Synopsis
The Blood of Five Rivers tells the story of a young man named Kaka, born and raised in a small, rural farming village in the Indian province of Punjab.
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
About the Author
Arjun Bedi is a second generation Indian-Canadian writer born and raised in Mississauga. Formally educated in Philosophy, with an eclectic set of experiences to follow, his aim has always been to interact with the world in a way that keeps his curiosity alive. The Blood of Five Rivers is his first novel.
From the Back Cover
The Blood of Five Rivers tells the story of a young man named Kaka, born and raised in a small, rural farming village in the Indian province of Punjab. Seizing on a unique opportunity to leave India, and to seek his fortunes abroad, Kaka is catapulted into a journey in which he becomes an unwitting witness to some of the most significant historical events in the latter half of the 20th century, many of which leave an indelible mark on him.
Reviews
Not in any sense of the word will this narration be reliable. It won’t be reliable in the semantic sense because this is a story composed of memories that are not my own, memories excavated with bias, and too much separation from thesource fouls the purity of a thing. And neither will it be syntactically reliable, because my mind is constituted by all thevoices that have shaped it, all of them diametrically opposed, and they enter and leave as they please, coming and going with all their contradictions, inaccuracies, and idiosyncrasies.
How, then, to shine light on those stolen memories and to harness those voices into a cohesive whole? It’s no simple affair, so I’ll have to use all the tools at my disposal, all the structures of knowledge I have access to, each a lens offering a unique insight—the world witnessed through my five senses, the testimony of my ancestors, the revered fictions of creased and yellowed novels, and the tangled outcomes of foreign histories. This is the burden I bear—the task of communicating this story by any means necessary.
But even in this I know I will fall short, because the past is not available to us like some vast reservoir. We cannot view it as we do an endless ocean from the shore, to see the high crests of our victories and to peer into the nebulous depths of our failures. Our experience is rather limited. We view the past through peepholes, narrow telescopes that display barely moving vignettes, and we give them colour through the tint of our emotions, but we can never recreate the picture as it truly was. As we look back, we see a world tainted by the transience of our present circumstances. We are voyeurs of things we can hardly understand.
Which brings me to the pressing question: If the task is so near impossible, why bother? Well, for one, because “understanding” has never been the point of remembering. Memories sit stubbornly in the mind not because they are accurate but because they are malleable—shapeshifters ever ready to change their form in service of whatever end wecan imagine. And it is because of this that we can use them as raw materials in the construction of a story that offers some feeble fulfillment of that desperate desire for meaning.
Yet, aside from this general and theoretical justification, I am also driven by a more personal motivation. You see, this particular story has become something of an inescap- able compulsion for me. It cycles though my head, again and again, and like a disregarded barfly or an old miser aban- doned at a retirement home, I find myself rehearsing these lines as if an enigmatic young journalist might sit next to me one day, and ask: “So what’s your deal?”
In that sense, perhaps the goal is simply to unburden myself, to objectify these words, like etchings on a tombstone, so they exist outside of me, so they can consecrate the use- less remains of something once living. Or maybe there is no point at all, in which case allow me to go forth with a con- ceited hope—a wilful denial of the presciently obvious—that the purpose of this exercise will be revealed at its conclusion. In the meantime, I’ll turn my attention to something more practical: The beginning. And where else to begin but a birth—not of a child, but something grander and more clearly defined than a human being. For now, we focus our
attention on the birth of a nation.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Not in any sense of the word will this narration be reliable. It won’t be reliable in the semantic sense because this is a story composed of memories that are not my own, memories excavated with bias, and too much separation from thesource fouls the purity of a thing. And neither will it be syntactically reliable, because my mind is constituted by all thevoices that have shaped it, all of them diametrically opposed, and they enter and leave as they please, coming and going with all their contradictions, inaccuracies, and idiosyncrasies.
How, then, to shine light on those stolen memories and to harness those voices into a cohesive whole? It’s no simple affair, so I’ll have to use all the tools at my disposal, all the structures of knowledge I have access to, each a lens offering a unique insight—the world witnessed through my five senses, the testimony of my ancestors, the revered fictions of creased and yellowed novels, and the tangled outcomes of foreign histories. This is the burden I bear—the task of communicating this story by any means necessary.
But even in this I know I will fall short, because the past is not available to us like some vast reservoir. We cannot view it as we do an endless ocean from the shore, to see the high crests of our victories and to peer into the nebulous depths of our failures. Our experience is rather limited. We view the past through peepholes, narrow telescopes that display barely moving vignettes, and we give them colour through the tint of our emotions, but we can never recreate the picture as it truly was. As we look back, we see a world tainted by the transience of our present circumstances. We are voyeurs of things we can hardly understand.
Which brings me to the pressing question: If the task is so near impossible, why bother? Well, for one, because “understanding” has never been the point of remembering. Memories sit stubbornly in the mind not because they are accurate but because they are malleable—shapeshifters ever ready to change their form in service of whatever end wecan imagine. And it is because of this that we can use them as raw materials in the construction of a story that offers some feeble fulfillment of that desperate desire for meaning.
Yet, aside from this general and theoretical justification, I am also driven by a more personal motivation. You see, this particular story has become something of an inescap- able compulsion for me. It cycles though my head, again and again, and like a disregarded barfly or an old miser aban- doned at a retirement home, I find myself rehearsing these lines as if an enigmatic young journalist might sit next to me one day, and ask: “So what’s your deal?”
In that sense, perhaps the goal is simply to unburden myself, to objectify these words, like etchings on a tombstone, so they exist outside of me, so they can consecrate the use- less remains of something once living. Or maybe there is no point at all, in which case allow me to go forth with a con- ceited hope—a wilful denial of the presciently obvious—that the purpose of this exercise will be revealed at its conclusion. In the meantime, I’ll turn my attention to something more practical: The beginning. And where else to begin but a birth—not of a child, but something grander and more clearly defined than a human being. For now, we focus our
attention on the birth of a nation.
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
Search results for The Blood of Five Rivers
Seller Image
The Blood of Five Rivers
Seller: moluna, Greven, Germany
Seller rating 5 out of 5 stars
Condition: New. KlappentextKaka, born and raised in a small, rural farming village in the Indian province of Punjab, seizes a unique opportunity to leave India and seek his fortunes abroad. He is soon catapulted into a journey in which he becomes an . Seller Inventory # 906296305
Buy New
US$ 28.08
US$ 57.09 shipping
Ships from Germany to U.S.A.
Ships from Germany to U.S.A.
Quantity: 4 available