The reluctant fundamentalist is a strange and powerful little book. It’s clearly got some autobiographical elements in it, and because of that has manage to net some darting fishes of life that jump and flash and look up from their prison wondering what will happen to them. But the fisherman, Mohsin Hamid, has a heart, and won’t kill them; on the opposite, he’s willing to let them go back to their immense liquid world after he’s used their magic. So the reader watches this magic operate, and marvels at the freshness of the scenes, the clarity of the feelings, the truth of the colours. So gentle is this fisherman – or perhaps one should say, this fish breeder, because the little wild fishes he has caught grow and develop as we read – that his creatures perform what he wants them to do: they recognize his respect, they let themselves be tamed by him.

     They even love their net! What is the net? Mohsin Hamid’s first person monologue, sustained continuously from first to last page, whereas he’s supposed to be in a conversation with his interlocutor. That’s it, he’s engaged in a 200 page-long conversation with an unknown American visitor, to whom he’s telling the story of his life, and never makes this other person intervene. It’s sometimes artificial, because he’s not always very good at reformulating the other person’s remarks or reactions, so as to make them originate from his own logorrhoea; instead they sometimes turn out to be clumsy repetitions, and one wonders why he hasn’t wanted us to hear the other person’s voice! Well, that’s the book’s main trick. Who is Changez’s interlocutor? The question gathers momentum during the conversation; we feel the urge to hear him, to know his identity, his name, his purpose: we will be denied this relief.  

    On the other hand we know lots about Changez, the young Pakistani Princeton graduate who, now back in Lahore, tells his guest about his time in America, how he has brilliantly succeeded in his studies, was singled out among smart rivals and gets hired by one of the most prestigious New York finance companies. Changez, says his all-powerful mentor Jim, is a shark, he never ceases to swim, he’s constantly on the alert, and possesses tremendous powers of concentration and dedication. At 22, after a stupendous University record, he’s landed in the fiercely competitive waters of corporate New York, and he’s beaten all the natives, all the WASPs. They look at him with a mixture of disdain and envy, but he’s such a winner that his difference is disregarded in cosmopolitan New York. He feels at home there, in fact.

    The café conversation with the unnamed American also rolls on about Changez’s girlfriend, a lovely young Princeton graduate (I’d almost like to write “Princess”), with whom he goes to Greece that summer after they’ve all got their diplomas. She’s called Erica, and she’s a stunner, always surrounded by a crowd of admirers. But our young hero manages somehow to attract her attention, because he’s quieter, and she’s got a secret tragedy in her life that needs an attention which ordinary boyish physical adulation doesn’t or can’t give her. But she feels drawn to our young exile; his shyness, his gentleness win her slowly over. Back in New York, he learns she’s grieving the loss of her childhood boyfriend, who died from cancer. This death has shaken her so much that she’s under medication, and cannot commit; she needs friendship, not love.

     When we open “The reluctant fundamentalist” we are told of the importance of the narrator’s beard. He tries to ward off his listener’s alarm – says he – at seeing his beard. It must be some beard! We are in Lahore, Pakistan: so he’s a Muslim. In short, he’s our fundamentalist. But why reluctant? Does this reassure us? He says he “loves America”: not very reassuring. Yet, little by little, we do feel reassured. We are reassured by his story, by his character. One as much as the other, because confessing such a lengthy story shows a trust and a natural generosity which cannot but make us trust him in return. Changez may be a chatterbox, but he’s a believer in the power of words as a promoter of peace and confidence among peoples. Is his interlocutor’s silence a sign that this belief isn’t shared? What is sure, at any rate, is that because of his confession, we understand better what it is to be a “fundamentalist”. Changez is anything but what we would normally call a fundamentalist: a bigoted, short-sighted, intolerant ranter who cannot understand that humanity is plural and should remain thus. Fundamentalists never change: but he’s called “Changez”.

     But in fact this “fundamentalist” has learnt fundamentalism in America, where his company’s creed was to “concentrate on the pursuit of fundamentals”. These fundamentals are the firm’s overriding demand for efficiency and professionalism. So Mohsin Hamid makes it quite clear that we aren’t necessarily looking in the right direction when we turn our minds East, thinking of fundamentalism. A certain form of blind belief is involved in devoting all your energy in making sure American firms are the best and the most profitable of the planet. These white bright things are utterly convinced they are the best, they’re convinced they’re on a mission, that of intelligence and superiority, and that nothing less than total dedication is necessary if they want to justify their top-level recruitment. And all that is done in the name of a hidden God, the God of profitability and sound Finance.

