The Bridge on the Drina translated from Serbo-Croat by Lovett F. Edwards. Chicago University Press, Chicago. Pages 314. $15.95.

Bosnian Chronicle or The Day of the Consuls translated from Serbo-Croat by Celia Hawksworth and Bogdan Rakic. Harvill Press, London. Pages 415. $19.95.

The Damned Yard and Other Stories translated from Serbo-Croat by Celia Hawksworth and others. Forest Books, London and Boston. Pages x+219. $15.95.

— All by Ivo Andric

— Branko Milkjkovic

WHEN the Bosnian novelist Ivo Andric (1892-1975) received the Nobel Prize in 1961, he was compared with Tolstoy. Now that much of his work is available in new and recent translations, it is not foolhardy to say that the comparison is only partially valid. There are none of those "silent chords playing behind the scenes" that Forster found in Tolstoy. You at once recall Maslova being driven to Siberia in "Resurrection", Dolly visiting Anna for the first time in "Anna Karenina" or the lively soiree at the beginning of "War and Peace".

Also, you do not see the perfect blend of the historical and the personal that made Tolstoy an exemplary novelist and endowed the simple domesticities of Pierre’s household, the easy contentedness of the Kitty-Levin relationship or the ironies of "The Kreutzer Sonata" with significant historical purpose.

And yet, if Tolstoy is a Jupiter among major world novelists, Andric is no mean asteroid. He shares with his fellow Slav a sense of history as inexorable and irreversible and his pessimism about the grand flourishes of historical personages. Just as the omniscient narrator at the close of "War and Peace" broods over the futility of heroes manipulating history, so do the community elders in both "Drina" and "Chronicle" ruminate over the uselessness of grand viziers and counsels imposing their will on ordinary humanity. In "Drina" the changeability of human fortunes in political turmoils is signalled by the "great flood" in the river and the toll it takes.

"Their town had been into a hell, a devil’s dance of incomprehensible works, of smoke, dust, shouts and tumult," says the narrator. In the title novella of the collection "The Damned Yard", the Ottoman rulers turn their Bosnian colony into a prison yard and in "Chronicle" the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires bring nothing but ruin to the ordinary people of Travnik, falsifying the claims of successive rulers to establish order.

The other quality Andric shares with the Russian master is an ability to see history in broad strokes rather than in small detail. It is not that he is unaware of how it affects individual lives. What matters is how the forces of history such as the Ottoman and the Austro-Hungarian empires swamp all individual self-expression. So that in an Andric novel, even though there are occasional expressions of individual assertion (as in Radisav’s fatal revolt in "Drina" or Kalim’s claim in the "Yard" to be prince Cem, or sporadic romantic tumbles of De Fossets in "Chronicle"), it is history, particularly the history of conquest and rapine, that has the upper hand.

If Tolstoy sees all individual acts suffused with historical nuance, Andric sees large historical forces dwarfing individual efforts as freedom. Apart from Radisav’s abortive revolt, "Drina" records the doomed brief eruptions of Fata (in love), Milan (in gambling), and Fedun (in soldiering) as instances of helplessness before the larger machine.

Similarly, in "Chronicle", Hamidy Bey and Mrs Daville, wife of the canny French counsel, appear puny as do the towns people in the story "Vizier’s Elephant". Reading these works, one is saddened by the spectacle of uncontrolled and uncontrollable tyranny eclipsing individuals in their feeble attempts to break through the Schwabes, the sultans and the minor bureaucracy, whose wayward behaviour blights private lives as much as it lays waste entire territories. The fact that most of the time Andric’s characters act as representations of and participants in history goes a long way in determining their existential status.

Since many of his major works — the two above novels in particular — are about actual historical periods, the general leitmotif of these novels is the material nature of human experience. Andric grounds his stories in specific geographical locations, mostly in Visegrad and Travnik in what is today Bosnia-Herzogovina. As he returns to these locations time and again, they acquire the quality of legendary and mythical places. The experiences thus presented become rediscoveries in new forms of the relationship of the conqueror and the conquered or, in the fashionable jargon of today, the coloniser and the colonised. These works show Andric as a mythmaker at his most fertile.

This way of looking at reality as mythicised but recognisable is a signature technique in some representative non-western writers. One thinks of Nurudin Farrah’s trilogy, the Indonesian writer Pramodeya Ananta Toer’s celebrated "Buru Quartet", Mahfouz’s "Cairo Trilogy" and, nearer home, the wonderful Bengali novel "A River Named Titash".

These books, Andric’s novels included ("Titash" is closest to "Drina" in both conception and design), are mythical in the positive sense of the word. They are social chronicles but not in the manner of textbooks of fact and event. They are not documentary details of what actually happened, but emblems of how the course of violence arising from the sadistic impulses of the conquerors would shape the everyday lives of the conquered people.

As we carefully read Andric’s work, we notice a recurrent pattern of behaviour (such as the not-so-concealed arrogance of the conquerer towards the conquered displayed by several provincial governors in "Drina" and "Chronicle"), and of the relationship of the coloniser and the colonised that forms the substance of myth and legend, fostered by the fear-driven rumour mills in semi-literate societies.

The fact that not many of his characters have private lives of their own lends substance to their being parts of a design, even of a game, in which their destinies are decided by people outside their power to regulate. Games, intrigues and machinations of one sort or the other subordinate the individuals to a larger political destiny, larger, that is, than their own subjective lives. Looking for wisdom rather than spectacle in the tragic history of his country, Andric foregoes the historian’s urge to discover causality and focuses on the imaginative world that he creates out of history’s changing tableaux.

