Review: An Area of Darkeness by V.S.Naipaul

Few books have been as incriminating about India and Indians. From the moment of his arrival in Bombay, anything and everything seems to upset him. Sir Vidia's first travelogue in his ancestral land is an honest and no-holds-barred account of what he saw in India. He is utterly distressed by everything about India, from the babu-dom of Bombay to the orange robed sadhus of Benares, from the unethical businessman to the prostrating beggars.

Hindu philosophy preaches detachment from life and in turn leads to fatality. This fatality offers a certain disconnect from everyday life. Hence everyone fulfills only his duty. A businessman is expected to make money, even by dishonesty. A stenographer is expected to take notes, but not to type. In Trinidad Naipaul was aware of his caste but he is surprised by the Indian obsession with caste and purity. It is to the caste system, he attributes this sense of duty and withdrawal.

Indians, he argues, are a people without a sense of history or even reality. The tales are timeless and the ruins are everywhere. He sees India as a country, where political power has always been in the hands of a foreign military power. Reality is so complicated and harsh that, the nation became more archaic and withdrew from any responsibility of governing itself. He is surprised at the very Indian obliviousness to poverty and basic lack of hygiene in public spaces.

Naipaul's visits to India happen at curious times. His first visit coincided with the China war of 1962, his second with the Emergency of 1975 and his third during the late 1980s which came before an economic crisis. An Area of Darkness is a dark, brutal, yet honest account of India.

Review: Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh

In Sea of Poppies dance becomes nautch, look becomes dekko and reliable is pukka. The setting is the British India of 1838. English mixes synchronously with Hindi, Bhojpuri and Bengali. Years ago, reading Gone with the Wind, I marveled at Margaret Mitchell's juggling of a southern accent and heavy Negro English. Here Ghosh does something even better. A colonial Englishman's indianised verbatim is juxtaposed with an American's English. The Frenchwoman's English is painfully strewn with Bengali words and it is the upper caste gomusta who speaks the language to perfection.

The trade of opium and the girmityari system are the explosive themes that move the novel. India is the producer, East India Company is the transporter and China is the consumer of this drug that defines the history of the nations. In this historical setting, a plethora of characters from an upper caste woman running away with a lower caste man, an American mulatto on the Ibis, a French biologist's daughter, a bankrupt Raja mingle and become jahaj-bhais.

Each charecter has its own life and the story is moving in so many different directions, but they end up reaching the same destination, the Ibis. On this ship, girmityars travel to the island of Mauritius. Ghosh takes delight in writing a book that is only half the story, the rest is the historical setting of the Indian subcontinent and China.

Whether it is the play with mulitple languages, the description of characters and their lives, the trade of opium, the impending war with China, or the complex societal setting the eighteenth century India, Ghosh excels on every front. Only the ending is abrupt and makes you wait for the next edition of the Ibis trilogy.

It is amazing how globalisation alters lives, Madhu Kalua becomes Maddow Colver. It is also probably how some of Sir Vidia's characters from A House For Mr Biswas acquired their names. Bishweshwar becomes Bissessar and Shyama becomes Shama.

Review: Alchemy of Desire by Tarun Tejpal

He had all the feathers but no cap.

A Review for Mr Biswas

A House for Mr Biswas is a compassionate yet unsympathetic portrayal of the simple and unremarkable life of Mohun Biswas. Based mostly on his father's life in Trinidad during the 30s and 40s, Naipaul describes the life of a perennial loser. The story in itslef moves forward with a montonous undertone, no twists, no surprises, just a mundane life. But in this mundaneness lies a wealth of charecters and their relationships.

Biswas grows up without a home to call his own. He doesnt share love for his mother and even his marriage, in his own words, is a "cat in the bag affair". Shama, his wife, accepts him as her fate and displays no outward feeling of love. Biswas openly rebels against his mother-in-law, Mrs Tulsi and her brother Seth. He refuses to assimilate into the genteel din of the Tulsi household. Without a proper means of living he is forced to live on the generosity of the Tulsi family.

He considers himself trapped in a limiting society and openly blames the Tulsis for his situation. One sentence clearly captures his predicament, "He was married for life and only death would change his situation". But he reads alot and believes himself to be good with words. After a multitude of failed jobs, he lands up as a reporter for the Trinidad Sentinel, a local paper which relies more on fun facts than real news.

It is with his son, Anand that Biswas shares a real friendship. He takes pride and joy in Anand's success at school. Biswas's life long yearning is to own a house, for he fears loss of dignity even in death, among the squalor of the Tulsis. Even the World War II does not seem to change his position for the better or worse. It is only towards his end that he is able to buy house. This gives Mr Biswas all the joy, in spite of acquiring a huge debt.

Naipaul's comic portrayal of characters and cold assessment of life in a small Indian community in Trinidad offers wonderful insights. He portrays a people whose only source of identity is their caste which has little relevance in their present country or in their daily life. Biswas represents the beauty of the mundane and the aspirations of those who live in limiting societies.