The Seekers - A Quest to the Questions

The Seekers is a one-of-a-kind story collection by Gautamiputra Kamble. Originally published in Marathi in 2004, the collection is translated into English with remarkable brilliance, care and delicacy by Sirus J. Libeiro and published by Blaft Publications. 

The five stories of the collection are: The Story of a Story, Parivrajak, Shilpasan, Tales of Viroopnagar, and The Search for the Sixth Sense. Kamble himself identifies the central concerns of these stories in his Author’s Note: the clash between Buddhist and non-Buddhist philosophies, conflicts between cultures, the making of myths, the process of artistic creation, and the struggle between ideologies of violence and non-violence 'ahimsa'. The insightful Translator’s Note and Author’s Note are particularly helpful in understanding Kamble’s experimental and refreshingly unconventional approach to storytelling. 

What makes these stories remarkable is how carefully Kamble avoids over-characterizing, over-imposing or over-explaining. His conflicts do not arrive fully formed; they develop gradually, often through the choices, beliefs and discoveries of his characters. He does not rush to prove an idea. Instead, he lets it emerge naturally through people who are always searching for something – a discovery, a truth, an answer, or struggling with conflicts of their own making.

At times, the reader may feel lost in the opening pages of some stories. The narratives take unconventional turns, connections appear strange, and the world Kamble creates does not always reveal itself immediately. But perhaps patience is one of the things these stories ask us to learn: to stay, to observe, and to witness the unfolding rather than demand immediate understanding.

The Story of a Story

Our narrator is a writer in search of characters. Unable to find anyone sufficiently unusual among the people closest to his town, he sets out on an adventure, determined to discover characters worthy of his story. At the foot of a hill, near a new town he reaches for the perfect character, he encounters a mysterious man of unknown identity who has been living in a cave for decades. Eventually, we learn who this man is and how he comes to live there. The writer is desperate to end his search, and his desperation find ways to more complications.

'Just come with me, and don't make me suffer your refusals. Otherwise, I'll have to shackle you up with my words and carry you away. You don't realize the strength of my words.' With this strange threat, the cave-dweller finally surrenders to the writer and follows him home. The writer also brings a woman into his house under equally mysterious, almost eerie circumstances. Now he wants both of them to tell their stories.

The premise immediately reminds me of Luigi Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author. Here, however, the direction is reversed: the author goes out searching for his characters. But does he really get what he wants from them? Can we create and comprehend a story for someone who merely holds their words? How much of the stories we tell is rooted in truth? Are words powerful enough to represent another person's existence – to free them, or to capture them?

The story can therefore be read as a metaphor for the making of a story itself, and perhaps as a metafictional doorway into the collection.

“If only I could write a line for them, with words that have never been used before…” This line, I think, hints at what follows. The remaining stories are unusual, unconventional and unlike anything I have encountered, as though Kamble deliberately searches for new ways of telling them.

This is also perhaps the most scenic story in the collection, with descriptions that occasionally carry an enticing sense of terror. The writer's restlessness and the growing tension are palpable. It is the shortest story in the collection, but returning to it after finishing the other stories reveals traces and connections that seem to lead into the larger literary universe of Gautamiputra Kamble, until, slowly, some of its puzzles begin to fall into place.

Parvrajak

Parivrajak, or The Seeker, is the title story of the collection and perhaps the story that most clearly brings together Kamble’s recurring concerns with tradition, belief, identity and the search for meaning.

Naiser and Anisha, each leaving everything behind for a different reason, find each other in the middle of a barren land, or malraan, beneath the shade of a lonely tree. Naiser is on a quest to reach Dandgiri; the reason for his journey and what he discovers there slowly unravel. Anisha, meanwhile, ventures out in search of a “two-legged person,” the meaning of which is also revealed only towards the end. But are they really searching for different things, or their personal interpretation are in fact different ? And when they find what they seek, does the discovery satisfy their understanding? (Perhaps, it is better you discover them on your own.)

Dandgiri is a mysterious place where “few people who had dared to go there have never returned.” It is merely the "name of a hill" that has "become synonymous with death." Surrounded by rivers on both sides, it remains inaccessible not simply because of the landscape but because tradition forbids people from crossing the streams. One character captures the danger of such inherited beliefs: “You people imagine yourselves to be lovers of tradition, but in truth, you are afflicted by it.” These traditional barriers, rooted in different beliefs and fears, recur throughout the collection.

