{"id":5263,"date":"2008-06-24T15:39:47","date_gmt":"2008-06-24T20:39:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com?p=5263"},"modified":"2008-09-15T07:11:41","modified_gmt":"2008-09-15T12:11:41","slug":"indian_nonsense","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/2008\/06\/24\/indian_nonsense\/","title":{"rendered":"“Indian Nonsense”"},"content":{"rendered":"

I came across an anthology called The Tenth Rasa: An Anthology of Indian Nonsense<\/em><\/a>, while browsing in a bookstore in suburban Philadelphia. The book is a collection of nonsensical poems and short stories from all over India, most of them translated into English. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s one of those rare Penguin India titles that ended up getting distributed in the U.S. (An earlier book that I discovered in exactly the same way, was Samit Basu\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s The Simoqin Prophecies<\/em><\/a>. Also, I should point out that the editors of The Tenth Rasa<\/em> have started a blog<\/a> to promote the book.)<\/p>\n\n

I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll say a bit more about the idea behind the collection below, but what I have in mind for this post is a celebration of nonsense by example, not so much a thorough review (I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m also curious to know whether readers can remember their own South Asian nonsense rhymes, in any language. Anyone? Translations would be nice, but not required<\/strong>).<\/p>\n\n

For now it might make sense to start with a couple of poems. First, the spirit of the collection is perhaps best captured by a favorite Sukumar Ray<\/a> poem, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Abol Tabol,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (translated alternatively as “Gibberish” or “Gibberish Gibberish” to catch the reduplication), first published in Ray\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s book of the same title in 1923:<\/p>\n\n

Come happy fool whimsical cool
\n Come dreaming dancing fancy-free,
\nCome mad musician glad glusician
\n Beating your drum with glee.
\nCome O come where mad songs are sung
\n Without any meaning or tune,
\nCome to the place where without a trace
\n Your mind floats off like a loon.
\nCome scatterbrain up tidy lane
\n Wake, shake and rattle \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcn roll,
\nCome lawless creatures with willful features
\n Each unbound and clueless soul.
\nNonsensical ways topsy-turvy gaze
\n Stay delirious all the time,
\nSo come you travelers to the world of babblers
\n And the beat of impossible rhyme.
\n(Translated by Sampurna Chattarji from the Bengali)\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

(“Glusician” is not a typo, by the way; its utter unjustifiability is in some sense the point of the poem.)<\/p>\n\n

Another of my favorites from the collection is an almost-limerick, originally written in Oriya by a writer named J.P. Das, and is called \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Vain Cock\u00e2\u20ac\u009d:<\/p>\n\n

Taught to say ku-ku-du-koo, ku-ku-du-koo<\/em>
\nHe only said, \u00e2\u20ac\u02dccock-a-doodle-doo\u00e2\u20ac\u2122
\n Such a vain cock\u00e2\u20ac\u201d
\n You\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re in for a shock:
\nNot tandoori, you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll only be stew.
\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

(The joke here of course is that in many Indian languages a rooster\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s cry is rendered along the lines of \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcku-ku-du-koo\u00e2\u20ac\u2122, and presumably in the Oriya version of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Vain Cock\u00e2\u20ac\u009d the phrase \u00e2\u20ac\u0153cock-a-doodle-doo\u00e2\u20ac\u009d is rendered phonetically exactly as in English. The Vain cock, in short, is due for stew because of irremediable Anglophilic tendencies in his onomotopoeic ejaculation.)<\/p>\n\n

And yet one more, this time by Annada Sankar Ray.<\/p>\n\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153What the Little Girl Learnt\u00e2\u20ac\u009d

\n\nA-ha!
\nYes ma!
\nBaa baa black sheep
\nHave you any wool?
\nNo ma! No ma!
\nThat\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s all bull.
\nNot black, not a sheep.
\nNot at all woolly.
\nSo where\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll I get wool?
\nYou\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re wrong, fully.
\n (Translated from Bengali by Sampurna Chattarji)<\/blockquote>\n\n

We obviously lose a little here in translation from the Bengali, especially at the end. But the point still comes through: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153No ma! no ma!\/That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s all bull\u00e2\u20ac\u009d is a way of talking back to the dominance of English nursery rhymes in India, even outside of “English medium” elite spaces. Shakespeare and Dickens may have begun to give way to Tagore and Rushdie in Indian English literature classrooms, but “Baa baa black sheep” and the gloom-filled “Ring a Ring a rosies” still rule the nursery rhyme canon. (In this case, “black sheep” also has a certain possible racial tinge, which Ray seems to be resisting.)<\/p>\n\n

Other nonsense rhymes in The Tenth Rasa have a bit of an anti-colonial flavor to them as well. For instance, there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a Tamil folk rhyme translated by V. Geetha:<\/p>\n\n

Mister Rat, Mister Rat
\nWhere are you going?
\nI\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m going off to London
\nTo see Elizabeth Queen.
\n\nYou\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve got to cross the seven seas
\nPray, what\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s your solution?
\nI\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll buy a ticket for a plane
\nAnd fly across the ocean.
\n\nYou will get hungry on the way
\nPray, what will you eat?
\nI\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll buy bajjis and vadas, hot,
\nAnd give myself a treat.<\/blockquote>\n\n

