Teesta Review: A Journal of Poetry, Volume 5, Number 2. November 2022. ISSN: 2581-7094
Australia-India: Treasures from the Album of Human Memories
My association with Australia,
Australian studies in general and Australian literature in particular can be
traced back to the year 2004. It was in 2004, as Chairperson of the
Commonwealth Writers Prize, I visited Melbourne for the first time. It was a
dream come true. Australia the land of cricket, kangaroos, koalas, wombats,
kookaburra, cockatoos et al did not seem so alien to me, after all. The
literature and culture of Australia to which I was introduced by Australian
writers and academicians in 2004, created a sense of bonding and even in 2021
that connection continues as an ever-enhancing rich learning experience.
Interestingly, soon after my
visit, the Australia-India Council granted me a visiting fellowship for eight
weeks in 2005. This was indeed a rare opportunity to learn about Australian
literature and culture by going through archival material in the excellent
university libraries at Perth, Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne and Brisbane,
meeting academics and writers and interacting with Australian student
communities within classrooms and also in the campus cafes and dining halls of
the student residencies.
The added attraction of the
AIC fellowship, which also makes it unique, is the fact that the visiting
fellow gets a chance to visit at least five to six universities located in at
least four or five Australian states. I vividly recall the late August
afternoon when I reached Perth airport and had an AIC officer waiting to meet
me at the arrival lounge. Within minutes she helped me to change my mobile sim
card and having called home and reassured my husband that I had indeed reached,
I accompanied my guide Denise Tallis to the hotel where I would be staying for
the next two weeks. Denise escorted me to the lush adjoining sprawling gardens
where I learnt to call our familiar eucalyptus trees, gum trees. The flora and
fauna of Australia are overpowering, it seems as if all those pictures that we
had seen in our geography books had become animated. But of course, it was sad
to know from the menu cards in restaurants that the Australia’s national
animal, the kangaroo, features as a part of the fare on offer. I was served Kangaroo steak at a dinner and
it was explained to me that this was a perfectly acceptable way to handle the
kangaroo over-population.
But among such unique
experiences, what really enriched me, as a cultural commentator, was my
introduction to Australian women writers and their writing. If not for this
very enabling AIC fellowship, I am almost sure that I would not have known
about many feisty early twentieth century women writers. Back home it was
invariably discussions about Patrick White, Peter Carey, Peter Goldsworthy, Kim
Scott, Tom Keneally that we seemed to talk about. The wiser among us also spoke
of Jack Davies, Mudrooroo, Kate Grenville, Kath Walker, Les Murray among
others. And of course, Germaine Greer. But it was in Perth that two names were
repeated many times by faculty members of the Curtin University of Technology:
Miles Franklin and Katherine Susannah Prichard.
Interestingly, in 2006, The
Dept of English, Calcutta University brought out a special issue on New
Literatures in its prestigious departmental journal. I was the editor of
this issue and the volume included many articles by eminent Australian critics
such as Bill Ashcroft, Bruce Bennett, Andrew Hassam and David Carter among
others.
Also, during my fellowship period, when I
reached the University of Queensland, Brisbane I was introduced to the works of
two activist-writers: Jean Devanny and Eleanor Dark. At Perth I had learnt
about Miles Franklin and Katherine Susannah Prichard. I had been informed about
a number of Marxist women writers and the fact that there were a number of
Australian writers who were members of the then Australian Communist Party.
Interestingly, though I had
read some details about the mentioned writers, Franklin, Prichard, Devanny and
Dark in the histories of Australian literature that acknowledged their
contribution to Australian letters, the on the ground recommendations by
Australian academics and critics seemed to me to be far more enthusiastic and
an eye-opener for me.
It was a pleasure to meet
Carole Ferrier, editor of the feminist journal Hecate. I was introduced
to Carole Ferrier at a tea meet organized by David Carter the Director of the Centre
for Australian Studies, University of Queensland. Tall, slim, with a beautiful
crown of shoulder length hair Carole Ferrier looked spectacular and powerful as
she moved around in her office, telling me about her work, informing me about
her Indian friends and promising to send me some issues of the journal Hecate,
which she edited. In fact, she sent me all the back issues of Hecate
till 2005, and I now have a special shelf exclusively for the Hecate issues.
But along with these back issues she also gave me a copy of a book she took
about twenty years to write. The book was Jean Devanny Romantic
Revolutionary, published by the Melbourne University Press in 1999.
I visited Australia in 2017,
as an invited speaker to participate in an international conference on gender
politics curated by Carole Ferrier at the University of Brisbane. My perception
has been that Australian studies can expand in India if the cultural two-way
traffic, between Australia and India, receives enhanced governmental and
institutional support. Incidentally, the forthcoming issue of Hecate
will carry my review of a new book on Miles Franklin.
Also, I was recently delighted
to notice that the Miles Franklin award of 2021 went to Amanda Lowry who I had
met at the University of Brisbane in 2005. Lowry had gifted one of her books to
me when we had met in 2005. Perhaps the album of human memories store and save
treasures beyond the scope of virtual galleries and photo albums in phones and
computers.