Which brings me to Andric’s status as a historical novelist. In his novels there are no great heroes but only tyrants, oppressors and bullies. Considering that Bosnia was a centre of European power play in the 19th and early 20th centuries and continues to be in ferment today, it is natural that for Andric colonialism and conquest should expose the human capacity for unrelieved evil.

This accounts for the fact that the voices of those who see glimmerings of good in the midst of evil are either suppressed or are too weak to make themselves felt. One thinks of Radisav in "Drina", of De Fosset in "Chronicle", the small group of younger prisoners who question authority in the "Yard" or of the faceless masses outside the courtly intrigues who continue to live with total resignation in the face of evil.

Unlike in Tolstoy or Stendhal ("Charterhouse of Parma"), history in Andric is an elite business in which the ordinary people have no role but to suffer. Characters such as Daville’s wife and Alihodja represent the silent majority who, though affected by the pain that rulers inflict, remain mute witnesses all through. As the narrator says in a passage in "Chronicle", "Fear lay over Travnik like a fog, weighing on everything that breathed and thought. At such times many people, blinded and maddened, forget that there are such things as reason and courage, that everything in life passes… deluded by the temporary magic of fear, they pay far more dearly for their bare life than it is worth, doing base, contemptible things."

And in "Drina": "It was not thousands of fools like that Osman Karamanli who could do anything or change anything… What was the use of all that hullabaloo when, here and now, there had come for a man a time of disaster in which he could neither live nor die, but rotted like a stake in the earth and belonged to whomever you wished but not to himself".

Such pessimism from a former diplomat and communist (Andric was Tito’s favourite), may hurt socialist-realist hacks, but is a salutary reminder of his superior talent. He did not look at history through the class-tinted Marxist spectacles. Not surprisingly then that the bridge on the Drina did not bridge the gap between the Turks, the Serbs and the Bosnians, but accentuated it further. The river banks of the poet’s epitaph above kept quarrelling and still keep quarrelling today, while the waters get muddied and the stories of suffering of the people emerge from the hells of Kosovo, Sarajevo and other Balkan states, UN peacekeepers notwithstanding.

The events described in "Drina" cover the centuries after the first Serb revolt against the Ottoman empire. The bridge is a choral presence ironically symbolising permanence amidst drift and devastation brought on by successive rulers. The waters of the Drina suggest timelessness, calling into question the bravado of the colonisers.

The story develops as a series of vignettes of successive rulers who leave their evil impress on the soil of Visegrad. This is the reason there is no plot in the traditional sense. Andric refutes the colonial boast of an orderly growth and civilised evolution and sees colonialism as a deliberate eruption into the age-old traditional life represented by the river.

In "Chronicle" he is more concerned with the colonisers themselves and their psychological predicaments as rulers. Daville, De Maistre, the Austrian Counsel and their hangers-on (there are long descriptions of their history) are presented from the inside and studied from the point of view of themselves as well as of the local people.

There is a psychological complexity in this novel not present in "Drina", for this novel looks inside the characters and makes a statement about how it feels to be a coloniser. Given Andric’s anti-colonial predilections, the colonisers turn out to be more vulnerable than the colonised, deserving not our total hostility but our understanding. Even as a Communist, Andric does not fail to see human nature in all its contradictions.

What roots Andric’s works in folk ethos is his skill in telling stories and letting people tell theirs. In a sense, the stories in the "Yard" are about telling stories. That he can listen to the others indicates the communal character of his art. Even though a story like "The Climber" ends painfully, as do the novels, there is a sense of ongoing life that remains intact in the face of calamity.

This is folk wisdom at its best and allows Andric to stand apart from the western tradition of novel writing. He becomes a chronicler in the manner of Mahfouz or of his own Serbian tradition about which Albert Lord wrote in his classic "The Singer of Tales".

The Gender Gap in Education: NGOs as Change Agents edited by Rekha Wazir. Sage Publications. New Delhi. Pages 286. Rs 225.

IN developing societies of the Third World, education is not just a matter of individual learning. It is viewed as an important aspect of the process of social transformation. The literacy rates and the educational attainment of the population are, for example, seen as crucial indicators of social development. Launching literacy programmes, opening new schools, colleges and universities and making education easily and cheaply available to all sections of the populace have been among the important priorities of the state policy in the developing countries.

In any assessment of the achievements of development planning, questions such as who gets educated and who is left out assume critical significance. The available evidence indicates that the spread of education during the last five decades of independence has been far from even. One of the most important dimensions of this unevenness has been "the gender gap". In 1995, the female literacy rate for India was 38 per cent as against 66 per cent for males. This is obviously a reflection and a consequence of the prevailing gender bias in society at large. The problem is further exacerbated when gender disadvantage gets combined with class, caste and religious discrimination.

Despite their best intentions and well-formulated policies, the state-initiated programmes have largely failed to address such problems. It is in this background that the role of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) assumes importance. Being small in size, closer to the people and non-bureaucratic in functioning, the NGOs are more likely to be open to new initiatives and experiments than the state agencies. The NGO movement in India gained momentum during the 1980s and by now there are a large number of organisations working in diverse fields in different parts of the country. They have been particularly active in the relatively less developed regions of the country and among the marginalised sections of the rural population.

As evident from the title of the book, the eight essays put together by editor Rekha Wazir highlight different aspects of the problem of education in general and that of the gender gap in particular. The book also critically examines what is being done by the NGOs in this field. Making an overall assessment of the "problem" in the opening chapter, the editor claims that the NGOs have made significant gains at the level of educational innovations and in the design and delivery of programmes. For example, considerable amount of expertise was available in areas such as community mobilisation, use of participatory approaches, training techniques and teaching materials.

