Buddha, karma and tangkas

The Circle of Karma by Kunzang Choden, Penguin India, New Delhi; 2005; pb, 316 pp.; Rs. 295.

The 'exotic' world that Choden renders will seem only refulgent in the best tradition of ancient Buddhist religious paintings also called tangkas (which have the image of Buddhas occupying centre-stage emanating wisdom and spiritual strength). Choden reproduces the intricate circuit of characters, stories, journeys and the passage of time found in tangka paintings. She brings out closely observed rituals and symbols taken from everyday life (secular and spiritual) and grafts them around the central character, a woman called Tsomo. The bizarre travails and the impromptu travels Tsomo experiences make for the surface plot, woven into that is the inscrutable pressures of karma. Success or failure is karma, joy or tragedy is karma, the meaning of all things lies in karma, the preposterous mystery of life is resolved as karma. Karma looms like an unassailable force juxtaposed against which are the struggles, triumphs and hubris of a peripatetic figure. With Tsomo's restlessness Choden successfully subverts the cohesion that tangka art or practiced religions subsist of. Her 'narrative' unmistakably simulates the patterned fabric Tsomo produces on her looms, the story is tenderly crafted and intricately layered, rustling with wondrous connections forged and strange losses endured.

The blurb on the book states that the narrative is about 'a woman facing the world alone'. A fifteen-year-old embarks on 'what becomes a life journey, in which she begins to find herself, and to grow as a person and a woman'. Pema Tsomo can cook, tend, hoe, plant, weave and attend to rituals of life around the birthing, sickness or deathbeds, but she is aggressively denied an education and the right to a monastic career that her brothers could choose if they wished to. After brief domestic bliss and a nightmare of a miscarriage, Tsomo finds herself betrayed by her husband and her younger sister. Trapped with a mysterious illness, Tsomo with a distended pregnant-looking stomach, takes to the road making a quivering but nonetheless stoic attempt to break the circle of karma and the claustrophobia of a male-dominant social system. Tsomo's strange fortunes make her move on from Bhutan to Kalimpong and Bodhgoya, from Kathmundu and Dehradun to Mussorie, all the way to Delhi and finally back to Thimpu.

Through the travels of Tsomo, Choden beckons new vistas of experiences. She shows a new and exciting way to 'map' identities and narratives withheld or denied to women like Tsomo. Her protruded belly or distorted 'body' is meant to represent 'Woman' as an essentialized sign in feminist terms but only up to a point. Choden's feminist parable recedes ultimately with Tsomo's longing for spiritual solace or because she admits feeling tenderness for the men that karma delivers at her doorstep. There is chagrin at a woman's limited choices --but only to have Tsomo's disappointments become diffused with longing for the intimacy of a marital bed or quests for spiritual fulfillment. Choden does not blanche at Tsomo's heart torn between disparate longings. Hemmed with domestic responsibilities Tsomo ached for the outdoors. Once on her own, she never quite reconciles to how unnervingly 'quiet' being on her own can be. The tug of spirit and the pull of flesh equally fluster her sense of 'arriving' anywhere. Tsomo has much to learn in order to evolve into the person she has been longing to be for as long as she has known anything.

However, The Circle of Karma's charm lies not in the 'theories' of literature Choden evidently is exposed to but in the writer's delightful prose. She is a supremely confident story-teller. Selling off family heirlooms (lovingly preserved ancient robes handed from mother to daughter down the line) the young heroine takes vomit-stained bus rides and unpleasant train journeys to sacred temples and sites. The Circle of Karma portrays Tsomo's world as a vivid semi-medieval theatrical stage at the throes of change and modernity. Shots of temples, chortens, circumambulations, prayers, mantras and pilgrimages blend happily with popular culture, viz, modern buses, radios, make-up and heeled shoes, Dev Anand, and 'Joy Bangla' (old knitwear) arriving from rich donor countries via Bangladesh . Choden conjures an epically proportioned world of unconditional friendships and feckless whimsy. An alcohol-loving high lama's kind benediction, a low-caste Hindu hospital sweeper with white magic powers and an American missionary doctor try their respective skills in treating Tsomo's condition, each showing equal compassion.

It was impossible to put the book down! One followed Tsomo's journeys, forgetting to ask how she managed customs and immigration, tax and language barriers. It was useless to ask how she settled in a succession of makeshift homes, how she left, or facilely picked up her thread when she got back. Unsuccessful in love, Tsomo has an astonishing following of friends among unknown people across a vast sprawl of terrain. They sit her down with a cup of tea and share her sorrows, they goad her to move on and live, they lovingly teach her what they know, and learn readily from what she has to offer. Men, women, old and young, lucky and unfortunate, pious or sinning, Choden brings them together so that Tsomo may learn what cannot be taught in any other way. It may or may not be meaningful to know that Tsomo becomes a nun and comes home only to leave once more. Following her lama Rinpoche's teaching, Tsomo strives for restoring inner harmony, focusing on the moments she has cherished, willing herself to forget and forgive the rest.

Kunzang Choden has written a most humane novel with wisdom and empathy. Her voice is distinctive but should one want a comparison it could be with Mahasweta Devi and Gloria Naylor because of the elegance, earthiness and sense of control that permeates her work. The Circle of Karma is a heart-winning first book that is warm and witty, unafraid to explore in the most unexpected ways karma but above everything else the human spirit. Really, 'a must read' !

Nuzhat A. Mannan teaches English at Dhaka University.