more joined. The door opened. 

A lady with a sweet smile waved her hand “Welcome! Have a wonderful evening with Joyce Carol Oates. “

Ms. Oates was sitting at one end of a long rectangular table in a burgundy color jacket and oxidized silver earring studs. She didn’t need an introduction. We all have seen her pictures many times. The gentleman with a broad smile sat next to her was Joseph Di Prisco- a renowned poet, memoirist and editor.  

 He is the chairman of the Simpson Family Literacy Project, a nonprofit organization that sponsors literacy outreach in the Bay Area and today’s workshop is part of that generosity. 

He is very humorous and brought lots of laughter with each comment. For example, he said, “I wrote a book named ‘Subway to California’. One day a lady in one of my reading group got very annoyed. She stood up, a folder in hand, with brows crossed, asked ‘So it’s got nothing to do with your subway project proposal?’ Hey, no! It’s just a novel.” He chuckled. 

Ms. Oates was calm with a charming way of talking with opening her palms and playing with her fingers. I was feeling funny sitting next to her as if I was not worth it.… but had I seek another chair farther, it may look impolite. So I plopped. But I must say sitting next to such a personality was giving me chills, some kind of shocks, now and then. Strange, but true. 

When she looked at me and said “I am Joyce Carol Oates, and you? “I felt blood rushed to my cheeks. 

“Anindita Basu. You may call me Dita” I blew. 

“Dita…Dita… I thought you’d be much older living through the partition of India.” Holding my piece,  the first three chapters of ‘Shadow Birds’ she smiled.

“Well, actually the seed of the story came from my mother. It is not really a memoir. I’d say, a young adult historical fiction. A story of a young girl during the partition of India.” 

“Hmm. A young adult genre?” her brows knitted.

“Your language is beautiful. Lyrical. The starting is great and the title ‘Shadow Birds!… Stunning. Well, we’ll come back to the genre. Everything goes if you can do it right. We’ll come back to that.”

I could feel my heart pounding. Hopefully, my blood pressure is on the check. I sipped water to take a breath. I remember the other day telling my husband I can never find my pulses. They are so quiet. Checked my throat, checked my wrist..no ..I couldn’t hear a thing. He couldn’t either. We could find his, loud and clear. But today I could hear my heart beat going thump..thump.

“Tell me a little about your writing life. Since when are you writing? Did you publish anything so far?” Ms. Oates asked. 

I meant to say, “Since when? All my life. Since the first time I received my first present from Santa Claus and wrote him a letter on a slate chalkboard…. the day ma was unfair and slapped me instead of my brother…the afternoon I learned that I am pretty from the side glance of a young man at the bus stand on my way to school…the day I found out that my love left without telling me….and and so many more..” But I couldn’t say a thing. Just smiled. She finished for me “Forever?” I nodded. 

“Who is your favorite author?” I took a deep breath.” Where should I start?” If I say Rabindranath to start with, Bibhutibhusan, Tarasankar, Ashapurna Devi .would she get it? But they are my foundation, my mentors. I gulped.

“Hemmingway, Alcott, Mark Twain, even Betty Smith (A Tree Grows in Brooklyn- my favorite), and of course you, Joyce Carol Oates (Where are you going..where have you been, A Widow’s Story.)”

She pressed her lips. “Okay, okay.” 

She looked at the next candidate and Shanti picked up the thread. 

What was the take away from today’s workshop

* “Write every day.” She said. “Even when I was going through the trauma with the death of my husband, I kept a daily journal about what was happening. I was in no form writing cohesively then, but it helped later to sort out when I put together the memoir. “So that’s how that memoir “A Widow's Story “ was written. 

“When you are much hurt or having a splendid time visiting awesome places, keep a daily journal…just what is happening. Later the memory will come. Draw past from the present.” 

 * Tie in a big (larger than life) event, experience or emotion to give your writing another dimension. For example, she asked Shanti if she knew anyone from her family who had survived the Holocaust or suffered directly. Shanti’s memoir was about an experience she had in an Israeli military camp. Her background is Jewish, and she talked about her faith and religion in that piece. 

  

  

Piyari, the Elephant (Excerpt from Shadow Bird )

Piyari, the Elephant (Excerpt from Shadow Birds)

Shadow Bird is a Young Adult historical fiction. Though I strived to be mindful and not change history, the characters and events are imagined. Many stories, heard and read, pictures and photographs, music and books fueled my imagination. Out of them, I must mention the Bengali memoir Jiboner Indradhonu written by Dhritikanto Lahiri Choudhury. 


I wished I could hand my book to him in person but just came to know that he had passed away recently, on March 1, 2019. My deep regards and gratitude for this wonderful writer and a lover of wildlife, especially elephants.

Today I am posting an excerpt of my novel, dedicating it to his thoughts. 
                                                * * *

Zentangle Art by Anindita Basu @ copyright

I’ll never forget Piyari Chanchal. He was an adolescent elephant like me, same age, or maybe a bit older. Like an active, restless little boy, he loved to play in the water and would not come out. He would thump and clomp and play in the muddy pool, spray and splash with his trunk. He was very fond of my second cousin, Kutti dada.