Gender sensitive strategies have also been developed for teaching adult illiterates and for improving access and retention of girl children. However, the NGOs have not yet been able to translate this success in "laboratory" situations into practice on a large scale. They have rarely been able to find viable partnerships and collaborators to institutionalise such innovative techniques.

In her paper on "Educational status of girls and women: the emerging scenario", Ratna M. Sudarshan offers an assessment of the prevailing situation through a historical survey of the changing attitude of development planners towards women’s education. She also provides a quantitative profile of the prevailing scenario. Reiterating the point made in the introductory chapter by the editor, Sudarshan reminds us that the educational inequalities are not the only or even necessarily the best indicators of discrimination. "Domestic violence, stress and cultural practices of seclusion were all recognised as having a basis in unequal gender relations and a gender differentiated impact on development outcomes".

Further, she points out that the limitation of education as a tool for change arose from the fact that it essentially targets an individual attribute, while the underlying determinants of inequality are more often structural in nature. However, there still is a sense in ensuring educational equality. It is likely to lead to equality in access to resources and opportunities to men and women. Raising the level of education is closely associated with higher productivity, lower levels of fertility, better child nutrition, higher levels of self-esteem and better management of domestic relations.

In another essay of a general nature, Malvika Karlekar identifies three sets of factors that affect girls access to schooling: the pedagogical, institutional and familial. In the pedagogical factors she includes things like the structure, environment and ideology of the school; teacher commitment and teaching methods; the contents of education and the nature of curricula made available to girl students. The availability and cost of schooling, distance of school from home, presence or absence of separate schools for girls, the availability of women teachers, incentives such as midday meals and scholarships are the institutional factors that determined the education of girls.

The parental attitude towards girls education, the access girls have to resources within their homes are among the familial factors affecting girls education. Karlekar argues that the NGOs have so far concentrated on the pedagogical and institutional factors while the familial factors have mostly been ignored.

Through a broad survey of the literacy and adult education programmes, Vimala Ramachandran discusses the relationship between education and women’s empowerment. She argues that unless there was an initiative from below, from the women themselves, the official campaigns are not likely to produce a radical change. The official campaigns tend to fade away as quickly as they shoot into prominence. She also underlines the need to link education and literacy to the ongoing struggles of women and creating opportunities for women and girls to acquire technical skills.

Perhaps the most fascinating paper in the book is by Shantha Sinha who looks at the link between "child labour and education". She offers a refreshing critique of the prevailing understanding of child labour in India.

Child labour is generally explained by two sets of arguments. The first is known as the "poverty argument" and second the "irrelevance of education argument". According to the advocates of the "poverty argument", the practice of child labour was directly linked to the economic status of the family. Poor families were compelled to make their children work because they could not survive otherwise. Sending the child to school was a luxury that they could rarely afford.

The other argument — irrelevance of education — emphasises the futility of school education for children of the working class. It is argued that "the kind of education that is provided in most educational institutions is of little relevance to the children and does not in any way prepare them for the challenges that lie ahead. Work, on the other hand, can in many circumstances prove to be more educational than the irrelevant education provided in formal schools".

Sinha strongly contests both these arguments for they, in a sense, tend to justify the practice of child labour. She counters such theses by referring to the available evidence that showed that there were many families with incomes below the normally defined poverty line sending their children not to work but to schools. "The real danger in blindly accepting the poverty argument was that every case of a working child tended to be seen as one more instance of the harsh reality of child labour".

Many NGOs had in fact been able to motivate a good number of parents to send their children to formal schools without providing any specific input to increase their income. Poverty was not always the crucial limiting factor. Non-economic factors too played important role in influencing the decision of parents to send a child to work or to school. The need therefore was to focus on motivating the parents and mobilising the community at large in favour of education of children.

In another interesting paper, Geeta B. Nambissan looks at the problem of education among the tribals in relation to their distinct identity. Historically, the sense of "community" or the larger identity as "tribe" among indigenous groups was, to a large extent, a consequence of the colonial government which used "tribal" as an administrative category. However, the tribals’s cultural distinctiveness was an important fact that needed to be recognised while working out policies and programmes for their education.

There was need to explore the pedagogic possibilities of languages and cultures of tribes, inculcating sensitivity among the teachers to tribal identity as well as making schools more attractive. This required partnership between the NGOs, the state and the tribal communities.

In another paper, Atreyee Cordeiro too emphasises the need of building partnerships and collaborations among different agencies for evolving more effective programmes of education.

In the concluding chapter, the editor of the volume, Rekha Wazir goes back to the question of strategies that the NGOs needed to adopt to make a difference to the existing state of affairs and the role that they could play in reducing gender disparities in education.

On the whole, the book is an interesting collection of essays that not only conveys information about the manner in which those active in the NGO sector are thinking about education but could also provide some guidelines for positive action.

Nissim Ezekiel: The Authorised Biography by R. Raj Rao. Viking, New Delhi. Pages 401. Rs 495.

THE book under review is the supposed tell-all of the first recognised hero of modern poetry (Indian) in English in the second half of the 20th century. Raj Rao has known Ezekiel for a long time, was Ezekiel’s student at Bombay University, then a fellow poet and a writer and, above all, a close friend. At present, Raj Rao is a Professor in the department of English, University of Pune, and he is actively engaged in producing gay-poems and he is about to bring out an anthology "BomGay".