(Vadas, yum. Exactly what I would want to eat if I were going on a journey across the seven seas, to see the Queen of England\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6)<\/p>\n\n

The many words for different kinds of food, in different Indian languages, is also widespread theme, as we see in a short tidbit from Sampurna Chattarji\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s collection, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Food Finagle: A Culinary Caper\u00e2\u20ac\u009d:<\/p>\n\n

Idli lost its fiddli
\nDosa lost its crown
\nWada lost its violin
\nAnd let the whole band down.<\/blockquote>\n\n

(The above was originally written in English, and part of the pleasure here is in hearing the sound of south Indian dishes \u00e2\u20ac\u201c Idli, Dosa, Wada \u00e2\u20ac\u201c spilling phonetically into English.)<\/p>\n\n

As I hope these examples illustrate the pickings in The Tenth Rasa <\/em><\/a>are quite rich. People who haven\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t been exposed to this type of writing before might want to also get ahold of Sukumar Ray\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s wonderful Abol-Tabol<\/a>, for which a quite decent English translation is available.<\/p>\n\n

And Heyman, Satpathy, and Ravishankar have piqued my curiosity about the Indian experiences and writings of the father of English nonsense writing, Edward Lear (Lear spent two years in India, and left an extensive travel journal, as well as a handful of excellent poems, including \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Akond of Swat\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/a> and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Cummerbund\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/a>)<\/p>\n\n

For the curious, here is a bit more on the way this volume was put together:<\/p>\n\n

The Title. <\/strong>The title is an allusion to Bharata\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Natya Shastra<\/a>, which has a famous chart of the nine literary Rasas<\/a>, or moods (\u00e2\u20ac\u0153spirits\u00e2\u20ac\u009d): love, anger, the comic\/happy, disgust, heroism, compassion, fear, wonder, and peace. The one that was missing was perhaps the rasa<\/em> of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153whimsy\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u201c or nonsense. The Bengali writer Rabindranath Tagore noticed the absence, and suggested that a tenth rasa might be needed (he also published a volume of writing for children, as well as a collection of Bengali folk rhyms called Khapchhada<\/em> (1937), which has never been translated in its entirety. And Sukumar Ray, the most famous Indian nonsensicalist of all (the Indian Lewis Caroll) took up this charge quite directly, which contained an apologia at the beginning of the Bengali edition: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153This book was conceived in the spirit of whimsy. It is not meant for those who do not enjoy that spirit.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d In his introduction to The Tenth Rasa, Heyman points out that the Bengali for \u00e2\u20ac\u0153spirit of whimsy\u00e2\u20ac\u009d is \u00e2\u20ac\u0153kheyaal rawsh\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u201c where \u00e2\u20ac\u0153rawsh\u00e2\u20ac\u009d is the Bangla version of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153rasa.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Thus, The Tenth Rasa.<\/p>\n\n

The Sense in Nonsense.<\/strong> Some readers might think we are just talking about \u00e2\u20ac\u0153pure\u00e2\u20ac\u009d nonsense, but Heyman defines the specific literary genre he is working with quite carefully:<\/p>\n\n

We may begin by classifying literary nonsense texts as those where there is a type of balance between \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcsense\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 and \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcnon-sense.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 Such balance is necessary if the text is not to become either plane sense, as in a best-selling crime novel, or utter gibberish, as in a baby\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s babbling. The former is unremarkable, the latter, unintelligible. Good nonsense engages the reader; it must \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcinvite interpretation\u00e2\u20ac\u2122, implying that sense can be made, but at the same time it must foil attempts to make sense in many of the traditional ways.

\n\nIn order to keep the balance, the \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcsense\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 side of the scale must weigh heavily: Nonsense thus tends to be written in tight structures, that is, with strict poetic form or within the bounds of formal prose. It also usually follows meticulously many rules of language, like grammar, syntax and phonetics.<\/strong> Nonsense stories are about identifiable characters and the usually simple plots are understandable. <\/blockquote>\n\n

In short, in order to be interesting, nonsense has to be carefully crafted; it usually bowdlerizes the kinds of literary forms with which we’re most familiar.<\/p>\n\n

A little bit later, Heyman describes the distinction he makes between nonsense and related genres like riddles, fantasy, and fables:<\/p>\n\n

Jokes, riddles, light verse, fantasy, fables\u00e2\u20ac\u201dnone of these forms is in itself nonsense. A joke is funny because it makes sense; nonsense is funny because it does not. A riddle is clever because, eventually, it makes sense; nonsense is clever in how it suggestively does not. Light verse, fantasy, fables\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 nonsense can live in any of these forms and more. Indeed, it thrives on some overarching form that gives it some recognizable shape and meaning\u00e2\u20ac\u201dsomething to make sure the nonsense techniques do not make the text explode into boring gibberish\u00e2\u20ac\u201dyet the form itself provides only such (necessary) restraints; it does not equal nonsense. Thus, nonsense is a kind of parasite inhabiting a host form, yet it has a life of its own.<\/strong><\/blockquote>\n\n

In short, what we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re speaking of is not just any old bakwas, but the most refined rubbish.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I came across an anthology called The Tenth Rasa: An Anthology of Indian Nonsense, while browsing in a bookstore in suburban Philadelphia. The book is a collection of nonsensical poems and short stories from all over India, most of them … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1,8],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5263"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5263"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5263\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}