Kuano nadi, sankri, neeli, shaant/Jaane kab hogi aachitij, laal, uddhaam, Bahut gareeb hai yeh dharti/Jahan yeh behti hai.
– Sarveshwar Kuano river, thin, blue, calm/When will it spread to the horizon, turn red, turbulent/very poor is this land where it flows.
– translated by Amitava Kumar
I remember the first time I came into the USA. It was also the first time I had ever boarded an airplane. The immigration officer looked at the visa page on my passport. Then he looked up and asked what I was in the US for. I am going to graduate school, I tell him. He turns around and shouts to the officer in the next cubicle, "Looks like the whole world is going to school in America." It may have been his attempt at livening up a boring day but to me it did not sound welcoming at all. And then he proceeds to write F-1 on the immigration form. I froze. I had a J-1 visa. I had been warned—any mistakes could have serious repercussions. After a moment's hesitation, I piped up: "Excuse me, I have a J-1 visa." "Smart aleck, huh!" he comments. "Yes, a darned sight smarter than you," I felt like screaming but didn't. What would he know of my plans, my hopes and my fears. All he knew about me was what was in my passport.
It is what is missed out in one's passport that Amitava Kumar explores in his Passport Photos. The book is a charming, exhilarating, thought-provoking attempt at understanding and speaking about the immigrant experience in an "undeniably personal and political way". In the author's own words, "The book is a forged passport. It is an act of fabrication against the language of government agencies." The book, therefore, is structured into sections that correspond to the catego-ries in a real passport. Name, place of birth, date of birth, … This novel format when interspersed with evidence of Kumar's multiple talents and occupations—melli-fluous poetry, skillful language, great photographs—and his passion makes for a great read. Each section shuttles the reader between the diaspora and the home country, between literary theory and political economy, between Bertolt Brecht and Gulzar. Kumar follows (and quotes) Edward Said's suggestion that "since the main features of our present existence are dispossession, dispersion, and yet also a kind of power incommensurate with our stateless exile, I believe that essentially unconventional, hybrid and fragmentary forms of expression should be used to represent us."