The Story of a Book Yvonne Vaz Ezdani yvonne....@gmail.com
[This is an extract from the book *From Mind to Keyboard*, which has 30 writers from Goa and beyond narrate their encounter with the written world. The book, edited by Sheela Jaywant, is to be launched at a public function at the International Centre Goa, Dona Paula, later today on July 9, 2016, Saturday, at 10.30 am.] A little girl sat listening with horror to stories of war, planes flying over and dropping bombs, killing, maiming and destroying. Thousands had to flee the enemy. My father, who had lived through it all, narrated how many people, old and young, sick and strong, were forced to walk from Burma to India, through thick jungles, over steep mountains and cross dangerously swollen rivers. The hungry refugees followed monkeys to see what fruits and berries they could eat. There were even those who lay on their bellies, biting grass off the ground because they were too weak to pull it out with their hands. My mother told me, she was stalked by some Japanese soldiers who wanted to put her away in a camp where rape and torture was rampant. She resolved to consume a bottle of iodine to end her life rather than be taken by them. The day they came to 'arrest' her, a friend who was an English-Japanese interpreter happened to accompany them and his gift-of-the-gab as well as my grandmother's offer of fresh strawberries and cream to the soldiers helped change their minds; they left my mother alone after that. I would never have been born if the Japanese soldiers had arrested my mother that day. The Burmese are great story-tellers. I heard many accounts of the hardships people endured during 'Japanese days' from sources besides my parents. They told me how the aerial bombing by the Japanese in Rangoon and other parts of Burma caused much suffering to those who fled the country as well as those who stayed behind. The seed of the book Songs of the Survivors must have been sown then. Later, I became a student of English literature, passionate about books and music, with a secret desire to write a powerful dramatic novel of unquenchable love, another Wuthering Heights so to say. But the realities of being wife, mother, homemaker and provider took over. Plus, I went through a dark patch of seemingly unending work and worry. Struggling to keep my head above water, I could not think of sitting at a desk, pen in hand, filling pages with a flow of inspired phrases and sentences. Then one day, Thelma Menezes came into the picture. Strong, half-Burmese, bedridden and in constant pain, well-known as a freelance columnist for the Pune dailies, she was one of the survivors of the 1942 trek across the Indo-Burma border. Whenever I went on holiday to my brother's place in Pune, she was one person that I just had to visit. She was inspiring. When I remarked that the stories of Burma-Goans, especially survivors of World War II, needed to be recorded for posterity, she told me that I was the one to do it. I was flattered. I wanted to tell the untold stories. I wanted to write. But could I? Should I? Did I have it in me? Would I have the time to write a `book'? About two years passed before I dared think about it again. I mentioned it one day to Frederick Noronha, who was cycling down the lane in front of my house and had stopped by to chat. He enthusiastically encouraged me to start. "Who will read my book? Who will publish it? I know nothing of how books are printed and published or sold," I worried. "I will help with the publishing and printing." That was all I needed, a knowledgeable person willing to be involved! Frederick was a journalist, familiar with writing and publishing. I began collecting stories with no real blueprint for the book. Thelma got me four contacts who added their stories to the ten I had from relatives and friends. I thought, 'This is going to make a very slim book, so I will introduce people to the land I loved and grew up in.' During my six-month holiday in Australia, I read all the books I could on Burma, spent hours at my daughter's computer searching the Internet and compiled some historical, geographical and cultural facts into what I felt would give readers a glimpse into this beautiful and suffering land. It was a labour of love. As a result of an appeal sent to Goanet [http://lists.goanet.org/pipermail/goanet-goanet.org/], I collected four more accounts. On my return to Goa, inexplicably and without much effort on my part, I got five more contributors willing to tell their stories. I now had 23 chapters and some photographs. I added as a postscript, my story of a Goan family living in post-War, independent Burma; my brother added a chapter of anecdotes. Everything flowed smoothly along and the right individuals came into the picture. I did not have a publisher or distributor. * * * One day I casually asked Frederick, "Could you publish the book?" "I could." "Are you sure about it?" I had no other options and I trusted him. Thus Goa,1556 was born! This was the