This "authorised biography" is the record of hard work put in by the biographer during the past six years and during that time, there came many "downs" in the life and times of Nissim Ezekiel. In 1998, it was finally declared that he was suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, which is a form of premature senile decay and which requires all time attention and hospitalisation. In a recent issue of Time magazine (July, 2000) the findings of research at the World Alzheimer’s Congress in Washington has given some hope to the victims of this disease. It is possible that scientists could be on the verge of stemming the wasting disease. Till that happens, important people like Ronald Reagan and Nissim Ezekiel have to suffer.

This 400-page biography is divided into 12 chapters. Raj Rao tries to cope with and arrange the material at his disposal (of course, supplied by Ezekiel) and he supplements it by getting detailed comments from Ezekiel’s old friends and almost negligible help from the members of Ezekiel’s immediate family. Despite this handicap, Raj Rao has been able to sift material from the criticism already available on the body of his work. When one is writing on Ezekiel it is but natural that the "Bombay School of English Poetry" should get a detailed "look in". Raj Rao obliquely refers to the work of a host of "Bombay Poets" — Dom Moraes, Adil Jussawalla, Gauri Deshpande, Tara Patel, Gieve Patel et al.

A brief bio-data of Ezekiel reveals to the reader how he had to struggle quite a bit to achieve whatever little he could get with active help from friendly quarters. Quite early in his life he met the famous theatre director Ebrahim Alkazi who was instrumental in sending him to England to study philosophy under C.E.M. Joad. And once there he had to survive on philosophy, poverty and poetry in a London basement.

And attempts at journalism, publishing and advertising, before he settled down as a university teacher back in the "bitter native city" of Bombay.

His first book is "A Time to Change", and Ezekiel could not have been unaware of the aptness of the title. After 1952 the book became a touchstone for modern Indian poetry in English.

In that year itself he got married and he immersed himself in a lot of activities — theatre of Alkazi, editorial work at the Indian PEN Centre, and his deep involvement with the emerging poets (the present reviewer was one of them).

All these activities kept him so busy that the first seeds of discord with his family were sown quite early in his married life. Whatever the reasons, he had to first suffer separation, indifference, callousness and now neglect at the hands of his immediate family.

One needs guts to give such a statement as the one given by his only son, publicly, "Daddy will remain at the nursing home till he dies." Raj Rao has not been able to fathom the reason for all this, but he thinks that the presence of the "other woman" in the life of Ezekiel and I think it is the celebrity status of Ezekiel among the literati that the family could not adjust to.

Raj Rao has very critically examined the work of the famous critics on Ezekiel — Bruce King, Inder Nath Kher, Darshan Singh Maini, Vilas Sarang, Arvind Krishan Mehrotra and others. In better and saner times, Ezekiel once told Rao, "I stand only by my poetry and the real source of my literary sensibility was my mother." When Rao pointed to the adverse criticism of his work Ezekiel very candidly said, "A man of no enemies is a man of few friends".

Ezekiel’s oeuvre in the field of modern Indian English poetry is considered one of the greatest achievements and it consists of seven books of poems, 500 book reviews, numerous literary articles and a number of plays. Ezekiel’s major themes are love, personal integration, contemporary Indian urban scene, spiritual values, but basically his poetry is something that grows out of his own life and experience.

To him life itself is a journey, a pilgrimage consisting of departures and arrivals. The journey and quest motif is all too apparent in his work. There is also a curious blending of the sensual and the spiritual, the believer and the sceptic, which finds articulation through ironic modes of expression.

Art and the artist is yet another theme to which the poet, who goes with "a Cezanne slung round his neck" returns time and again alongwith the alienation theme which is central to Ezekiel’s work. There are two other aspects of his poetry — namely, the confessional element and the devotional element.

To a large extent his poems have an autobiographical dimension and what is personal and autobiographical often borders on the confessional.

I have a grouse against the biographer who is not able to know the real Ezekiel, the poet and the man from his poems when help from all other quarters (including Ezekiel, because of that dreadful disease of Alzheimer’s) was not forthcoming. Whomsoever the biographer met, he asked him one and only hackneyed question: "Was Ezekiel a womaniser?" This is no way to treat the subject of your book.

Raj Rao has also a dig at the Indian poems of Ezekiel which are, of course, written in Bombayia English. What is wrong with that? Salman Rushdie also hints at that language which he calls hug-me (Hindi, Urdu, Gujrati, Marathi, English) in his latest book.

Raj Rao has adopted different styles in the same book. Correspondence with friends in early chapters, a straight narrative style in the middle chapters and the last part in the format of a diary to avoid monotony. In the last part of the book, the lack of interest in the subject is not even concealed. It is well said, "Unless a man writes with his whole nature concentrated upon his subject, he is unlikely to take hold of another man..."

In spite of his delving deep into the Ezekiel memorabilia, the fascinating personal life of Ezekiel will continue to remain a rumour-ridden mystery. While Ezekiel is ailing in a hospital, living a life of severe solitude, he will continue to live, in his poetry, says Ms Nilufer Bharucha, an editor of the book on Nissim Ezekiel ("Essays in Honour of Nissim Ezekiel").

It Was Dark by Shashi Deshpande. Writers Workshop, Calcutta. Pages 185. Rs 150.

YOU can enjoy fiction like this while travelling to an understanding of self and women and the subtle politics of men and women, that is. Defining new parameters calls for verbalising inequilibrium. This kind of fiction draws on the reality of existence, of the existence of those around us and reconstructing stories around images of ordinary women in everyday India. Using broad details, the stories dramatise particular facets of existence in an effort to dynamically understand how events and images recur in the lives of disparate women, merge and flow so that women retain traces of "colonisation" by men over the centuries whether in the garb of honour or tradition.

