Interview
Unfinished journeys
JUNE GAUR
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Australian poet Syd Harrex talks about his love affair with India and Indian-English writing.
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Via Malgudi and Narayan's India, Syd Harrex was able to inhabit India in his imagination, feeling a sense of oneness with its people and places, sights and smells, despite the substantial differences between here and where he comes from.
Interested in India: Syd Harrex.
THIRTY years after Graham Greene encountered R.K. Narayan, Syd Harrex discovered the master storyteller of Malgudi on a bus in Hobart. The year was 1962 and Syd was a Teaching Fellow at the University of Tasmania with little more than a "distant and uninformed interest" in Indian writing. James McAuley, Australian poet and head of English at the University of Tasmania who had recently returned from a visit to India, fired his imagination and Syd decided to write his Ph.D. thesis on the (then) little-explored subject of Indian writing in English.
He tracked down a copy of The Man-eater of Malgudi at a Hobart bookshop and read the first chapter on the ride home. A "fascinating collage of cinematic images ... of a community derived from a culture's psyche" unfolded, setting off a long love affair with India. Via Malgudi and Narayan's India, Syd Harrex was able to inhabit India in his imagination, feeling a sense of oneness with its people and places, sights and smells, despite the substantial differences between here and where he comes from.
Literary observations
Syd was in Mysore recently to deliver the keynote address at the University's R.K. Narayan Centenary conference. For Syd, whose first rite of passage in India began in Mysore in 1969, it was a chance to return to Mysore-Malgudi in the company of old friends. In between long walks through the "essential Mysore", which he finds unchanged despite countless new Lawley Extensions, and letting his hair down in congenial company at old watering holes, Syd took time off to reminisce over lunch at the Jayachamarajendra Wadiyar Golf Club nestling at the foot of the Chamundi Hills. With the discreet tinkle of crockery and beer glasses in the background, Syd launched into TM (Talkative Man) mode, beginning with observations on the literary scene here.
"The great thing now is the increasing imaginative and artistic liberation of young people. All the writers of the older generation who wrote in English, partly because they were writing in English, were all addressing the issue of tradition versus modernity and I think they were trying to establish for themselves how to get the best of both worlds. And by modernity, I mean Indian modernity not just Western. And I think that's always been an issue with the pioneers. Raja Rao was able in English to be modernist in the sense he used the English language to capture Kannada rhythms and things like that."
Indian writing in English has been a flourishing literature, which has not been male-dominated, Syd noted. "There's the generation of women novelists, Santa Rama Rau, for example, Nayantara Sehgal and the next generation and so forth. But the question arises, and it's inevitable, about patriarchy and what the situation is for the younger generation. Kamala Das, we've seen way back, addressed this in an interesting way. So there you get the full scope. It's just that the earliest of the pioneers in the Indian novel writing in English happened to be men."
Pioneering role
The Centre for Research in New Literatures in English at Flinders University, which Syd Harrex founded, played a pioneering role in developing studies of Indian English writers. Apart from a shared history of a colonial past, a significant inheritance of the Empire is the English language.
"It is worth remembering, for instance, that there are more English-speakers in India than Australia. The legacy of English language writing in India has made literature a particularly important avenue of exchange between the two countries."
In Australian literature, the first collaboration came in 1989 when at Syd Harrex's initiative, Rick Hosking from Flinders University came to JNU to teach a one-semester course in Australian literature, "Literatures in English: Other than British".
Issues in India
Harrex is aware of some of the issues that concern writers and academics in India today.
"I think the traditionalists get very anxious about the theoretical understanding and appreciation of what they're doing, about the undermining of traditions by notions taken from outside India, particularly the West. The little I do know of regional literatures suggests that there's an area of sensibility that's quite common. Some of the greatest Indian minds, Tagore for example, had the ability to bring these things theoretically into conjunction."
"I've seen that fundamentalists are the ones who continue to be a threat. Fundamentalism continues to be addressed by successive generations and the younger people are taking that forward in their own way."
Syd Harrex is now in a new role with full academic status at Flinders University and the only teaching he now does is creative writing. Have his academic interests come in the way of his writing poetry?
"I'll just say that it's a collateral arrangement I'm probably a better teacher and researcher because I'm also committed to creative work when I can get the opportunity. Rick (Hosking) and I set up the first creative writing courses at Flinders quite a long time ago now and when you teach creative writing you're also teaching literature, literary technique as seen in a good writer."
Inspirations
Syd's most recent collection of poems, Under a Medlar Tree, was launched twice at recent academic conferences in India, before its launch in Australia. During his readings, Syd dwelt on some of the inspiration behind his work. The sight of a deserted university corridor after hours, for instance, triggered "Maya", with its obvious Indian moorings.
Exploring Mysore and its environs once more, matching up Malgudi and Mysore, and vice-versa, Syd recalled his friendship with R.K. Narayan. "I owe my generous reception to Prof. C.D. Narasimhaiah, who arranged the meeting," he recalled. "Narayan was unstintingly kind to me, which I considered a special honour all the more so because the outsiders who infiltrate Malgudi are trouble-makers."
Those who know Syd Harrex well would agree that Narayan's imaginary homeland is Syd's too, by right of vision. Significantly, Syd Harrex's Keynote Address at the recent Mysore conference was titled "A Home from Home in Malgudi".
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