first book published by that imprint, which completes a decade this year. We had no money to invest. So Frederick approached Khalil Ahmed who owns Broadway Book Store, Panjim. He agreed to bear the cost of printing and distribution. Cecil Pinto helped pro bono in whatever way he could. He coordinated with my daughter, Shannon, in Australia, via emails, to make the cover. He also got me in touch with Alisha Colaco who did the maps patiently and precisely. Two young friends helped put the contents of the manuscript onto the computer. Another, a computer whiz, showed the way to neatly layout the pages. Someone 'up there' was taking care of *Songs of the Survivors*. But in spite of multi-tasking, I had to make deliberate attempts to shut down other jobs and try to complete some chapters each day. I spent a lot of time conversing with Burma-Goans who recounted their war-time experiences along with irrelevant details which I would have enjoyed listening to at some other time. Most of the stories were told to me orally. The survivors were old and had difficulty recalling certain names and dates. One lady was ill with cancer; I did not have the heart to ask her too many questions. I jotted down notes while they spoke, then compiled them at home and made umpteen phone-calls to confirm that I had the facts right. I agonized over getting the personality of the storyteller into the narration and suspected that the words and expressions I used were not apt. A few stories I scrapped, others I rewrote. Some contributors themselves wrote down their memoirs and sent them to me by email, airmail or 'per kind favour of...' . They permitted me to edit their articles but I tried as far as possible to keep them in their original form. Even so, I had to go through them several times to weed out mistakes, change the sequence of the paragraphs etc. 'Do I use a comma or semi-colon here?' 'Is it grammatically correct to use a hyphen between these two words?' 'Isn't it shameful for an English teacher to have to refer to spellchecks and relearn punctuation?' 'This keyboard is so confusing -- why do I keep making these typos?' I was told to use some new software that I took ages to master. "It's driving me nuts. I don't have to do this. I don't want to do this anymore." Sometimes I could not see eye to eye with Frederick. I liked some of the changes he suggested but I wanted us to go through my work meticulously with a fine-tooth-comb while he was impulsive and quick at deleting and modifying. I told him how much I appreciated his help but I was also honest about changes that I thought did not really bring out the sentiments of the contributors. At one point I think we both got fed up of each other and kept silent for some days. But our friendship and mutual respect for each other saw us through our differences. One thing troubled me. I was a citizen of what former *Illustrated Weekly of India* editor Pritish Nandy calls the 'Republic of the Unseen', content in my private world. I was uneasy with the thought that a book with my name on it would propel me out of my comfort zone. I wanted neither bouquets nor brickbats. I think the desire to complete the book went deeper than all the other feelings. When Frederick sent the rough draft of the book to eminent writers and asked for their comments to be put on the cover of the book, I wanted to disappear. If he had asked me, I would have said 'no' and rewritten the whole book. But the book had taken on a life of its own. The cover was finalized, the chapters were given titles and I was given a deadline. The month before the book went to press was filled with feverish last minute editing, proof-reading, deciding the photographs... I cannot describe the anxieties of a first-time author. In spite of his 'don't worry, yaar', I'm sure the first-time publisher also went through his own worries. Dr. Teotónio R de Souza wrote a foreword for the book at Frederick's request. In his view, Burma-Goans had no real patriotism and were ready to play tunes for any colonial masters. This did not gel with my portrayal of the endurance and determination of the survivors, so we did without that foreword and the subjective observations of a great historian. My role in the making of the book was done. The publisher, the printer and whoever, could do whatever. I did not want to stress about it anymore. About three weeks later I got an excited call from Frederick. He was coming over with the book. All the stress returned for a moment. The next thing I knew, someone was trying to climb over my garden wall as my freshly-painted gate was padlocked. He was trying to contain his happiness but I could see through his, "There are some small things we missed out. There are some glitches. There are some instructions we forgot to give the printer." I was oblivious to anything negative. The colour of the cover was exactly as I wanted it, the layout of the pages was neat, the quality of the paper was good: I could see no reason not to celebrate the