>From Deccan Herald May 26
Book Review/ Pundalik Naik's 'The Upheaval'
The Spell of Doom
By Manohar Shetty
'The Upheaval' by Pundalik N. Naik; translated from the Konkani by Vidya
Pai; Oxford University Press, N Delhi; Rs 295; Pp144.
To fully understand the power and pathos of this novel, a little background
on the iron ore mining industry in Goa may be useful. After the Second World
War, the Portuguese regime realised that war ravaged Japan would require
enormous quantities of iron and steel to rebuild the devastated country and
its economy. The colonial power also understood that it was in its own
long-term interests to rope in more local Goans with a stake in its future
growth.
The Portuguese shrewdly granted a few Goans, mostly small businessmen and
war profiteers, generous 99-year leases for the mining of iron ore. After
the Liberation of Goa in 1961, the Government of India turned a benevolent
eye on these miners, and on renewal of the licenses, even granted them huge
tax concessions. These miners have since diversified and prospered
enormously, but they have also left irreparable scars on the landscape of
Goa.
Hundreds of hectares of forest land have been virtually decimated by mining
activity and legions of families have been affected by the pollution of the
Bicholim, Khandepar, Madei and other rivers caused by the erosion of waste
dumps, the discharge of mine pit water and other effluents from
environmentally unsound open cast mining.
Visitors to Goa, bedazzled by the coastline and its 'Iberian ambience' will
be shocked and appalled by this wholesale depredation of the land in the
mining belts of Bicholim, Pissurlem, Pale, Codli and other areas in the
interiors of Goa.
Pundalik Naik's novel is set in this grim backdrop, chronicling in detail
the decay of a self-sufficient agricultural community with the impassive
invasion of the mining industry. Naik's novel, the first to be translated
from Konkani, created something of a sensation when it appeared in 1977. No
other writer in Goa had portrayed in such graphic and brutal detail the
ruinous fallouts on small agricultural holdings by the bulldozers of big
industry.
Pandhari, the protagonist of the novel, is the first to fall into the
tempting shaft. Just before the auspicious day of sowing, Babuso, a wily and
unscrupulous go-between, approaches him for his services as a load-bearer
and to hire his bullock-cart to carry ore from the mines. Pandhari succumbs
to the allure of quick money and in an instant becomes a bonded labourer and
the bullocks, which once ploughed the life-sustaining fields, become a
transport vehicle, the cart laden with the metallic spoils of the pillaged
land.
Pandhari's wife Rukmini, remonstrates with her husband for forsaking his
'gods and his duties for money'. But this is met by an angry drunken blow
from Pandhari, which sets the direction for the rest of the novel.
Naik assembles a cast of true-to-life characters in his riveting and
realistic story: the school teacher Savlo who is forced to close down and
leave in exile as the children of the village abandon their education to
work in the mines; Abu, the sentinel spirit of the village, who is ignored
by everyone until it is too late; the scheming and licentious Babuso; the
estranged son of Pandhari, Nanu who becomes a truck driver and his younger
sister, Kesar, who also works in the mines; and the feckless Romeo, Manuel,
also a truck driver who seduces Kesar.
Rukmini watches helplessly as her son and daughter follow in the shadows of
the father, neglecting both their education and their traditional
occupation. Pandhari himself is sidelined when tippers and other vehicles
render the bullock-cart redundant. Towards the end, the land nearly denuded,
a character asks: "When this mine is exhausted and closes down what will we
Kolambkars eat? We begged the Sarpanch to talk to the mine owners. Those
bastards declared that if the fields turned barren they were willing to buy
the land! Why don't you write about this in the papers?" The response is
significant even to this day: "The mine owners own the newspapers. Will they
print anything that is critical of them?"
Pundalik Naik, who comes from a rural farming family and has experienced
poverty, is well in touch with the land and its seasons and rituals. A
versatile writer of short stories, plays and screenplays, he has some pithy
and earthy turns of phrase: "Kolamba village nestled in the curve of the
river Mandovi as snugly as a water pot fits against a woman's hip". And tart
similes of rustic India: Like that story where the snake bites the calf and
the cowherd bears the blame. The author observes ruefully that the mining
settlement does not wake up to the cock's crow but to the siren at 6 am, and
that the birds crowed at odd hours, confused by the sound of the machinery.
'The Upheaval' is by no means "a near perfect work", as some critics have
claimed. It is structurally uneven and some of the incidents seem to occur
arbitrarily. But it is a piece of authentic and realistic fiction, and a
visceral document on the literal steamrolling of a well-knit, contended
rural community by heavy industry.
--Manohar Shetty
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