Flights by Olga Tokarczuk

Flights by Olga Tokarczuk may not be appropriate here to bring into focus these days when everyone is being advised to stay at home and avoid travelling. This book is about travelling , pilgrimage and mobility. Olga says that travelling is civilization and it is barbaric to not to travel around. If  barbaric man  goes anywhere it is only to attack. Living is travelling and reality is mobility. An essay on travel pschycology finds place here. This novel is  not about inspiration compassion and guidance to those who has lost his soul. But this novel has many things and raises many voices which are usually silent in most of writings . Within the precinct of four hundred plus pages one gets to have a panoramic view of humanity and its many colours and of course a big chunk of the world. 

Flights is not a conventional novel where you get to read a story of a person or persons and their fate. This is a book with many  narratives which are dissimilar and unconnected to each other. Each of the narrative is complete, they stand alone. In between the narratives there are essays, memoirs, anatomy and these insertions are not there either for support or negation of them. They do not reflect anything on any of the stories. But these memoirs and essays form part of fiction and as asserted elsewhere a reader need not be concerned with reality or otherwise of this work. The basic tenet of fiction writing is that it is  creative and and is only a mimicry of reality and not reality itself. Flights is a creative writing and therefore the reader is made to realize as such by the author.

 Reading this novel is like watching satellite television with a remote on your hand and surfing different channels. This in fact is a technique often employed in postmodern fiction. Postmodern fiction writer Thomas Pynchon has used this technique in his novel Vineyard. Each chapter open up with new characters and memoirs,  essays of different time and period and from different places. There are narratives with unnamed characters while others with a proper identify and identification. Characters are of different ethnicities, historical period and of completely different classes. The constant flux of themes and narratives make this novel a tough reading. But if one patiently trudges through it is very rewarding at the end.

Olga is not a nationalist and the narratives here clearly vindicates her point of view. She is from Poland but the narratives, memoirs and essays cover multiple nations, culture and civilizations. Multiculturalism is her ouvre in this text. She is against colour conciousness and embraces broader humanity. The characters in her narratives have parentage from diverse ethnicity. 

The story of  17th century Dutch anatomist Philip Verheyen titled "Ash Wednesday Feast"  is melancholic and scary. He loses one of his leg.  But he likes to keep his amputed leg which has now  been preserved  in a glass jar. He feels that his separated leg is in pain and he suffers with it. Though separated from his body but he thinks it should be cremated along with him when he dies There is a macabre scene of human disection performed in full view of big audience. People attend this after buying ticket as if it is a theatre or some musical show. This narrative turns grotesque when after the anatomical dissection completed all the participants are served with delicious lunch. 

From the 18th century there is a story of a slave who becomes courtier during the reign of Emperor Francis I in Austria. The courtier is survived by his daughter who pleades the Emperor to allow his  father to be given a proper burial as the body had been preserved for display in museum. With the body not given burial his soul will not  be liberated. When she does not receive response from the Emperor inspite of reminders she gets angry and says "I will follow , my lord, like a voice from the darkness even when I die"

Chopin died in 1849 and his sister transports his heart from Paris to Warsaw, Poland, as he was a Polish. This heart rending story is from 19th century.

An elderly woman  in her sixties receives an invitation from her ex lover. It was long ago that they were together when they were young and now she is married happily and well settled in her life but she still loved this man. When she receives a mail from him she decides to meet him. After many hours of flight and bracing icy cold weather of northern Poland she meets him. But she finds him old, sick and almost immobile and on the verge of desthbed. She touches and takes care. He had no wife to take care of him and he was being looked after by his sister. He was unhappy. This is the tale from 20th century. 

From the 21st century stories we find stories of Kunicke and Anushka. Kunicke's wife and child disappears mysteriouly in an island in Croatia where they had gone on holiday. Anushka is an unhappy woman from Russia. She had given birth to a physically challenged child and her husband does not love her.

Flights is also a powerful counter writing to patriarchy and strong narrative of feminism. This line which is from a character surprised me as it echoes our own Parijat writing in her novel Blue Mimosa. "men needed women more than women needed men. In fact......women could get along perfectly fine without men altogether." Compare this with Parijat writing half century earlier " to germinate for oneself, to bloom for oneself , to die oneself  only "( आफ्नो निम्ति फुल्नु, आफ्नै निम्ति फक्रिनु, आफू मात्र मर्ने , आफ्नो इच्छाले झर्ने ) Olga says that for men women are "highly useful breed of dog" only.

Hindu philosophy and culture find place through religico-philosophical terms like Sarira, Kaliyuga and items of culinary like samosa, kofta etc.

This is a novel of rarity and comes out of only such mighty pen once in ages.