The title of the beautiful novel by Tabish Khair published by Editions du toad is strange Soothe dust ... Dust is raised by the bus that connects to Phansa Gaya in Bihar state: for the "calm", a gesture endlessly reproduced by the merchant mithai, whose shop, beside the road, offers travelers the comfort of sweets, these tilkuts with sesame paste and wrapped around a kink wooden pole. The constantly repeated effort aims to freeze the small tornado triggered by the passing vehicle. It does not protect the crushed sesame paste which set the basis for the treat: the man knows that's impossible. But the world must regain its original arrangement, each grain resume its place, to somehow resist the threat of disorder. Pathetic attempt:
With skillful gestures, the man plunged his hands into the bucket and waved to spread arcs of water around him. The drops fell on the dry dust of the roadside, on the splashing in the first, and then forming a real lasso, lassos of water, hoping the man would force the dust to remain at rest during the early hours of the morning traffic.
Tabish Khair's novel, the first that we could read in French (in the beautiful translation of Blandine Longre ) takes us on a journey amazing, "home" to "home" travel itinerary full of surprises, of chance encounters, whose path preordained adapts to the vagaries of life. The bus, driven by Mangal Singh is a microcosm unlikely event disparate fates intersect. Each traveler carries with him his past, his history text, which appears to disperse into different fragments corresponding to disparate voices, finds its unity in the vehicle that brings these lives for a moment, one where everyone hopes to find his home. Silhouettes, faces, clothing ... Things come together without knowing each other, and yet, the story gradually reveals their identity: the brazen young woman with her child, we recognize Zeenat, the maid whose Irfan, the first narrator was in love, the young boy with sunglasses plastic, which carries with him a beautiful sari varanasi, Chottu is that the reader has met in Patna ... Different narrators take over the story, some in first person, as Irfan or controller. The alternating narrative voices, in a complicated ballet at first, but the choreography becomes clear as you go. Thus, the novel bursts into a multitude stories, confronting us with all social classes, but also to all records, from drama to comedy, nostalgia for tragedy. A colorful mosaic of these chips comes together, like a society that is both composite and, somehow, attached.
From these fragments enrolled in short chapters emerges a unified world through movement, colors, smells, sounds, anything that presents itself to everyone equally. Indeed, if life does not offer all the comforts, the same opportunities, all can smell the scent that rises from the river, collect the swish of traffic, watching the flight of birds ... Tabish Khair gives a key to the language of feelings. It is particularly important chapters in the second person, whose identity remains unclear of the protagonist - he is an inhabitant of the building where Chottu was the home of Mrs. Prasad in Patna:
The night deepens. You're lying on your bed. The usual noises coming up to you. Knowing even a precarious world thee known that this reassures you. Dogs bark at vying for a district another, a truck goes sometimes growling, someone sings in the grip of the night - a drunkard or a peasant who comes home late - the doors open and close here and there in the building, faucet drip tirelessly in the kitchen of Sharma. If it was colder or warmer, you'd hear the creaking of piercing something that stretches or shrinks inside the walls.
While it is difficult to know if you go somewhere, if the home that we regret and we wish still exists, it is possible to decipher the signs that returns the world. Tabish Khair's writing is a great sensuality, it feeds on sounds, scents, colors, awakening in the reader the impression of feeling, seeing, touching, tasting the same, because the kitchen is in the novel an important place. In the beginning of the novel, one of the main characters is Mian Wazir, cook, or rather head, bringing his art to perfection. In the chapters that evoke Wazir, the narrator, Irfan, also remembers his love for Zeenat, the servant of the neighbors, which he perceives the presence merely by the smell it gives off a heady perfume for him, but the scent coarse according to others. Towards the end of the novel, a young man, he passed the teetars , partridges, remembers that their flesh is delicate but assumed that he never ate.
But the smells, sounds, tastes the same, are fugitives, and fail to fix this busy world, the image of that bus that will eventually stop inappropriately. Identities are also blurred in this changing country, where the original organization in caste is officially challenged - but not really in the soul. Mangal Singh wanted to be a writer, he drives the bus. Irfan Zeenat wanted, he let escape. One who calls himself Parvati was a man, a eunuch, she changes her identity to escape the existence of proscribed she led. Rasmus, the firangi - Europeans - was born of an Indian father, but he does not speak the language very well from its origins. Moreover, the language is also central to the novel. Blandine Longre, for his translation, has chosen to retain the terms that pepper urdus Hindi or English used in India and Tabish Khair chosen by (a glossary is placed at the end of the book).
What is "home"? A fixed place, a landmark that we would last forever? In this uncertain world, no home is stronger than the memory that is preserved:
I in me my memories, this house of, say, sixty-nine pieces. I saw for the first time the world I've tried to describe through the windows of these rooms in clutter, the pieces all pell-mell - as in a bhoolbhoolaiya , as in a house that grows and that was demolished over the years, as one of its mental states (when we dream, that one remembers that one or meditate), when there are no breaks in the way things crumble or ebb. My home my fragile, confused, monstrous, who have never been confined by Yahan ke Ammi, Ammi's house, or our ghar , although I always carried their burden.
Thus the novel is an attempt to fix the world in words that constitute it, the interlacing of these voices, these languages, built up a world sustainable. The kaleidoscope is organized into a mosaic with iridescent colors blend to create a world where everyone finds his place. The journey can be completed, the fates remain suspended - the reader to contribute to this construction by imagining developments possible: it is also integrated with the work, a small piece of this assembly, including registering to turn his emotions, feelings, gathering those memories that will help build these walls more solid than stone, those of memory.
Tabish Khaïr, Apaiser la poussière, traduction de Blandine Longre, Editions du Sonneur, 2010
NB : en lisant le roman et en rédigeant cette note, je n'ai pu me sortir de la tête un morceau que vous pouvez écouter en suivant ce lien . Il me semble que Cornershop a eu plus de succès en Grande-Bretagne qu'en Inde, mais ce sont des sonorités qui me rappellent des souvenirs à moi aussi...
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