Naiser and Anisha become companions on their arduous journey, each seeking revelation and relief. They travel through barren landscapes, desolate and ancient villages, forests and streams. In one village, a single event can turn people into mortal enemies; in another, they encounter people who accept that they are “not developed enough yet to kill.”

What they discover in the hills eventually leads Naiser to narrate the story of a prince who becomes a parivrajak. Though the story never names him, we recognise the figure as Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha.

I think Parivrajak lies at the heart of Kamble’s work. It reflects his underlying philosophical concerns, shaped by Buddhist thought and the Phule-Ambedkarite intellectual tradition. Yet Kamble never imposes philosophy directly; he has openly expressed this in his author's note. Instead, he breaks taboos, challenges inherited norms and places the quest at the centre: the quest to understand the self, its presence and the meaning of existence. Perhaps what the central characters need to understand is the unspoken Dhamma, expressed beautifully in the story: “There is a world of difference between looking at something and seeing it.” This is how Naiser puts it.

What makes his blending of these ideas so sublime is its delicacy. Different individuals come with different purposes, struggle towards their own discoveries, and encounter meanings and philosophies along the way. Searching and seeking are what make Kamble’s stories adventurous - an adventure that ultimately moves inward, towards the greater self.

Shilpasan

Imagine, in an endless desert, finding two stone figures carved as if from a single rock: a man bent forward, pressing his thumbs against the toes of a standing woman. Who are they? How are they related? What does this strange gesture mean? How did they end up in an uninhabited desert? These and many other questions arise immediately. The Shilpasan, the third story of the collection, is a blend of fantasy, magical realism, legend, and a quest.

Idfra and Monark, two travellers, venture into the desert to see the stone figures, or shilpasan. Idfra has visited the place before, but its enchantment brings him back, this time with a friend. The 'stone figure was so sublime that it made the whole arid wasteland feel like a lush greenscape. Seeing it had transformed Idfra,' – such was the magnificence of the shilpasan. Their almost silent passage, marked by sparse conversations, quiet remembrance, stories and realizations, gives the narrative an aura of mystery.

Idfra begins telling Monark the legend of how the figures come to exist. The woman of the shilpasan, Sanruta, comes from Kigypt, a strange, almost magical land where 'the sky is always gray, and the air perpetually muggy,' and where the sun rarely shines. Almost every family there makes stone sculptures, including Sanruta’s. Soon, the story takes us into a world where staring at the Sun can transform a person into stone, and, astonishingly, that person can be brought back to life.

Araj and Tejsan are two eccentric and enigmatic figures whose presence raises questions that unsettle Sanruta and turn her into a 'seeker' like in other stories of the collection. Who they are, and how their lives connect with hers, is something the story allows us to discover.

Like the other stories in the collection, The Shilpasan revolves around an individual possessed by an urgent, relentless quest. Art becomes a means of seeking answers, while mysterious people and unexplained events leave behind more questions. Reverence, doubt, fear, shame, magical transformations, adventure, desire, beauty and spiritual self-realization come together in a story unlike anything I have encountered before.

Kamble’s writing is intricate without being excessively detailed. Its strange turns take us into an unfamiliar landscape of existence. Personally, I cannot recall another author who has given me quite this feeling of travelling through such an artistic and mysterious world, except perhaps Herman Hesse.

There is always a quest in Kamble’s stories, and a trail of questions that moves the characters forward. At times, I find myself wishing these stories are real, simply because I want there to be a way to meet these people and visit these places.

Kamble has a rare talent for taking the reader into another zone, where one can sometimes feel lost even when everything seems to be right in front of us, only to be uplifted by the end. The Shilpasan captures the solitude of identity, and the questions that follow us like shadows, especially when we are searching for answers to the mysteries of life.

Tales of Viroopnagar

Tales of Viroopnagar has one of the finest openings in the collection. Kamble begins by creating an ancient, mysterious and almost mystical town settled along the banks of the Aakashnadi. With a river on one side, mountains on another, an ocean of desert in one direction and forest in another, Viroopnagar is a small settlement of roughly two hundred houses, 'obsessed with its old traditions and the remnants of its ancient past.' Its stone ghats, inscribed pillars, sculptures and surrounding caverns give the town a fading historical identity. At times, its landscape even feels supernatural. In my view, Viroopnagar could also represent India itself, although I doubt Kamble intends such a direct allegory.

