Malinda Words: Let us take a deep breath now...

Questions are the respiratory system of children. I doubt if anyone thought of this before or, even if the thought crossed the mind, wrote it as elegantly. This is why I find John Freeman’s Dictionary of the Undoing fascinating. One could open the book to a random page and find mind-blowing observations written in heart-blowing ways.

John has dedicated an essay each to every single letter of the English alphabet. It seems like an easy enough exercise; after all there are countless words beginning with each letter. For ‘A’ he has picked ‘agitate.’

How many times has that word been used, I’ve asked myself. In how many poems, news stories, features, declarations, political pamphlets scurrilous and otherwise, conversations, political commentaries, television debates and social media posts has it appeared, for example? How many forms can agitation take?

I do not know the answers. I do believe that if anyone were to assign a particular aspect of agitation to write about he would do so as eloquently as he has in this book. I do believe, also, that if someone picked a random word beginning with the letter ‘A’ he would still churn out a compelling read. Yes, even for apple, adze, amulet, atom or anonymous. The same holds for the other 25 letters of the English alphabet.

Let’s return to children and their respiratory systems. John isn’t really talking about children. He’s not talking about how they breathe. His is an essay about the need to be critical and the need to be self-critical. It is about what kinds of questions we could consider asking.

Here’s a slice:

For a big question to get off the ground, it needs to open up a possible field of answers that is far bigger than one individual an contain or grapple with.

Here’s another:

As we ask questions, the world’s structures take on a whole different hue. If we ask What if? often enough in our private lives, we may begin to do the same in our public lives. If the answers our structures return to us do not suffice, we may begin to question the structures themselves. Or we may begin to ask different questions.

A few hours ago, speaking with some undergraduates who aspired to become journalists, I referred to the title of a book I had read a long time ago, so long ago that I got the author’s name wrong. Rivers have sources, trees have roots: speaking of racism was written by Dionne Brand and Krisantha Sri Bhaggiyadatta. We see trees. We see rivers. We don’t see roots and sources. And so we celebrate the trees and the rivers, not the roots and tributaries. That’s because a tree has an authoritative presence. A river too. They are there before our eyes, why ask how they came into being? See?

The poet Ruwan Bandujeewa has seen trees and rivers and other things too. He has obviously considered the ‘why’ and ‘how’ and ‘where from’ related to these things. For example, consider the poem titled ඇළ (Th Canal) in මීළඟ මීවිත (The next wine).

ඇළ හොඳින් ඇඳ පැළඳ
ඇවිද යයි කුඹුරු මැද

වැව අරෙහෙ නිදි නැතිව
මේ ඇඳුම් මහපු බව
කිසිම වී කරලකට
ඇළ කියා නැත තවම

The canal,
elegantly attired
strides through the paddy fields

That the reservoir over there
stitched these garments
without a wink of sleep
not even to a single rice panicle
has the canal informed
as of now.

In some moments, the right questions can prompt an untold story. In others, a well-timed inquiry may force us to contend with what we are; not who we wish to be, or imagine ourselves to be, but how we are living in the world today.

That’s John, whose essays can be read as answers to questions that have tormented him so much that he has taken each of them in his hand, turned them around so he can read how
It has been formed and how it glistens in sunlight and is dulled by shadow. The questions and answers are both evident in his reflections; each question has roots and sources and each answer not only recognises these but swells the waters and nourishes the root and for this reason signatures both river and tree in ways that we can no longer ignore their hidden pasts, hidden body-parts or hidden ancestries.

I think that the opening line of John’s essay which I opened this essay with was not just an elegant composition with the children-reference giving it the softness that allows for a play with malleability. Children have a way of asking questions that adults don’t believe make sense because much of what they, adults, encounter are marked ‘goes without saying.’ Children have not concluded thus and therefore their queries imply the existence of a certain ‘comes without saying’ that ought to be investigated.

John tells me, ‘be a child, if you want to breathe.’ It could be the title of a book. John has written it; only, he’s picked a different title. Regardless, let us resolve, friends, to take a deep breath. Now.

['The Morning Inspection' is the title of a column I wrote for the Daily News from 2009 to 2011, one article a day, Monday through Saturday. This is the 254th article in the new series that began in December 2022. Links to previous articles are given below]

29 October 2023

Let us take a deep breath now...

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