The stories focus on the lives of people, especially women who are never in the headlines. They are not even straight biography. It is their obliqueness that is paradoxically directed, and startling. They talk of the pain that women go through from childhood to dotage and which those outside the gender can never know of. It is the pain here that is talked about without parenthesis.

Much has been written to the "condition of women" question since 1986 when this slim volume first appeared. More complex interpretations have been attempted since then. But these stories discuss the elementary situations that reiterate themselves in the life of the female down the ages.

From Amba, the "dispossessed one" in the first story, who struggles to find coherent "voice" of her own moaning, "O God, to be and not to be seen, to speak and not to be heard", the voice finding an escape from its reverie and finally moksha in silence to the rest of the stories which continue this reaching back and groping "in the dark" record events that impact on the collective female subconsciousness. This continual repression makes them sensitive and vigilant like rats, rats of the sewer, rats always foraging around for leftovers, trying to "only survive", maybe "only connect" and forever aware of the malevolence of men.

The darkness is spread out evenly on the pages with a butter knife. It is a wall which is both a woman’s armaour and the only defence as well as her doom. In the story "It was dark", which is the title of the book, a 14-year-old rape victim rescued from the pimp, is barely a survivor. She lustily gorges on food but only when it is offered and also speaks little or nothing, like a drought victim. The rest of the family are confused about the consequences. She only knows for sure that "It was dark" and on these words hinge the images of brutality, which are only a part of the minefield. The father and the mother can tread no further.

The narrator’s access to language and to presence is mediated through such characters. N. Glazener in "Dialogic subversion: Bakhtin, the novel and Gertrude Stein" and quoted in Ken Hirshckop and David Shephard of "Bakhtin and Cultural Theory" states that "if desire is misplaced, the site where it finds expression is itself a contested zone, mediated by the discourse of the ‘propre’, the relationship between property and propriety".

In the next story "The valley of shadow", a physically disabled woman narrator pins all her hopes on the hands that appear on the railing of the hotel room next to hers. Snatches of conversation with the owner of those hands grow into a hope in her mind. "Mote by mote, like sunshine", the hope engulfs her but is finally crushed as questions of property and propriety come in. Therefore there is a necessary dispersal at the heart of the narrative, a multiplication of overlapping codes and images of darkness and submission and a "no-looking-forward-to" crowd in.

This travel from a unified linear history in Shashi Deshpande’s work creates a fundamental urgency — a shifting of subject positions and of voice and a crumpling of the texture as if the narrative deals with erasure. Resistance takes the form of submission which re-enacts the symbolic dismemberment of the female body, its enforced contortion into other roles than that of the natural self and the subsequent loss.

The strand of a displaced individual’s cultural silencing, absence and exile runs through the collection. Deshpande’s prose in interstial, shifting on borders of meaning and concerned with the problem of finding a voice as a sexually, and in one instance even racially, inscribed "other".

The broken story-line of "The alien" announces the presence of the absence in the title itself. It is written in the economy of the in-between prose, conditioned by an arrival which incessantly rewrites departure and where living "here" (in this case London) means inscription on the margins of "there" where solitude reigns and personal history falls away. This narration is by an anonymous Indian woman and her combat with estrangement in a concrete city landscape. Her rented apartment constitutes a trope of fixity in the story, establishing a chain of meanings as questions of ontological boundaries and continuity provide and interface with the development of her life in London.

Plot development, however, collapses, increasingly concerned with individual, especially a woman’s, double alienation in a city dotted with empty spaces where "a fog would be better than the nothingness...". It is a narrative in which boundaries are both policed and disputed, in which the presence itself is challenged. The apartment, in the story, is emblematic of the simultaneous imprisonment in an exclusion from a middle class scale of values. The other reality of a "home" accessible only in dreams and fantasies, and therefore not attaining referential status, also remains indeterminate.

The narrative loses itself in the gaps, troubling the source of voice itself.

All the stories register the questioning presence of an uncanny male — a symbolic vector to an authorial desire, emerging in the interstices of discursive play.

The richness, sensuality and fluidity of this and other stories is increasingly the condition for the retreat of the real — the woman falls back on silence. There is no uprising, as in Kamala Das, little struggle within the self as in Anita Desai, but only "submission... it’s the answer" as one of the characters says. Deshpande, however, in her own unique way, makes a "small dent in the silence..."

Vastu, what it really is?
Review by M. L. Sharma

Mystic Science of Vastu by N.H. Sahasrabudhe and R.D. Mahatme. Sterling Publishers, New Delhi. Pages 180+xvi. Rs 150.

OF late several useful books on vastu school of architecture have come out as more and more people have become vastu-conscious and there has been a constantly growing interest in vastushastra as well as feng-shui. It goes to the credit of the authors of the present work that they have provided the fundamental principles and rationale behind the vastu tenets and why various vastu flaws are unlucky for the occupants of a house. They say these flaws can easily be corrected, if not fully removed, once the principles are fully grasped without doubt or confusion.

Spread over 17 chapters, the book covers various topics like cosmic energy, yogashastra concepts in vastu science, vastu dosha and yogic remedies, vastu jyotisha and energy concept in temple architecture. The authors, who are technocrats with post-graduate engineering degrees as well as expertise in vastu, have made an in-depth study of vastu, utilising ancient Indian as well as western scientific knowledge. They have made a three-pronged attack on vastu flaws by yogashastra, astrological rules and by vastushastra itself. The book studies vastu from three angles by providing guidance on astrological rules and the yoga system besides architectural virtues to promote peace and harmony in houses, temples and industrial establishments.

The basic concept of vastu is that the north and east are the most significant directions and sources of the most invigorating and elevating cosmic energies. In yogashastra soma (moon), presides over these directions, correlated with ida or chander nadi (moon stream) as contrasted with pingala or surya nadi (solar stream) which has a correlation with south and west directions.