The open square at the centre of the town becomes the stage for its rituals and, eventually, its divisions. Power rests with the mukhiya, the rtvij, protector of tradition and ritual, and the sarvar-mhatara, the oldest and wisest man in the town. Before the conflict begins, Kamble takes time to establish the town and its idiosyncrasies through multiple tales of its origins, almost like Jataka tales.

We hear of the settlement's beginnings, the reason some houses face south; the five youths lost in the desert; Mukhiya Salvan and his fascination with a flower field, his daughter Kalma, a mysterious rider; events of floods and storms. These stories preserve Viroopnagar's history and perseverance but also leave behind unanswered questions. And unanswered questions, passed through generations, eventually become beliefs, while beliefs become traditions and fears.

The real conflict begins when an arhat stops the ritual sacrifice of a kalvad (sacrificial calf). His questioning of a violent tradition divides the town. Politics, fear and the desire to establish one's own truth gradually turn difference into hatred. The arhat tries to bridge the growing chasm through non-violence, but reason can hold the town together only temporarily.

As tensions rise, disaster finally strikes. The dramatic ending brings destruction, followed by remorse, and only then do people come to their senses.

That, perhaps, is the tragedy Kamble captures so well: nobody has time to reflect; everyone wants to be right. We shelter ourselves in the comfort of inherited beliefs and ignorance, and when those beliefs are threatened, they become weapons.

The presence of the arhat, non-violence and mention of 'uposathi' may make the story appear Buddhist, but its concerns are much larger. Tales of Viroopnagar is ultimately a story of humanity: of tradition, fear, ignorance and our tendency to create hatred out of difference. Its beautiful open-ended conclusion leaves Viroopnagar lingering in the mind, because its stories feel less like tales of a distant town and more like stories of ourselves.

The Search for the Sixth Sense

Let me ask you a question.

Have you ever felt the need to follow something to its very end? A quest that might fill some incompleteness within you, satisfy a desperation, clear the fog around your strange understanding of the world, or perhaps make you question that understanding altogether? And if the search demands loneliness and desolation, would you still be willing to bear it?

Is anything worth dedicating your whole life to? And if not, is there something you can believe in and still remain free? The Search for the Sixth Sense sparked these questions in me.

The Search for the Sixth Sense is an unusual adventure of two individuals, Salvina and Nikay, who meet on a train under equally unusual circumstances. Both are searching for something: an escape, a solution, relief, perhaps even a revelation after having endured enough.

Salvina has a peculiar condition. Whenever she sees someone crying, she feels an uncontrollable urge to laugh. She cannot control this opposite emotional response, and it eventually brings an end to her school life. Now living in isolation, she tries to escape her past through travel.

Nikay, on the other hand, is talented and restless. He too leaves his village school under unusual circumstances. What follows is a remarkable journey through different forms of art and experience, first driven by curiosity and fulfilment, but later driven by one question: does the sixth sense really exist? And if it does, how can one find it, and, more importantly, experience it?

His search sometimes feels like a vortex and at other times like an endless quest.

Eventually, Nikay and Salvina set out to meet an arhat (a perfected being who, in Buddhist thought, has escaped the cycle of rebirth). They hope that this person might have answers to their questions and perhaps free them from the burdens they have accumulated over the years.

But do they meet the arhat? Do they find what they are looking for? I shall not spoil that part of the journey.

Both Nikay and Salvina have, in their own ways, departed from their old lives and begun something new. Nikay's attempt to detach himself from the everyday crises of life raises an intriguing question: can we simply relinquish our claims over our troubles? Can we disown or renounce our burdens?

What makes Kamble's narration particularly interesting is that he does not depend on dramatic events or constant plot twists to keep the reader engaged. The story unfolds much like life itself. Extraordinary events are sparse, but seemingly ordinary incidents, encounters and realizations gradually change the direction of the characters' lives.

The story also touches upon caste-based discrimination, casteism even within the world of art and communal violence. These elements do not dominate the narrative, but their occasional appearance has consequences. A single incident, an encounter, a realization, or even a person with a different way of looking at things can alter someone's life, or at least their understanding of it.

