‘Coolitude’ and Khal Torabully

Dear Amitav Ghosh,

Thank you ever so much for your kind response.

Forgive me for my shaky English, as I have lived for more than 32 years in France and have basically written in French language, and of course in Kreol, my native tongue.

I confess that I have been moved while writing this email, as much as I have been impressed by the craftmanship you reveal in your books, mixing so many fields of knowledge, but more than this, you are a poet and novelist traversed by this rare gift of “la parole”, to quote Lacan, this dimension of language which entails truth, often said “unknowlingly”, breaking through the most sophisticated levels of discourse. This would not surprise any one, given the ideas and visions you pursue and defend with the greatest integrity, whether on the moral, intellectual and artistic levels.

I am a poet, basically, and have a profound respect for your art blending both narrative and poetry, in a very unique rendering of style (whichever “school” one would say it belongs to) and talent. You are a great soul and writer Mr Ghosh! As we say in French : “Respect”!

Allow me to say I particulary feel very close to the way you encapsulate History, so close to mine (allow me this parallel, as your work is infinitely of the excellence I would in vain ever toil for), specially when it comes to the “bricolage mythique” presiding over its enunciation, with the use of the “archives”, just in the way you would rewrite them, revisit them with poetic power and also through the voices of the muffled and silenced ones. In this respect, our poetics are nearly twins. This paradigm, which I deemed the coral imaginary, was at the forefront of my aesthetics of coolitude. I read about you on internet and discovered we were born in 1956, which friends say, is an excellent vintage. I do not know if this common year of birth means something, but I am really impressed by the commonalities we share in putting in words the worlds we explore, and specially, our particular standpoint, namely, our voices from the peripheries.

When I wrote Cale d’étoiles-coolitude, the founding book of the oceanic voyage of the coolies in 1989 (published in 1992), I wanted to pay homage to the “forgotten voices of the voyage”, the coolies’. At that time the word coolie was thought as base and derogatory, and it was a pleasure and duty for me, as a poet of plural visions and of the peripheries, to reclaim the coolie, and from this derelict history and identity, I used the term coolie to coin coolitude, very much as Aimé Césaire did for négritude (though I took my distances with any essentialist view from the outset). I carved it as the basis of a humanism of diversity born from the mosaic India migrating through indenture. I played with languages and archives, moved to silences of archives, sketched the centrality of the voyage of the coolie as a space of construction/deconstruction of identities, giving a primordial role to the ocean so as to move away from the “kala pani petrification”. In that sense, I also write about the sea and the Indian Ocean, just like you, with my own modest voice. This ocean, I am convinced, should be explored again and again, as it is a space where diversities meet, clash and emerge in new configurations of humanities. I believe time has come to gather interest on this ocean, I believe the Atlantic has had its fair share of narratives and studies, and we have to come back to Sinbad’s ocean, to re-discover it and allow articulation of other imaginaries in this matrix of globalization (with a different tinge!)..

I am sorry to say that I write mainly in French, specially my two poetry books which developed the poetics of coolitude. And I don’t know if you read/speak Molière’s language.

I am hereby attaching attaching the first part to this present email, if you can spare some time… Thank you for your kind attention and perusal.

I would very much like to exchange with you, specially on the themes of revoicing History in the Indian ocean, of indenture and coolitude.

I wish you the very best energy for your masterly work.

Be assured of my profound esteem and admiration master Ghosh!

Sincerely yours,