Sunday, May 18, 2003		Books

A personal quest that became the history of a people
K. Rajbir Deswal

Benang: From the Heart
by Kim Scott. Penguin Books. Pages 502. Rs 295.

THE scene is set in Gableup Township on the Western Coast of Australia early in the 20th century. Ernest Solomon Scat migrated to this place and brought with him from his native Scotland the White-skin complex. This complex dominates the rest of his life despite his cohabiting with coloured races of the aborigines. A member of the third generation of his family Harley — "the first white born" — struggles to trace his lineage.

Harley stumbles on to the discovery of his bloodline. His grandfather’s documents, diaries, notes, photo albums etc. preserved for posterity to purge his progeny of the ‘sins’ of being aborigines and link them, with evidence, to their White past, become Kim Scott’s tools while writing Benang: From the Heart.

One meaning of Benang is ‘tomorrow’ and the quest for finding himself in the long-forgotten dark chapters of Australia’s history when it was under colonial rule, left in Harley an urge to look forward to a tomorrow. Grandad Ern Scat’s near aversion to half-caste, one fourth and one-eighth Negro blood, is agonising, as is Harley’s exposition of the plight of the aboriginal ‘untouchables’.

The narrator-hero is pitted against his grandfather who is overbearing, obsessive, amoral, unjust, a crafty schemer and promiscuous man. Besides the aborigine women and children, Ern Scat abuses even Harley, his own grandson. Ernest Scat was dismayed and disappointed at the fact that his own son was a "throwback" —reason enough for Harley to rebel against his grandad.

Then there is the Chief Protector of the Aborigines, A.O. Neville, who separates children from their mothers so that they grow as Whites having no relationship with "the useless coloured people". The endeavour would, in Neville’s scheme of things, make the Blacks become White, just as when a small stream of dirty water enters a clean stream, it eventually loses its own colour.

Kim Scott uses symbolism throughout the novel. Many Australians can testify to the authenticity of Scott’s historical details. The book begins as a family genealogy, develops through local history, to finally evolve as an accepted history of half-castes, quadroons and octoroons. Scott dexterously handles issues such as sexual abuse, discrimination and frustration.

It is the beauty of narration which makes Benang, with its rhythmic composition, a pleasurable read and despite the fact that the novel has no storyline or a well-rounded plot, Kim Scott emerges as raconteur par excellence.

Scott employs the tools of ambivalence and ambiguity to weave a fascinating pattern. There some unforgettable expressions like " `85 the island was a patch of coagulated darkness" and " He clung to the technology of hub, of spokes and the arch of a rim from which the weight of a car could be seen to hang. Civilisation".

However the beginning of Benang is confusing and the relationship between the different characters belonging to the three generations is intriguing and takes time to figure out. References to round collar coats as "Jodhpurs", might come as a surprise to Indian readers. Colonialism did leave a common heritage in many countries.