At its heart, the story is about departure and seeking: leaving behind what exists in search of something that might bring fulfillment.

Kamble's knowledge is wide-ranging, and that depth is evident throughout the book. He brings considerable breadth and depth of knowledge to his stories, but he does not impose that knowledge on the reader. The details scattered across the narrative often feel experiential, as though they come from someone who has closely observed and lived through the worlds he describes. Although the story is deeply influenced by Buddhist philosophy and carries traces of Phule-Ambedkarite ideas of progress, justice and equality, Kamble never forces a religious or philosophical conclusion upon the reader. The ideas remain part of the world of the story rather than becoming lectures directed at the reader.

His narratives require patience. There were moments when I felt the story was moving slowly, almost as if it had no destination. But perhaps that is precisely the point. Kamble does not rush toward an ending. He allows the questions, experiences and realizations to unfold at their own pace. They do not take you on a whirlwind ride; instead, they invite you to take a slow walk through life and examine it closely. It is therefore, the ending is satisfying without feeling artificially conclusive.

That, perhaps, is the most beautiful idea in The Search for the Sixth Sense: the burden may be lifted not because the world changes, but because we finally realize that the burden was never quite what we thought it was. And somehow, the complexity is eventually resolved through something remarkably simple: a change in the way we look at life. Sometimes the troubles surrounding us are not waiting for a grand solution. Perhaps they are simply waiting for us to change our thoughts about them.

***

Kamble's stories are not dramatic in the conventional sense. Yet they are as strange, unforgiving and revealing as our own personal and social lives. We are all surrounded by conflicts, and every conflict demands questions. Without asking the right questions, without having the courage to immerse ourselves in a quest, we risk remaining forever lost in the chaos of our own making. We must question our beliefs, challenge traditions, break through taboos and search for a way forward – the way of Dhamma.

The Seekers feels like the result of philosophy and art coming together. Kamble wants to say things in ways that have not been used before. As one of his characters says, “I prefer the one my footsteps create.” Perhaps this is also Kamble's own artistic philosophy. The author himself is the Seeker, in a literal sense.

His characters can be read as projections of that seeking self, bringing together the ancient and the modern, art and alienation, tradition and taboo, violence and survival. What makes Kamble's approach brave is his willingness to place these seemingly opposing ideas beside one another – and then question all of them.

The stories do not necessarily give us answers. They leave us with questions, and perhaps that is their greatest strength. Kamble's way of telling stories stays with the reader long after the stories end: not as a conclusion, but as an invitation to keep searching.

Original Text: Marathi
Translator: Sirus J. Libeiro
Front Cover Art: Sanjeev Sonpimpare
Pages: 186
ISBN-13:  9789380636856

Publisher: Blaft Publications Pvt. Ltd.

The Deadly Playground

Vishwas Patil is one of the greatest novelists of India writing in Marathi, and his novels are well-researched and rich in their depth and breadth – in scope, characters and understanding. Dudiya is not so lengthy as Patil's other epic works like Panipat, Mahanayak and later works, but in a mere two hundred and few pages, in this political novel the author takes us to the depths of Dandakaranya and Abujmarh forests, among the tribals of Naxal-afflicted region, particularly of Chhattisgarh state, and well into the center of Naxalite–Maoist insurgency, and the armed struggle, tension, fear and death lurking in those lands. 

The narrator Dilip Pawar is a civil servant officer and recounts his days after being sent as an Election Observer to one of the Naxal-afflicted districts of Chhattisgarh (Previously part of Madhya Pradesh) State. From the outset, despite being deployed to a region known for its notoriety, his interest to inquire and understand about the Naxals keeps him motivated even after hearing and reading about the recent frightening killings. His seventy-six days stay in the region brings him face to face with the facts, the historical development of the Naxal crisis, the ongoing struggle, the atrocities committed by the state and Naxal forces upon the civilians, the people directly involved in handling the crisis and those who are victims of it in one or another way. The narrator has become a window for the author and readers to try to understand the Naxal problem, serving as a perfect vantage point, and so is the narrative development in the novel – we are surrounded by questions, we hear the witnesses and find ourselves as if in the middle of a burning land, just like the subtitle of the novel suggests.