No one could get him out of the water even when it got dark. “Get up elephant, it is time to go home,” the mahut (elephant keeper) shouted, but Piyari Chanchal would not listen, until Kutti dada bribed him with bananas and coconuts and cajoled him, stroking his trunk, “Chanchal shona, my love, I promise you another day to play again.” The elephant swayed his trunk and listened to him but not to grownups at all.

Elephants and people have a lot in common. Their life spans are similar to ours. I heard that in their late sixties and seventies they get the same health problems that humans face. They suffer from heart troubles, arthritis, shortness of breath, just like us.

When they are little, they depend on their moms solely like we do. The elephant mom teaches them how to use the trunk for eating, cleaning, drinking and also how to greet. Like we learn to use our hands. When they are thirteen or so, they enter puberty like we do and soon become adults. Around twenty they are able to have babies.

Piyari Chanchal also had one of those crazy days of puberty. One day he took us, a bunch of people to the riverside on his back. The sun was going down in the Brahmaputra River. The western sky blushed with vermilion and lustful pink. Piyari Chanchal had seen it all.

After he reached the portico, he gently sat, folding his rear legs to let each one of us get down. Then he rushed, shook the mahut off and started to run. The mahut was a bit perplexed in the beginning, then he grinned “Zara masti aye” (got a bit high), he remarked.

Piyari Chanchal started running around, banging the iron gate, messing up the stalls in the market. When some tried to prevent him, he turned them upside down. He attacked the cars and the horses on the main road. People got hurt and many shops lost their merchandise.

He was marked as a mad elephant. The District Magistrate ordered, “Shoot the damn elephant.” Probably the Magistrate was encouraged by George Orwell's books and wanted to be a hero for shooting an elephant. Now, the Magistrate did not have any tools to do the job, so he asked the zaminder.

The sandalwood adorned rifle was taken down from the wall and handed over to the boss. What could he do? You may be a Raja of someplace, but when an order came from the British headquarters, you had to obey.

Piyari Chanchal was a beloved elephant of our extended family. Kutti da’s grandfather, could not accept his murder. Every now and then the sound of that bullet echoed in his brain. For the next few days, he kept himself isolated in a dark room, not eating, not doing anything. It was a strange mourning session he dedicated for the elephant. Kutti da was in college in Calcutta. So luckily he did not have to experience it.

I thought of Piyari Chanchal a lot. Felt that such bouts of exhilaration did come to me too sometimes. There were times when I wished if I could just run run run up the Garo hills, through the green rice fields, swim in the Brahmaputra River, dive and sink like a fish, hug someone tight and kiss...

Piyari Chanchal, by nature, was much active, more energetic. But he was a teenager like me after all. Maybe he did it a bit too much but for that should he be killed? And we had no voice to protest it?
I flung my school bag on the floor. My throat felt dry, my mouth, bitter. I wished I could cry. Only a black void, a sadness as big as that dear elephant kept swirling in my chest and crept up to burst inside my brain.

Ma entered the room. “Look at you, your face looks like a dry mango. What happened?”—She touched my forehead. “No, you don’t have a fever.”

“Do you know that Piyari Chanchal has been killed?” my voice choked.

“Of course I do. What are you going to do with a mad elephant?”

I jerked and brushed her hand away and thumped my feet in anger leaving the room.

“Oh my! What a tantrum. Who are you showing all that temper to, hmm? You need to grow up girl, You must learn grace and humility
and how to be nice. At your age  I was already married. How will you handle it when you are married and live with your in-laws?”

I stormed to my room and slammed the door. This was my first experience with death. Death of a loved one. Maybe he was not a human, but I loved him. We played, he took me riding on his back, I painted on his back, fed him, cajoled him, he caressed me with his trunk, we were friends. We loved each other.

I felt like screaming, hiding my face under a pillow, and wanting to have a good cry. But that did not happen. I remained motionless with all that suffering stuffed up, alone. At one time I got up and started revolving around myself like a rotating firework until I felt dizzy. In the mirror many images of me kept on whirling like those Sufi monks who meditate like that, arms stretched out revolving and dancing at their own center. I looked like those meditating monks.

Then I was tired and plopped onto my bed. The chess board on a table across the room came into my vision, swirling ferociously. When it stopped I narrowed my eyes and to my amazement found that they were not just chess figurines anymore. They were alive. They had life.

From Babu’s library, I could hear the music. Dara-ra-ra, dara-ra-ra... dara-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-rung! Beethoven’s fifth symphony. I felt goosebumps.

On the chessboard, the black soldiers, the horses, the bishops and the queen stepped one by one and in groups with the beat of the music and captured the white king’s castle. The king was totally stuck. All the white soldiers, his horses, bishops, rooks, even the white queen were rolling on the board now. Lifeless. 

The black soldiers were glistening in sweat and blood with their swords and shields adorned in sandalwood paste blessed by the goddess. They were demanding from the white king, “Why this injustice?”

The music in the other room was in crescendo to celebrate. Don’t you worry Piyari Chanchal dear, one day we’ll straighten it out.