I received an email from K, who had been mucking around Buoyantville's archives, which asked me what was happening with the madcap novel I had outlined to write; some fragments of which can be found strewn here and there. Now I had put all that business in abeyance, unsure if I have skills and cunning I would require to pull it off, and also because I had (and have) doubts as to if the stuff I want to talk about is of interest to anyone at all. But K's email made me go back to the some of the source material I had scavenged online to provide historical scaffolding that would support my tales.

One of these historical sources is the California As I Saw It" section of the extensive American Memory project set up by The Library of Congress. This section, as its subtitle "First-Person Narratives of California's Early Years, 1849-1900 " indicates, has various fascinating narratives on living and dying in what are essentially the Gold Rush years in California. And among all these narratives, a simple textual search brings up only one in which a desi, or a Hindu appears; that of Friedrich Gerstäcker's "Scenes of life in California".

As the Foreword to this book puts it, Herr. Gerstäcker was some kind of a German Bruce Chatwin of the 19th century. For example it says: "In 1849 Gerstäcker undertook a new voyage with the double purpose of collecting information for the use of emigrants and for new material for his books. This time financial troubles were greatly lessened for he was subsidized by the “Reichsmenesterium zu Frankfurt.” He went to Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, Valparaiso, and to California, returning to Germany in 1852 by way of the Sandwich and Society Islands, Australia and the Dutch Indies. His accounts of these new travels appeared in Ausland and in another journal published at Augsburg. Later they were collected into book form, some of which were translated into English. In 1860 he visited the German colonies in South American in the interests of further immigration. His last visit to North America was in 1867 and 1868 in which again he went to South America." In this California book, Gerstäcker chronicled his experiences as a miner, and later as a merchandiser with other Germans in the middle of the California Gold Rush.

In two chapters titled "The Hindu" and "The Chase of The Indians", Gerstäcker records incidents triggered by the appearance of a Hindu, who makes the claim of having being robbed by the Indians of nineteen thousand dollars worth of gold dust. This triggers the greed of the whites in the mining camps, and they set off to retrieve this gold for themselves. In this process, they shoot an Indian as well as burn down their camp. Only later do they realize that the Hindu was a liar, and bring him to the rough frontier court. To further discover how the Hindu’s claims are unraveled, and how justice worked in the Wild Wild West, go take a look at these two fascinating narratives.

Well I have and in fact more than one and I'll tell you this too

I wrote one against Algeria that nightmare and another against

Korea and another against the one I was in

and I don't remember how many against the three

when I was a boy Abyssinia Spain and Harlan County

and not one breath was restored to one

shattered throat mans womans or childs not one not

one but death went on and on never looking aside

except now and then with a furtive half-smile to make sure I was noticing.

... Notes:

Wendell Berry in his book of essays, "What Are People For?" calls this poem, "a poem of difficult hope". In an essay with the same title, Berry, after noting that while this poem appears to give a negative reply to the question, "Why do something that you suspect, with reason, will do no good?", writes

"In the first place, the distinguishing characteristic of absolute despair is silence. There is a world of difference between the person, who believing that there is no use, says so to himself or to no one, and the person who says it aloud to someone else. A person who marks his trail into despair remembers hope - and thus hopes, even if only little".

Berry goes on to discuss the structure, the syntax, and other mechanics of Carruth's language that make this seemingly unobtrusive poem masterful, and then circles backs to the question he posed at the beginning of the essay, "Why has this poet expended so much skill and care to tell us there is no use doing what he has already done a number of time and is no, in fact, doing again?" To this question, Berry posits that, while history has little evidence that anyone's individual protest is of any use, protest endures because it is animated by a hope far more modest than public success: the hope of preserving the qualities of one's own heart and spirit from the destruction that can come from silent acquiescence. Berry, concludes the essay, by saying:

"But something more is involved that is even harder to talk about because it is only slightly understandable, and that is the part that suffering plays in the economy of the spirit. It seems plain that the voice of our despair defines our hope exactly; it seems, indeed, that we cannot know of hope without knowing of despair, just as we know joy precisely to the extent that we know of sorrow."

...

I reached for this poem and Wendell Berry's essay on it when I saw the photos of the latest destruction – those of thirty or so incinerated dead children - earlier today. Perhaps it will be of some use in giving hope to the equally distant others as well.

Indian trains have their complement of traveling buskers, who make their money by singing songs wandering from compartment to compartment. One of my enduring memories of these bauls of the rails was from a train journey some fifteen years ago. This was on a school trip to a science camp at Tarapur, a town along the Maharashtra Gujarat border, on the Arabian sea. This was also to be my first encounter with Bombay.

It was in between Pune and Bombay, where the train barrels in and out of the darkness and rainy light of the Western Ghat tunnels, a young boy and a older girl, who still was not much older than I was then, i.e., 12 years old, suddenly appeared in the compartment, with two pieces of hard slate that they used like cymbals, like clappers, singing old Hindi movie songs. I now don't remember the songs they sang or their faces but I remember being struck with some kind of a dumb pain after they got off at the next station to get into the next compartment. One of our teachers told us, in English, not to acknowledge their presence in the compartment, for otherwise we would have to give them money.

So you pretend that they are not there in the aisle, you pretend that the hill scenery outside the window is more compelling than their bird like throats bobbing up and down, their eyes bright with half-hunger, and their singing - musically not smooth but a still grenade of pain tunneling down your ear, and primed to explode anytime you recall that journey. If in the West kids lose their innocence to the flame of desire then in the East, this flame that burns away the pretense of innocence is that of a naked and helpless witnessing.

I wouldn't have remembered all this tonight, except I got to YouTubing for songs of a Indian folk-rock band "Euphoria", and ran into this music video for "Maaeri", primarily made on a train in India. If you see this, imagine those small two birds (who still exist), as they clap pieces of rock to produce a beat, and sign old Hindi film songs up and down on that Western Railway line, a funeral pyre for innocence.