In astrology the north and east directions are represented by the first and the fourth houses while the south and west directions are denoted by the seventh and 10th houses. The authors recommend minimum side margins and openings to the south and west directions and the placing of heavy loading in the south, southwest and west zones. Pyramids outside southern entrance, heavy stone pillars in the southwest corner, glass bricks, lead chains in the west, copper plates in the south, and bhoumi yantras can be helpful in warding off evil effects.

For boosting the favourable aspects of the north and east directions, in case there are blockages, the authors suggest use of mirrors, exposed lunar shaped water surface, lower level of roofs, use of marble, more windows, etc.. While a sloped and extended northeast zone represents "divine sky full of positive events", an unextended structure in the south increases negative streams. Enhanced moon stream (ida nadi) connected with the northeast zone is "a holistic gift" for harmony and peace and increases "jaivik urja". Chanting of mantras associated with specific planets ruling the directions with vastu flaws will also mitigate evil effects.

The unique quality of the book lies in the useful remedial measures provided by the writers in placating the planets by adjustment in building and other mediums through vastu guidelines. The bad effects of saturn in the seventh house of the horoscope could be removed by placing a lead-chain in the western direction and a copper plate in the south (10th house) ruled by mars for domestic harmony and happiness. Exposed lunar shaped water surface or fountain could be of great help since the fourth house (north direction) in a birth chart is ruled by the moon, which denotes water.

Crystals (sphatik) to strengthen venus and precious or semi precious stones could also be of great help. In the chapter "Vastu dosha and yogic remedies", the authors have shed light on the efficacy of several rituals, like arghyadan (cupping of water in hands and offering to the sun), homa-havan (fire worship), sudarshan kriya, shakti yoga diksha, pranayam, vipasana, and soham sadhana.

In the chapter, "Vastushastra and event manifest", the authors observe: "The theory of event manifest as in vastushastra says that the sky is full of events. If a person locates himself in a flux of energy streams free of impediment, blockages and friction, the effect of prarabdha (past deeds) is substantially reduced and his life becomes full of positive events. The two-stream theory as propounded in the book shows there is an emerging constant north to south flux, called jaivik or organic stream, while the other opposite solar flux is termed pranik stream.

In the chapter "Energy concept in temple architecture", the authors have expounded eastern philosophy with special reference to the five elements — the sky, fire, water, wind and earth in the order of their finesse or superior virtues. The higher one controls the lower element. The space or ether (akasha) is reshaped in the temple architecture through domes, pyramids, etc. for providing maximum rhythmic response in order to achieve the desired results. The ether being the finest of all elements controls the lower levels of existence. Arti enables devotees to merge their minds with the wind and the sky to ascend the nirguna (formless) state from the saguna (with form).

The chapter "Tantra, mantra and yoga in vastushastra" is quite useful as there is an exposition of mystic qualities of vastu. The corrective measures mentioned in the chapter include recitation of mantras, sounding of bells, sprinkling of water mixed with rock salt in the house, various tantra practices, use of crystals and gems besides yantras. Crystals reinforce the will power of those who use them. Feng-shui acknowledges them as carriers of divine power.

Some of the guidelines provided in the book are: the north-south axis should be longer than the east-west axis, the south-west side compounds should have stone construction, solid and heavy with good height, multi-coloured fancy lamps should be fixed on the north and east walls. These walls should be painted in bright glossy colours and they should be decorated with paintings of goddesses or wall papers depicting natural scenes, to increase the virtues of the east side ventilation from the west should be limited. Equal ventilation from the east and the west curbs the flow of harmonious energy; staircases should not be anti-clockwise and if they are anti-clockwise, make clockwise arrow designs on the steps.

Grow plants in the south-west. The planting of trees in the north, north-east and the east should be avoided. Through reflector mechanism light should be provided from the east.

Storage room (where articles in disuse are kept) should be located in the southwest corner, southern walls should be higher with no window or doors; the maramsthan (central point) should have no heavy constructions. Keep bowls or vessels filled with water in eastern windows.

On a close examination of various shrines like the Hazratbal in Kashmir, the Golden Temple in Amritsar, the Haji Ali Dargah and the Mahalakshmi Temple in Mumbai, the Balaji Temple at Tirupati, etc. the authors have discovered various vastu virtues. The Golden Temple is encircled by water which is auspicious. The square foundation gives stability and strength. The presence of solid rock on the south of the Balaji Temple with slops towards the east and north is auspicious. The entrance from the north and a water pond in the northeast is a virtue according to vastu. In the Hazratbal shrine north-south length is much greater than the east-west width which is auspicious.

WHILE they are potential competitors for power and influence in Asia, India and China also share common interests in maintaining stability, exploiting economic opportunities, maintaining access to energy sources and enhancing regional cooperation. Many contend that they have far more reason to cooperate than to collide. Some believe that China would come to terms with India as a great power eventually (perhaps after a decade or two of sustained economic growth in India) just as the USA came to terms with China after decades of attempts to isolate and contain China started yielding diminishing returns. There is little doubt that future relations between India and China, the world’s two most populous nations, are critical both to Asian and to global security. A lasting global and regional security structure cannot be built without finding a place for both China and India. Is it possible to build a relationship when the past remains so present in the consciousness of each other?

