HEADWIND, Laxmi’s Story: In The Eyes Of A Little Reader-Dom
Adelaide, SA
Headwind: Laxmi’s story:By Alice Anna Verheij.
[The following is not a book review, but an appreciation note, thus avoids a detailed content wise exaggeration.]
When it comes to reading a book on the Bhutanese cause, especially the exodus of the people of Nepali Ethnicity following 80s/90s human rights and democratic movement in Bhutan, this little reader, then a very small boy feels awe and swells his chest with the scents of distant land where he did not belong. The little reminiscence he brought as a boy has been metamorphosing on the sands of time and freshens getting a book like this.The older generations yet with their first-hand experience could/did not pen them down, the younger ones do not know. Thanks to those foreign writers, activists and audiences venturing to transcribe the awful jolts of the southerners-the Lhotshampas!
Alice Anna from the Netherlands have projected on the same in her 300+ paged novel ‘Headwind: Laxmi’s Story’ hovering around the sizzling issues of more than 100,000 mass of politically exploited Bhutanese refugees.
The stark fact on which the content of this novel is set, has been disclosed at the onset of the story footing where the young, yet, too naïve and practical a character, Laxmi opens up the bouquets of her stories wrapped and constricted within the walls of the imposed restrictions-the typicality of eastern patriarchal family, and more precisely where the decisions regarding the children are exercised by the parents.
Interestingly, the novel rests and hovers around the story narrated by its pivotal character Laxmi (aka Cindy) switching between the events of Bhutanese Refugee family based in the camps before and after the resettlement. Children are a social bunch of truth revealing hearts. Laxmi as a teenager uncovers and digs the story, spilling the multitudes of facts, as an archetypal of many more such children. The novelty of this novel reposes in holding with caution, to some extent, the child psychology pertaining to focus on the impacts of social, cultural and environmental grounds on the development of teenagers/children.
Laxmi, whose family opted the Netherlands, as a teenager has loved a Dalit boy Jigme Gazmer estranged to the USA by resettlement programme. What follow then is the events and correspondences surrounding the romance of the two love birds at distant quarters, to a reunion later in the States theatrically.
And here’s where it converges to customize its theme this way: the storyline is a next brick among the innumerable to attest the old and common of what many have to say of love, ‘Love grows and nurtures its way out even from a distance if it’s committed in faith’.
Whether be it a time, when Laxmi, as a surreal character loving a Dalit boy in the Netherlands defending her parents her freedom of choice of decision (where her understanding under the rule demands over social/superstitious constraint), or at times back in her dilapidated hut in the camp warring against the challenges of everyday odds, the struggle of a refugee child growing within the constrained walls of a socially and culturally conservative society has been peeked in from a close neighbourhood and portrayed well in simple and understandable English. And here’s where the oyster of the words digging for the root is; the newer resettled generations are in demand of a radicalism in the modes of their cultural (do I have to mention values, beliefs, practices, morals, and rational grounds, to name a few?) life both to adjust in a competitive and fast paced society of the west and streamlining to safeguarding their legacy, the culture of their yester generations. As simple and murky as it may sound, it’s equally serious.
The places, people and the characters surrounding their events are second to none for originality and clarity. What stands out for a humble mention about this very novel is its sincerity to tell the real tale of struggle.
Undoubtedly, Laxmi’s parents expose the poor fate of the majority of the Bhutanese mass resettled in the west with little or no communication and adjustment skills struggling in the ongoing phases of acculturation.
The author has mustered her calibre to blend the novel with the dichotomy of two different languages-Nepali and English, with the former side by side with its translation in English. The wording used being simpler has made the book even simpler; a mid-run beginner can go well off as long as they are patient over recurring encounters with grammatical, tense and minor spelling errors. But, sorry if only you are a critical reader!
The book (at least for this little reader) appears to have lacked a critical grammatical and spelling proof read. Given the fact that nothing stands out perfect, this book holds significant minor and noticeable errors. Either using Steel instead of still, or stills replacing still, or than for then, there are typo errors in counting. Beautifully designed and chaptered, the discontinuity in story telling may not be of a sequence to you. Nor do I. Thanks many to Anna for picking up the issue of Bhutanese refugees.
I wish this writer every success in her future writing career. Meanwhile, before you kick out for your day’s work, a night shift or rest, can I please drag you to page number 189, where Anna’s Laxmi agonises to spill this conviction against her fate in a brief portion of a letter addressed to her beloved Jim?
I didn’t ask to be born in a refugee-camp, neither did my parents desire to be exiled. You didn’t apply for a lifelong stay in the mental prison of refugee-ship. And I have never accept myself as a refugee. We shouldn’t be captivated by our pasts and certainly not by other’s past, even if they are related to us. We can never turn back the time. There simply is no way to make things undone, we have to accept reality as it is. And reality is not nice for many of us. (Extract of a portion of a letter from Laxmi to Jigme).
UNFORGOTTEN: Images from the Bhutanese Refugee camps in Nepal
Ever more my thanks are to Eveline Van De Putte and Alice Ann Verheij for offering us a chance to enjoy their 175 photo’d volume of a book on Bhutanese refugees. Submerging into a small photo volume, of a history of 20 years odds of the life of Bhutanese in ramshackle huts in exile, is no doubt more than challenging. The book, according to the authors only contains photos from their snapshots between February 2011 and January 2012, thus missing what should never have been. If not you can find the whole of the stories in the few photos inside the book, I bet, your generations tomorrow may find innumerable of them when you no more can tell them, when you no more are there to tell them. If only I were not a foreign reader holding this photo book, I could go well with what the story is in the photos, lacking important captions! Rest is to you, take it as you like!
And my Thank you acknowledgement to Devi Pokhrel for lending me the books!