AN IRWIN Allan Sealy book is an event. His last was Red: An Alphabet in 2006. In the book, Dehradun, where he lives, appears as Dariya Dun and artists, starting with Matisse, rule. Since Sealy doesn?t write as regularly?this, his seventh, is his first book in eight years?his fans are always left wanting more. Now, he is back, indulging his legion of followers with a book, which he calls an almanac. The Small Wild Goose Pagoda is exactly how he describes an almanac: ?The Almanack is for Everyman. On whom the sun shines with equal vigour everywhere and on whom the rain rains without partisan wetness. In recent times it has been demoted to a yearbook, a treasury of facts, but fancy was an important part of old almanacks: poems, stories, riddles, advice, all found a home in that rattlebag.?
So poems, illustrations, riddles and advice all find their way into the Sealy almanac of non-fiction, Dehradun no longer Dariya Dun. In the process, he also allows us more than a peek into his home? the 433 square yards of it?and life. ?We live in a small brick house in Dehradun, in the foothills of the Himalayas. One and a half bedrooms, two and a half gardens, front, back, and side (three, if you count a piece of public land outside the front boundary, fenced in and planted with trees), an old Fiat, an Internet link with the world, and a terrace roof for walking on under the sky…We have 433 square yards of India,? he writes.
What follows is a natural and social history of this piece of land. We learn about the trees?rosewood, litchi, pear, Mexican silk cotton, ?the first pumpkin flower jolts with its ten thousand volts??and the birds, from the cuckoo and evil parrot to the noisiest tailor bird. And, once the setting is clear, we go along with Sealy, as he embarks on building a pagoda on his portico, apprenticed as he is to the clever bricklayer Habilis. We meet the others, too, who are regulars here: Dhani, the head gardener; Habilis? interesting girlfriend Beauty, who is also part of his workforce; and Victor, Habilis? assistant.
Wordmeister Sealy draws us into his inner world?daughter Filo, lovingly called Tochter, wife Maeve and his father, a retired police officer, flit in and out of the 433 square yards, as Sealy, turning 60 years old, looks back at his life. Focusing on the four stages that marked an ideal life in classical times, he goes from being a householder to a forest-dweller.
It?s not an easy book to read, but then Sealy?s books are like trees, branching off in many directions. With The Small Wild Goose Pagoda, Sealy?s readers will particularly cherish five pages (under Stocktaking) where the writer has a dialogue with the Inquisitor, a ?hooded figure?: ?The problem is you?ve got out of the way of writing,? the Inquisitor tells the writer, who retorts: ?It?s this pagoda. It?s made a note-taker of me. Scribbling in between building a set of steps and cutting out a tin goose.? You come upon this exchange on December 31. What better way to end the year than stocktaking?
Even as he must gradually learn ?how to walk away? and be like an ascetic, the drama of small-town life has to be faced: ?Power gone early today. By some miracle a trickle of water into the tanks?. The recent trip to China doesn?t make it easier to understand the Indian way of doing things. Sealy talks about the two Chinese gods in his home: a folding aluminium stepladder and a Trek bicycle with a lament, ?when will we make such things?? There are no easy answers to that, but a pagoda has been built on 433 square yards, not a replica, but a tribute to a small wild goose pagoda in China?s Xian.
Sudipta Datta is a freelancer