Two books I could never write…

There are some books I was never meant to write. Nor could I have even imagined them. Recently, amongst all the books I have immersed myself in of late, two have so affected me that I can barely leave them to the side.

One is One Native Life, the engaging and powerful memoir by Richard Wagamese.  Each chapter is like a small but significant stream in his winding river of life.

The second is Renee Sarojini Saklikar‘s evocative and fiercely personal elegy, children of air india.

Both of these books, memoir and poem, are written from as close to misfortune and heartbreak as any human can get. Both works, I think, share similar emotion and perspective. One evolves from a terrible set of government policies which amounted to, which was certainly cultural genocide. The other was a single explosive act, built of the same, or a similar, genocidal evil. One is essentially one man`s tale of recovery. The other, perhaps, but not solely, how one devastating act (built on a series of connected evils) consumed and strengthened a poet so very personally involved.

Though I sometimes found myself too close to the many sorrows and somewhat fewer joys of the people I served, and now try to write about, these are but two of many books I was never meant to write.