Gordimer on her Ultimate Safari

Nobel-winning author Nadine Gordimer, who touched down in the city en route to Kolkata, speaks of her characters and the inspirations behind them

Some story-tellers have the ability to stun you into silence. That’s exactly what 85-year-old Nobel laureate Nadine Gordimer did to the crowd gathered at the Asiatic Society on Sunday morning.

Dressed in a straight, ankle-length tie-n-dye dress, white hair tucked into a neat bun; the South African writer walked in and immediately set the record right. “I’m not here to give a speech,” she said, setting off moans of disappointment. “Forget about this old woman talking to you. Hear a story from a 10-year-old Mozambique girl.”

Poring over yellowing typed sheets through her spectacles, Gordimer, described as one of the ‘Guerrillas of Imagination’, read out her short story, The Ultimate Safari, transporting the gathering to Kruger Park, which an unnamed black girl fleeing the violence in Mozambique must cross to take refuge in South Africa.

Deeply involved in South Africa’s anti-apartheid struggle, Gordimer’s story uses a child to voice the absurdity of violence. Meandering through the wildlife park, the narrative juxtaposes humans and animals, which the girl observes roaming freely in their habitat with enough to eat - while she and others are forced to flee and go hungry.

Later, Gordimer explained that the story (featuring in a collection of short stories, Jump and other Stories) germinated during one of her visits to a refugee camp in the late ’80s with a BBC team interviewing refugees from Mozambique. Soon after, she read an advertisement in the London Observer, selling African adventure as the ultimate safari.

“I thought, what I’ve just seen is the ultimate safari,” she told the rapt audience.

Gordimer’s repertoire of writings has captured her nation’s struggle against apartheid and the painful transition from oppressive racism to a turbulent democracy. Currently in India to deliver the annual Nobel Lecture in Kolkata, she said the political scenario in South Africa was “very worrying”.

Troubled by the recent split in the African National Congress (ANC), she described Jacob Zuma (poised to be the next South African president after Thabo Mbeki and with various corruption charges against him) as “very clever but a man of dubious character”. 

Decrying Zuma’s symbol of the raised fist and his anthem ‘Umshini wami’ (bring me my machine gun), she said, “This incites people to take to violence. I am puzzled about how I am going to vote. I don’t want to desert my own ANC.”

Despite an oppressive regime, Gordimer refused to leave South Africa unlike several others. Asked how she reacted to her books being banned, she said, “It would have been an insult if they hadn’t been banned. This was an honour.”

Deeply protective of her private life, Gordimer is known to have said that she will never write an autobiography. “None of my characters are personal,” she said in response to a query on how she managed to get into the skin of her characters. Quoting Graham Greene, she added that writers create alternative lives for people they might have encountered, sat beside on a bus, or overheard in loving or quarrelsome exchanges while waiting in a line.

Decrying the modern day “domination of the image”, with people constantly looking at images on television sets, she said it was a pity that the written word, which opens doors to the imagination, is less relied upon. “I feel sad for children growing up without physically turning the pages of a book.” The Guerrilla isn’t giving up yet.

m_anshika@dnaindia.net