Asia-Pacific is not only big enough to accommodate both China and India, it is in fact too big for any one country to dominate it without that domination having repercussions at the regional and global levels. If they cooperate, they can dominate the whole world, not just the Asia-Pacific. Otherwise, they will keep counterbalancing each other and might also be used as pawns by the USA to pursue its own interests. Will China’s Asia policy move away from the assumption that "one mountain cannot accommodate two tigers". The vital question is whether China (and India) will think in terms of cooperative security and common security to guard its national security or continue to rely on balance of power. Balance of power politics is a double-edged sword; it cuts both ways. The net result is more insecurity. Balance of power-based containment strategy has led to repeated crises in Sino-Indian relations (in 1959, 1962, 1965, 1967, 1971, 1987 and 1998).

It was China’s attempts to contain Japan and India through its contribution to accelerating the nuclear and missile technology race in South Asia and Northeast Asia that helped create the context within which India decided to unveil its nuclear weapons and Japan decided to opt for the US-backed theatre missile defence (TMD) in East Asia. Constructing a bilateral relationship based on common security which jettisons the push and shove of balance of power politics could be a way out of the security dilemma. As Andrew Nathan and Robert Ross point out, "The problem for both the Chinese and their neighbours is to find the balance point of common interests where security can be achieved for all." Otherwise, China and India will remain locked in competition for political, economic and strategic supremacy in Asia with all the potentially destabilising consequences for regional security.

As we enter the third millenium, we see that the relationship between India and China is at crossroads. Historic rivalries and their strategic cultures suggest that a fair amount of tension between these continent-sized neighbours is inevitable. The success of the ongoing economic reforms could transform India and China as the economic powerhouses of the 21st century. In the internatiional status stakes, it is China with whom India wants to achieve parity. India and China share similar aspirations towards status and influence, with China having the lead.

And this inevitably introduces a more competitive aspect into Sino-Indian relationship. Asymmetry in international status and power in Sino-Indian relations serves Beijing’s interests. Any attempts by India to challenge or undermine China’s power and influence will be strongly resisted by China. Therefore, India and China are likely to remain long-term, if not permanent, adversaries since they both aspire to be great powers of the future. It is not so much a clash of civilisations as a clash of the two "Middle Kingdoms" which had historically dominated southern Asia and eastern Asia respectively. However, these aspirations appear to be manageable. Just as the USA and the Soviet Union did not go to war to counter each other’s power or spheres of influence, India and China need not resort to use of force to neutralise each other’s aspirations.

The lessons for altering the security structures in South Asia today draw more substance from the harsh reality that militarisation alone cannot guarantee a nation’s quest to survive. Security therefore assumes a new meaning for these countries, one that inter weaves economic potentialities with the desire for international stability. The individual, his rights and his power to overthrow a system that denies all these things have begun exerting their influence upon ruling elites across Asia. Privatisation may be the buzz word that rings simultaneously in Islamabad and New Delhi but more than the issue of the rapid transition to a market economy, it underlines the fact that the power of the individual to demand more from his leaders is coming up front on the political agenda on either side of the border. In an age of mass action and mass democratisation, for the first, time in Southern Asia, the chances of the individual being taken note of seriously appear bright.

It is axiomatic that India-Pakistan relations will have to reorient to the changing reality. The old paradigms that governed their bilateral contacts will have to be dismantled and a stable working relationship forged if they are to prevent their isolation from the rest of the world community. For India’s foreign policy objectives, Pakistan and the sub-continental affairs will continue to remain top priority items, but they will have to be part of the global efforts to increase intedependency in matters of trade, economics, technology and ecology. India simply cannot get bogged down in confrontational struggles in the region because cold war notions of national sovereignty, economic exclusivity, practices of de-stabilisation, incitement to terrorism, denial of human rights and repression of democracy have become outdated and irrelevant. In a world that increasingly becomes more inter-dependent, the dangers and consequences of lagging behind the pack far outweigh the advantages of continuing to practise inter-state relations based on outmoded institutions and beliefs.

In a fast integrating world, where economics, trade and technology are replacing military strength as the currency of international power, Indian foreign policy has to take these new "essentials" into account whilst looking for peace in the sub-continent.

New beginnings in India-Pakistan relations will have to be made if the two countries are to take advantage of the unique global situation in which peace and development have a greater priority than before.

Some description of Central Asian threat perceptions is worth mentioning. The strategic importance of the region lies in the fact that it has Russia and China, two nuclear-weapons powers, as neighbours. Second, the region faces interference and competition in reaching out to the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean through Iran and Afghanistan. Third, the desire to have security arrangements of a political nature with the West will be opposed by Russia and China. A summit of the Commonwealth of Independent States in February, 1995, perceived a major threat to the Central Asian region coming from the build-up of military acti- vity in neighbouring countries, particularly the training of insurgents and separatist forces. These surrounding countries were also witnessing the creation or generation of power conflicts and the intrusion of foreign troops under the excuse of the UN or other peacekeeping operations.

Apart from this, it has to be acknowledged that the armed forces and defence establishments of the Central Asian Republics are now fragmented after the break-up of the Soviet Union. Their transformation into national armies is still taking place. None of the countries has yet completed the setting up of new command, control, communications and supply systems. They will also have to put in place new procedures for mobilising personnel and training them, and for defence production. Nor have they yet formulated detailed military doctorines, force deployment patterns and defence policies.

One threat to the national state structures of the Central Asian Republics could come from China if their territories were to be used for "subversion" against it. Another threat could be the advocacy of pan-Islamic or pan-Turkic solidarity by elements wishing to challenge the existing socio-ethnic structures. But this would only succeed if there is total failure in the task of governance by the existing leadership in these countries.