There couldn't have been any other perfect character than Dudiya, a tribal girl, who would recount her journey and struggle, to the narrator and therefore to us, from an ordinary tribal village birth to being a Naxal insurgent and again back to being a civilian after the surrender. Her dissatisfaction, defiance, disgust and feeling of being in the wrong marks her sharp turns in life and the emotional hollow she felt throughout.

Once inside the Naxal world, there was no getting out of it. As a tribal girl, I would send this one fervent question above, 'God, is there any release for us hill people from the twin assault of the Naxals on the one side and the police on the other?'

We get an up-close glimpse into the life of Naxal-Maoist leaders and senior officials of the state, and their rituals too. It is nothing less than being on a battlefield. The author has positioned the narrator in the fine line as an observer between the state forces and the Naxal insurgents. He is looking at the crisis, at its roots and not merely at the individuals fighting from each end. Impartial to the view of the crisis, this story has given a humane as well as critical perspective on the problem. This is also an attempt to unmask all brave men, all ruthless men, and all terror-stricken men and to show the ordinary face of the people behind all those perceptions of the news coverage and terror of killing.

This novel had to be written – and it has been written. You cannot witness a state terror, an insurgency, and not know its reasons, and not write about it. Though it hasn't many plot twists, the references to the real-life events that happened and the facts that still hold true give the novel a complex and complete political shine – which is alarming, thought-provoking and dreadful. We feel a heat emanating out of the novel, a heat not of warmth but of disorder, panic, death, fear, struggle, harming those with arms and those without – the tribals. It transports the readers to the dense forests and makes them witness the tension, fear of death and violence hanging in the region – all behind the lush and beautiful hills and forests – and all seen through sad and panic-stricken eyes.

Ruthless killing and butchering of people, disintegration of the families, personal loss, migration of the tribal youths, the suppressed and compromised development of the region, real events of Naxal-State forces confrontation killing political leaders, IAS and IPS officers, Naxalites and armies – events dotted with bloodbath and scars lefts behind – this is the story, not of peace but of violence and disruption. Still, the character Dudiya makes us hopeful, that people will indeed return, will understand, and thus settle for peace, to come to an understanding. Dudiya is a symbol of peace and resilience.

The story weaves not only the timeline of Naxal-insurgency development but everyone who is at the frontline of the State Vs Naxal warfare. We start with the exploitation and abuse of the tribals and local resources by the government authorities, the birth of hate and anger amongst the tribals which was never appeased or addressed as a major disconcertion. Then we witness the poverty and provocation that made the tribals of the region vulnerable to the promises made by the Maoists/Naxals and who then saw them as saviors protecting their rights, defending them against the state laws and terrors. But, before anybody could understand the maelstrom brewing behind, it grew out of hand and tribals/Adivasi people found themselves amidst the center of two arms-wielding powers – Naxals and the government forces.

Against the background of political upheavals and transformations, Naxalism seems to have become a need for everybody in a number of states in the country. The Naxals needs jungles for performing their tasks; while state administrations need thousands of millions of rupees annually as Central grants under the head of combating Naxalism to pull themselves out of financial crises. If Naxals were suddenly to disappear, at whose door would these state government go with their empty begging bowls? This is the vicious circle that has formed everywhere.

Election happening in the backdrop of fear of gunfire, death traps of landmines and pressure bombs, violent confrontations in the depths of the forests and far-flung hills has also set a stage for a political drama, which the author has handled very well – without exaggeration and without losing the authenticity. But as said earlier, this is a humanist side of the story that is often lost in pure historical and political narratives, and the novel has fulfilled that gap.

Dudiya, in Nadeem Khan's excellent rendering, serves as an authentic contemporary account of the Naxal-Maoist Crisis in India not only for Indian readers but also for foreign readers who haven't yet heard about and have no clue about the existence of the State-Naxal struggle. I think the research put in this novel gives us a rare opportunity to listen, think and understand the inside and intrigues of both camps. And, just like the narrator who is unsettled after all his experience and asks questions, and doubts the intentions, we too are left with such questions. Dudiya is like looking at a bullet wound which provokes a movement in your thought – that lives can be saved.

Author: Vishwas Patil
Original Text: Marathi
Translator: Nadeem Khan
Publisher: Niyogi Books http://niyogibooksindia.com/

Source: Review Copy from the Publisher