Surahbhi reviews Madhuri’s latest book, subtitled Motorbiking in the Himalayas in the Name of Love
When Madhuri asked if I would write a review of her new book, Reluctantly to Kunzum La, I was delighted. I had edited a previous book of hers and really enjoyed it – her writing, insights, humour and general take on life.
I hoped that the book was as alive and quirky as the cover… and I wasn’t disappointed!
Madhuri is first and foremost a poet. For me this means that she doesn’t point directly at a thing, but comes to it from an angle, so that the reader doesn’t just understand and visualise the place or person but feels and experiences it or them. Thus, this book is not just a journal, but a real journey that you go on together.
But Madhuri isn’t only a poet; she is also a deep-sea diver into life, into who she is moment by moment.
The honesty, humour and humility with which she does this (and in my experience these qualities can only be present with the self-love earned from years of shedding all that isn’t love) means that anything she writes about becomes something worth reading!
As she says at the end of the journal:
‘…And it’s true, this is not a hardy-mountaineer book at all. I love that sort of book — but this just isn’t one.’
So putting aside any ideals or judgements about how one should or could go about such an expedition into the Himalayas, this book is a raw account of ‘what is,’ and what was encountered and revealed in the high altitudes of these ever-present giants, under challenging and unpredictable circumstances.
Madhuri quotes a therapist with whom she worked for many years, which I find sums things up perfectly:
‘Let’s just put aside for the moment what it should be like… you can return to that later if you like. But for now, let’s look at it so: It is like this.’
‘…So no matter how it should have been or how I should have been, it was like that…’
From this standpoint many insights become available, and these Madhuri shares with the reader.
One such one which I found wonderful, but which may not be agreeable to all (and that’s fine!):
‘…But I do see sentimentality as a particularly German-conditioned way to balance brutality — even, strange as it might seem, just a roughness of judgement…’
In general I found the journal full of gems and richness, and I also laughed out loud, nodded my head in agreement: ‘Yup, I’ve been there too!’ and in moments had to stop and think about something she has written, questioning… does it feel like this to me?
She describes in detail the clothes she chooses to put on that day, the way an old lady is dressed, the face of a child, what the travellers ate that evening; making the experience alive and earthy as well as deep and profound.
Madhuri has a comfortable way with the paradoxes of life; how much of what we love we also hate or abhor in some way.
As a lover of India she also can look the filth, grime, callous attitudes towards the environment, etc, straight in the eye and dislike it… and still, simply observe it and her own reaction to it.
‘… the whole pungent crowded disorder that is India…’
‘…outside of the mind of her (India’s) tradition-bound, woman-bashing, vast-outdoor-toilet culture…’
I find that this gives all of her writing a depth and realness.
And in amongst the sweaty, stinky, far from perfect humanity: hers, her partner’s, the group’s, and all the people they meet – is the constant magnificent nature, of the biggest mountains on earth. And the scenery that she transports the reader to can be felt as well as imagined.
‘…this is the province of rock, size, distance, and falling water. All big, big, not caring who dies in it, not caring that a falling being would be like a pebble gone dizzy down, down, voice hushed forever amongst the endless up-flung weights of them (the mountains)…’
The book peaks during a gruelling hike where Madhuri describes so well a breakthrough, a transformation even, as a new energy comes in from who knows where.
‘I felt parts of me rising behind my closed eyes, others falling; a kind of mingling, as if this gargantuan effort at this altitude — the effort of the body only, for the will was somehow gone — was sending me into some delicious totalities inside…’
All through the journal there is a sense of intimacy with the reader as the author welcomes you into her world – as if you are chatting with a close friend, the kind who has nothing to hide from you, who can bare their soul, laugh at themselves, speak in a voice of passion, then quietly whisper a sacred moment.
While all the time, some distance from it all, the observer makes it everyone’s story in some way.
‘When I write I am an observer – of myself as much as the other, or the place, time, mood.
‘An observer allows what she sees…’
I take away with me many things from reading Madhuri’s journal: insights, new ways of looking at life, and the glorious feel of that land.
I am forever grateful to any writer who can put into words something that I only know, feel, sense deep down but can’t find a way to articulate – and a poet such as she is simply points towards this mystery and magic without reducing it in any way.
‘What matters anyway is not the outward circumstance and the drama thereof, but the light which penetrates down through things… however it comes.’
Reluctantly to Kunzum La
Motorbiking in the Himalayas in the Name of Love
by Madhuri Z K Akin
Paperback and colour hardback
Independently published, 3 July 2024, 347 pages
ISBN: 9781446110393
Links to buy: madhurijewel.com/KunzumLa
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