Karsten Kelsey reacts to Bhanu Kapil’s recent BathHouse reading:
Liquid colors, fluid language, swirling imagery. Everything about Bhanu Kapil and her poetic work, Humanimal, brings to mind the image of water. I can only relate her piece to being swept along on your back in a gentle river, ears underwater and exposed to a world both foreign and mystifying.
The book can be difficult to comprehend. Based on Kapil’s studies delving into the case of two feral children in India circa 1920, it consists of separate narratives dissected and interspersed throughout one another. Even as she details the process taken to humanize Amala and Kamala, young girls raised with wolves, she dives headlong into their mindsets, allowing the reader to experience the two girls’ perspectives and forcing them to consider just what “humanize” actually means.
The snippets of recorded notes that document the girls’ treatment and progress are often brutally concise, to the point, and jarring. The simple matter-of-fact descriptions of such painful events are unnerving, bringing to mind the question of whether the girls or the captors themselves were the more savage. But outshining these sections are those in which we see glimpses through the eyes of Amala and Kamala. Wrought with sensational language and poetic descriptions based heavily on color, Kapil explores and embraces the animalistic.
The emotion behind the book is an indication of Kapil’s own thoughts, represented most strongly by the compelling bestial narratives. Lines are blurred and existence is laid bare; the very essences of what it is to be human and to be animal which, Kapil impresses, are essentially the same. To say that the book leads the reader to empathize with the concept of “humanimal”, the fusion of human and animal, would be an understatement.
Having observed and listened to Kapil herself, I immediately saw her reflected in her work. Both are something of an enigma initially, but are only made all the more fascinating because of it. In both cases I felt a need to try to absorb and comprehend everything that I could. After the brief audience I decided that she was one of the most eloquent human beings I’d ever met. Though speaking in conversation, her words were like something from a page of her book, flowing and smooth. What she revealed of her life and her past and her own inner workings captivated my full attention.
Though my initial reaction to Humanimal was fairly positive, the deal was sealed upon attending Kapil’s reading. The well-spoken author wrapped her tongue around the lines of her work and expelled them in a stream of provocative vision and enthralling grace. The language and colors within the book swept into my ears and drowned my mind in imagery, made more profound by Kapil’s deliberate voice. There was little visual performance during the reading but none was needed, and in fact I think that any such performance would have only drawn focus away from the spectacular auditory experience.
Humanimal is a book that thrusts itself into the reader’s mind with literary prowess and intriguing, thought-provoking concepts, bringing to light a dilemma that some may not have considered. But it is the author herself that truly brings it to life with an inspiring and refreshing delivery. So much so that rereading parts of the book on my own without her voice to accompany it is slightly disappointing to me now.