There is the question whether Iran poses a threat to the Central Asian states or to South Asia. Despite all its handicaps, Iran has the economic capability of becoming a major military power in the region. It has also undertaken a large-scale programme of rearmament, and is even reported to be interested in becoming a nuclear-weapons power with the assistance of China. However, it is not likely to pose a threat to the security of Central Asia in the foreseeable future because it seems to be concentrating on becoming a power centre in the Persian Gulf. Iran’s interest in Central and South Asia does not presently have expansionist or military overtones.

There is also the possibility of the situation on the Tajik-Afghan border getting out of hand if the civil war in Afghanistan continues. In that case, ethnic politics of the region will take on operational manifestations, destabilising the countries of Central Asia and even affecting their territorial integrity. There could also be a similar centrifugal impact on Pakistan.

The Central Asian governments share an apprehension that they will be inveigled by stronger powers into their areas of influence. The President of Uzbekistan, Islam Karimov, articulated this worry in categorical terms on February 24, 1995, in Pravda Vostoka: "There are those who would like to drag us into their spheres of influence. They could use any available method, including military ones. Therefore we must have a mobile, well-organised and equipped army capable of defending our borders, our independence and sovereignty."

Another factor impacting on Central Asian security perceptions is the fact that Russian military doctrine still considers the southern, eastern and western reaches of the region as an integral part of its strategic defence planning. Therefore Russia could theoretically intervene if it perceives threats to its interests in this region emanating from any other source.

This country (Afghanistan) is at present the most volatile negative factor affecting the security of both Central Asia and South Asia. That the civil war continues is only the most visible manifestation of the turmoil there. Its undercurrents in Afghan politics and their negative implications for regional security are also matters of concern.

The objectives of the 1978 Left-of-centre revolution in Afghanistan, backed by Soviet intervention from 1979 onwards, would be accepted by many. The revolution sought to bring Afghans into the 20th century by modernising the economic and political institutions of the country. While giving due respect to all important religions, it aimed at creating a secular, socialist state. It was, however, flawed because the Afghan people were not ready to accept the changes sought by the leadership of the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan. Second, these leaders made the mistake of trying to push through their revolution with Soviet political backing and direct Soviet military support, thus destroying their nationalistic credentials.

However, the present turmoil in Afghanistan is due not only to the failure of the revolution but also its abrupt abandonment by Mikhail Gorbachev. Once the PDPA regime led by the late President Najibullah was overthrown (nearly three years after the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan), the country descended into anarchy and remains in that state. Afghan politics has lost its national identity. The mujahideen and the government they tried to establish in Kabul after Najib’s overthrow were subject to ethnic contradictions and competitions and continuing rivalries between the leaders of various factions. This government was in turn overthrown in 1996, and now the juxtaposition of forces in Afghanistan is on unabashedly ethnic lines. The Taliban, backed up by Pakistan and Saudi Arabia represent the Pushtuns; General Dostum’s forces represent the Afghan Uzbeks; Ahmed Shah Masood’s forces represent the Tajiks; and Khalili’s Wahadat group represents the Shias and, by implication, the Hazaras. The conflict continues, but peace efforts initiated by Iran are underway, backed by similar initiatives on the part of the Central Asian Republics and the UN.

India was marginalised, as far as Afghan affairs were concerned, from the end of 1988 to the middle of 1990, the period when Soviet troops withdrew and successive mujahideen regimes were being installed in Afghanistan. This was the consequence of India’s involvement with the previous Soviet-backed PDPA regime. But by the middle of 1991, India had re-established contacts with practically all the significant mujahideen leaders, culminating in a good working relationship between its government and that of President Rabbani. The dislodging of Rabbani’s regime by the religiously fanatical Taliban forces backed by Pakistani militants is against Indian political and security interests.

If the initiatives of the UN and Iran do not succeed and the civil war between the ethnically based military forces in Afghanistan continues (a possibility which cannot be ruled out), the likelihood is a break-up into three states. Southern Afghanistan will become Pashtun, and northern Afghanistan will break into two states belonging to the Uzbeks and the Tajiks. Portions of the country can even get affiliated to Iran, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, generating tension and conflict in Iran and Central Asia.

The existence of a Pashtun majority state abutting Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province and Baluchistan can give rise to assertive politico-ethnic movements in Pakistan, generating impulses of fragmentation in the Pakistani polity also. The impact of such a development on India’s stability and security needs no elaboration. Basically, any success of ethnic, linguistic or religious forces in fragmenting a plural society or state in India’s neighbourhood would generate similar fissiparous tendencies in the Indian republic, placing in danger the very difficult experiment that India has been engaged in for the past 50 years, that of sustaining India as a plural, secular, democratic society. The impact of the break-up of Afghanistan on Central Asia and Iran could be similar because even Iran has its ethno-religious minorities concentrated in potentially separable parts of that country.

India’s long-term well-being hinges on a comprehensive national security vision and strategy. India needs to remove a major deficiency in its security planning by developing a clear-cut strategic doctrine. The country cannot fully concentrate its energies and resources on economic development if it is constantly concerned about its external and internal security. Nor can it play an important role beyond the subcontinent if it continues to lack adequate defences against external aggression, overt or covert. A unilateral desire for peace cannot buy India security. That is the lesson of the 1962 invasion and of Kargil. Enduring peace can come only if the nation is strong and has the required capabilities to deter aggression.

As India enters the new millennium, problems relating to governance are haunting its future. Political stability and decisive leadership have emerged as the crying needs of the country. India has been wracked by a growing crisis of leadership, underscored by rising cynicism at home and declining Indian influence in international affairs. If India is not to be left behind in the world, it will need to start taking hard decisions. It needs leadership that provides vision with courage and can help convince the nation that tough decisions, even if they bring pain in the near term, are essential to build a strong, prosperous India.

(Concluded)