Our honorary guide in mid-October turned out to be a sprightly girl-child engaged in improvising a swing. On our way back from a brief look at what appeared to be a column, but was called sandook (a box) for some strange reasons by the locals, we found that she was still trying to suspend the straw rope.[break]
The conversation with her was a lesson in the art of living.
“What’s your name?”
“Imlana”
“You mean Imrana?”
“No, Imlana.”
“What’re you doing, Imlana?”
She gave a shy smile and began to explain in a breathless voice:
“First I made the straw rope. I tied it to the bamboo. The rope was weak. It broke. I made another rope. It was too thick. The bamboo bent and I couldn’t swing. So I made another rope and tried suspending it to a taller bamboo. Its node was too high, and climbing upon a bamboo is difficult. I made a hoop and hung it up with a stick. See, now it works.”
Then she flashed a triumphant smile. I smiled too. Bamboo is a symbolic representation of creativity, fertility and prosperity in the Maithil culture, and this little girl had succeeded in bending it, all to her will.
“Don’t you go to school, Imlana?”
“Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t.”
“Does your brother go to school?”
“Sometimes he goes, sometimes he doesn’t.”
“What does your father do?”
“My father goes to work. My mother goes to work. My brother goes to work.”
“You’re working too, aren’t you?”
“No, I’m not. I’m playing. But I’ll also go to work when I grow up.”
“But you made a swing by yourself, didn’t you?”
“Yes, I did. But I’m playing.”
I asked if I might be allowed to take a go at her swing. She smiled again. We bade her farewell.
The little girl in Bara would be a creator of our common future. She is learning to cope with the challenges of life, and learn to live despite what our schools do to children of her age.
Political theorist Hannah Arendt once wrote that the 19th century technology was devoted to production, the 20th century one to destruction. That argument can be taken forward to propose that the technology of the 21st century would have to be a force of creation if humanity is to have a future. The bases of such a creative technology, however, are still hazy.
Electricity, steel, telegraph, the internal combustion engine, and the railroads of the 19th century prepared the world for massive wars as Darwinism primed the mind for the survival of the fittest. Huge destruction wrought by the two Great Wars in the developed world, and the wrecking of the poor countries during the Cold War decades by competing powers, took human civilization almost to the brink in the 20th century. But it also gave the television, the World Wide Web and the microprocessor—technologies that promise to set us free from the ignorance, vanity, and prejudices of the past.
The 19th century’s bulk transportation technologies and mass communication revolution of the 20th were mostly based on scientific discoveries and inventions.
In the coming decades, perhaps a bigger dose of arts and crafts would be necessary to bring these gains back to human scale. The focus would have to shift towards innovation and improvisation, something that Imlana of Amritganj seemed to be doing with panache.
At the risk of sounding sexist, I would argue that women are instinctively more creative. Women would have to take the reigns to free this century from ravages of wars and pollution, and lead the world towards peace and harmony.
The Durgas and Laxmis of the future would have to be Sarswatis, the deity of all arts. On this note of hope and yearning, I take a pause with the Nepali Women Creators Series.
Suggestions for its resumption are solicited.
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