What does it mean for someone to be in a character, to play a part or a role in something that is orchestrated, as in a movie or a skit? And what happens when that role is played out and done with; when the end transpires leaving behind that human alone in a void with no characters to live up to?
That’s the question Sanjaya Ghimire’s book ‘Patraharu’ has tried to address in a monologic meandering in the form of his relentless stream of consciousness where readers get to giddy-up on a ride from places that invariably look like the dome of Dante’s inferno and the peaceful sleep of a baby, both at same time.
I got my copy of ‘Patrahuru’ back in July of this year. The book, at the outset, appears to describe a very normative aspect of the world we live in. It depicts how characters live out through their representations of the world and what they make of it. As a matter of fact, the narrative progresses in tandem with the author’s direct experience of the world. Sanjaya’s world follows him throughout the entire narration. From the quiet vales of Nepal to the bustling humdrum of American cities, the one thing that remains constant and unperturbed is the author’s bewilderment about how persistently characters are primed and primped in an unflinching symmetry regardless of what roles are being played in and around.
The characters are made of individuals. True!
And they ascend from unsuspecting nooks and crevices.
The descriptors that run hand in hand with those characters, however (and in essence), are truly the figment of the author’s imagination. In describing those characters, the readers are taken onboard a ride where they can take a peek into what’s going on in the author’s mind. What’s out there in the world of objects are just mere coincidences of what the vicissitude of a life has wrought upon us. We didn’t choose our parents, nor did we choose our language or our forms. And yet here we find ourselves playing into the characters of our avatars, constrained within our limits, and smudged by the tyranny of our adjectives.
This is also the point where the ruffles of free-will crosses one’s mind. The characters, once they sublate into the appearance of their roles, become the representations of their world in a unique way. Every little emotion that gets to ride along the melody of such inherited roles are a mere depiction, albeit, within the limitations and the latitudes of such given garbs.
There are philosophers like Dan Dennett and the entire ilk of thinkers who vehemently believe in the falsity of such claims. In contrast, however, Sanjaya’s characters can only come to life ‘iff’ those characters can take up on roles preconceived and absolutized by the priors of their essence.
Another brilliant essay titled “What is life?” by Brett Bourbon has a somewhat similar message that can inspire Sanjaya’s characters.
Dr Bourbon moves forwards with these exact words in the essay: “Our common lives are shaped by our common contexts, and those contexts change and shift, subject to events and powers. Wars sometimes come, as do freeways, earthquakes, water bills, trash disposal trucks, new houses, shifting economic conditions, and so on. We always live in particular times and within specific communities, societies, and cultures, and these determine to a very high degree (although not absolutely) the space of possibilities for our living and our lives. Events that happen to us can damn us or liberate us—and we will not always know which. Stories can help show these events and their consequences, even if they might not give them any real or acceptable meaning. But our descriptions of these events can help us see our life amidst the powers of these events. These descriptions may imply stories, but they are not equivalent to stories.”
In essence, what we are and what we aspire to become have been impressed into our characters. So, as we follow along the trammel of our fortitude to become the heroes of our aspirations, we find ourselves in an act, just like Sanjaya’s characters do, in trying to make sense of the world that doesn’t need any sense making. The part to be played is already scripted.
The existence that needs to be lived is nested in the essence long before the characters have or will have arrived.
So then, what is there to talk about?
As long as those characters are sustained by their limits, they are really nothing.