completion of this project. I was on a high seeing my book in print. There would be time for a critical evaluation later. We began to prepare for the release of the book on December 27, 2007, at the Xavier Centre of Historical Research, Alto Porvorim. Everyone agreed that it was an appropriate venue. Nine survivors were present. A local TV-channel covered the programme. We sold all the books that had been brought to the venue. Someone 'up there' was still watching over *SOTS*. Two days later my interview with a *Navhind Times'* reporter was published with my photograph. I did not leave the house for two days and was embarrassed even by the phone-calls I got. My name was on Saligao-Net, Goanet and reviews of the book were being published. I found it difficult to deal with all this at first. Slowly, my attitude changed. I think later I even began to enjoy the attention. But every day I saw where I could have removed or added something. I could have gone deeper into the minds and experiences of the survivors. I felt humble that people were saying nice things about the book, but knew I could have done better. Negative criticism took getting used to: someone commented in his review that I had asked only Burma-Goans from a certain caste for their stories. I had not even been aware of it and it seemed such a ridiculous remark but I tried to understand the background of the reviewer. There were also some mild comments about my method of editing which I accepted and vowed not to repeat. The following year, four of the contributors passed away and later, five more died. They and their families had been very happy to see their stories in print. Some of them became emotional and nostalgic, over phone or email, when they spoke about their parents. I was especially touched when an elderly nun came to visit me to tell me how grateful she was to read of her grandmother's burial in one of the stories. With tears she told me that the family assumed that, like many others who had not survived the trek, her grandmother's body had been left by the wayside in the jungles to be devoured by wild animals. This one instance alone made me feel good about the book. Once, a Russian lady called me up from Switzerland and told me how much she was touched by my book. She had bought it whilst holidaying in Goa. She was reminded of her mother who had gone through a similar experience trying to escape from her country. She was weeping. I wept with her. A Bengali gentleman living in Germany got in touch with me after a Goan friend of his sent him my last chapter. He had lived in the same town in the Shan State that I mentioned. It was heartwarming when he and his wife came to Goa and had a Burmese meal with my family. One of my old schoolmates in UK was feeling nostalgic about St Agnes Convent where he had studied. He googled the name of the school and my story came up. He got in touch with me and sent my email id and phone number to friends who had migrated to the USA and UK. Within days I started getting calls from them. Someone sent an ex-teacher a copy of my book and in my photograph she recognized the eight-year-old she had known. When my daughters in Brisbane, Australia, showed *SOTS* to their friends they wanted to buy copies. On my next trip there, I carried a load of books instead of my usual stuff. It was worth it. I was treated like a celebrity when deep down I didn't feel like one. The book made me known in certain circles. I was lucky not to have had to go from one publisher to another. I would have been totally dejected if I'd had to face rejection. All in all, I am glad I overcame my doubts and inhibitions and completed this book of non-fiction. I learnt a few lessons along the way and gained self-confidence. When the books were sold out, Frederick advised me to rewrite a second edition. I asked Amitabh Ghosh if he would write the foreword for it. He agreed. I was overjoyed. Jerry Pinto contributed a story of Helen, the legendary Bollywood dancer and a piece about his own Burma connections. He also edited my manuscript which was quite different from the first book and sent it to Ravi Singh (of the Delhi-based Speaking Tiger Books), who published the book. *New Songs of the Survivors* was launched at The Goa Arts and Literary Festival in December 2015. I am still amazed and thankful to the universe for making all this happen. My dream has been to write creative fiction and produce a novel about unquenchable love and passion, with strong characters that would be remembered forever. Mind, body and soul must come together to find the inner music to write a great book. I may do it yet. -- Although *New Songs of the Survivors* is a fine example of oral history, Yvonne Vaz Ezdani also loves writing fiction because she can make up stories about fictitious people and feel no guilt. She has taught at the higher secondary in Goa (after her return from Burma) and is known for her generosity as a career counsellor to students here. Her email: yvonne....@gmail.com