Jackal's orchard (a novel) and in the muses' labyrinth: discovering the configurations of a creative process

ABSTRACT My novel, Jackal’s Orchard, fictionalises the communal tensions arising from the likely social and cultural changes in a Bangladeshi village because of the impact of globalisation. Isolated and resistant to progress, the village of Jabalpur is stagnant in its ways and has not seen any significant progress since the partition of India. The villagers suspiciously view the government’s rural development program, which includes building a bridge across the Padma River, a medical clinic and a sealed road for traffic. In addition, a British-owned multinational spice company seeks to build a factory on a tract of high land in the village. A tenacious Afghani fundamentalist, Jalaluddin Chisti, wants that same piece of land to establish an Islamic school. This adds to the tension in the village. Caught in the conflict is one of the company’s young, junior executives, Ashraf Siddiqi, who has been entrusted with the responsibility of negotiating to buy the land from Jabalpur’s oldest resident, Abu Taher. The turmoil in Ashraf’s personal life (his impending divorce and a fractious relationship with his demanding father) makes him determined for professional advancement, by striving for a promotion which will reward him with significantly better remuneration. Abu Taher refuses to sell his land, but his kindness and compassion for the young man, particularly after Ashraf is attacked and assaulted by Jalaluddin Chisti’s followers, marks the beginning of a gradual change in the executive. Prompted by the altruism of his doctor friend, Nafees Mahruf, who has left a lucrative medical position in Britain to return to Bangladesh and practice his profession, Ashraf finds that he has to compromise between his career ambition and his guilt about the perceived damage to the village culture. A takeover of the British company by an Indian spice manufacturer and Abu Taher’s death and the usurpation of his land heighten the crisis. Ashraf seeks to resolve the dilemma on a personal level by arranging to adopt the old man’s grandson, Rahim, as well as accepting the offer of CEO of the restructured company. The exegesis examines the creative process that led to the final drafting of Jackal’s Orchard. The analysis not only scrutinises the theoretical aspects of creativity and their relevance to the process that resulted in the evolution of my novel, but also investigates the cultural factors, such as the experience of diaspora, pluralistic identity, estrangement and the role of imagination on memory, that significantly influence the creativity of migrant writers. Finally, the exegesis traces the genesis and progress of the novel through its different stages and concludes that there cannot be a set of guidelines that can be used as a template for creativity. A process is unique to each piece of creative writing and develops organically from within the work itself. [Appendix pages 145-147 are blank]