Burying the typewriter : Childhood under the eye of the secret police

Burying the typewriter

Childhood under the eye of the secret police

By Carmen Bugan

Picaodor, 2012, 235 pages with appendices

I bought this book from Book Sale at a super steal price of ten pesos without any doubt that it would steal my heart. I am delighted that it did. Of course, the tag is secondary to why I picked this one up because the title lent mystery to it and so mainly, the title caught my attention. I love the visuals attachef to title which refers to a machine that is now buried dead by computers and cellphones as means of communication. And there is some kind of homage in the title to the freedom of expression. Of all defects of democracy I suffer because we are not human if our freedom is repressed. Then comes the secondary title which gives me a bird's eyevew that this book must be about childhood in times of repression of the freedom to express.

It turns out, Carmen Bugan mainly transported me to her childhood in Romania which has beauty in its community and traditions and flowers and trees, even birds. I love how her sweet innocence fill the pages seamlessly. There is pain and naivite when she talks about the passion and determined heart of her father for the country but she astonishingly make you see that they are all secondary to her pressing need to be a child.  She transported me to Romania by happily walking through a breezy field when in fact, tornado is just near the vicinity, given the political milieu at the time.

And what came to mind when I was reading was  Angela's Ashes, a memoir from a favorite Frank McCourt which tells of a painful suffering through wit and humor through the eyes of a child, that you will laugh and cry while reading.

How the author became a poet and writer can easily be gleaned from the fact that she found solace in many books -Romanian authors and the classics - she reads when freedom of movement was deprived from her and the fact that her mother is the first audience of her poems. 

Way before the author was born, her father was already an activist fighting for democratic rights in a communist society. When her father saw the injustice in the lack of food and electricity in communist Romania, instead of going with the flow, he does personal campaign to awaken the people to clamor. He bought two typewriters, one is tagged by the national security and used by the family -- author Carmen typing her early poems and her mother typing food inventories -- while the other which is untagged is buried in the yard after every use  by the author's parents to type campaign materials each night.

Present Romania should be privileged and proud to have a memoir like this to be out, and should thank the author Carmen Bugan who is a celebrated poet and a professor. 

As for us who grew up in a democratic society, let us be reminded not to give up defending human rights, or allow to wholly lose it like drops of water escaping from a full tub. Just because we bathe in waters of freedom, it does not mean it can't run dry one day if we don't pay attention.