     September 11, 2001 is the turning point in Changez’s narrative. Everything changes for him as from that date. First it makes his envied position as a shark in the high-flying NYC firm look more like a dartboard: being a Pakistani in post 9-11 New York wasn’t exactly a way to promote open multiculturalism. He starts getting bad looks, then threats and even if he’s protected by his bosses, it’s hard to fight against those “fundamentals”. Then things deteriorate with Erica. For her, the national disaster reactivates her own drama: death is again very close, and her depression worsens. They try to protect their budding love, but the forces within her are too strong, she drifts away from him, and is placed in an institution. Changez’s family at home in Pakistan tell him about the risks of war against the old arch-enemy, India, and he’s shocked to realize that the US are pulling the strings in the back. This is too much for him: here he is, working his ass off for a country that’s planning to bomb his country’s neighbours, and perhaps his very family! He slowly understands some fundamentals are wrongly positioned.

     But it isn’t that simple. Because everything he’d fought for so far had become his pride, his happiness, and his sense of achievement. He’d been living that goddamn American dream, that’s what. And when America gives, it isn’t with half a heart. He’s become an American, almost. America has been made thanks to guys like him. That’s where its strength comes from. That’s why it’s the world most powerful nation. He has believed in the Dream that all men… etc. America’s life-secret is that the river of kindness and hope has continued to mix its waters to the gigantic materialistic and individualistic estuary. One sign of this: while they’re talking at the café table, a beggar comes up, and our narrator approves the stranger’s principles not to give money to paupers in the street:

“Very wise: one ought not to encourage beggars, and yes, you are right, it is far better to donate to charities that address the causes of poverty than to him, a creature who is merely a symptom. What am I doing? I am handing him a few rupees – misguidedly, of course, and out of habit. There, he offers us his prayers for our well-being; now he is on his way.” (p. 45)

     Changez is “reluctantly” doing two opposite things at the same time: rationally encouraging the detachment from visible misery in order to keep his eyes on the wider picture which is that of the long-term solution, and emotionally pitying the real person who needs food, now, so he and his family can eat. This contradictory attitude symbolises his “fundamental” humanity. Because the contradiction is only apparent. The real contradiction is when one gives to be rid of the problem, or when one doesn’t give in order to escape the burn of poverty in a fellow human being, and when one justifies this by building rational excuses. Guys like Changez are the real Americans, those who believe in doing what’s right, those who have pledged their lives for freedom and who have died on the Normandy beaches. But not the rifle-toting, whiter than white, frightened isolationists who vote with their Chevrolet 4WD.

     In the fight against America inc., Changez wins the battle: he quits his golden job and returns to the nation where he really belongs, and thus regains a purpose which he had lost somewhere on the line when leaving for the States. He loses (Am)Erica, true, but then she was lost anyway. For me, Erica represents the weak spot in Changez’s strength of character. Not that he’s responsible for that weakness. But she’s the one thing he hasn’t been able to succeed in: she has eluded him, whereas he has succeeded everywhere else, including his indictment of neoliberal USA. Perhaps this failure helps picturing Changez as a less formidable figure; and his suffering and sacrifice brings him closer to us?

Mohsin Hamid

The white tiger is a rare genetic variation of the normally ochre-skinned feline that is both feared and respected as the king of animals in Asia. But it’s also a 2008 novel by Aravind Adiga which the press has acclaimed and which I’ve just finished reading. Somebody (The publishers weekly) said about it that it was “the perfect antidote to lyrical India”. Other books and films could claim that title, but it’s true that there is, especially in the West, a tendency to lyricize India, matlab, to romanticize it by raving about the colourful and exotic surface, and ignoring the harsher reality below. I’m sure I myself have been a blind victim to this illusion.

Well thanks to guys like Adiga (I would also like to mention writers like Rohinton Misty or Khaled Hosseini, who even if he’s an Afghani, depicts a society shown from the ground roots, which has much in common with Adiga’s. And let’s not forget earlier film-makers like Shyam Benegal), my eyes have opened, and it isn’t that I’ve forgotten about the more colourful iced top, but the cake has definitely acquired a richer and sourer taste. Quite normal, obviously. What Arvind Adiga has done is create a style, a voice and an urgency which all together compel to read and please the reader. And he has something to say. But first the style, the voice.

Balram Halwai, the main protagonist, is writing to Mr. Jiabao, China’s Prime Minister, but in reality, I am Mr. Jiabao, you are, we all are. Balram is telling us how India is now ready for companies from China to come and invest there, because newly set up entrepreneurs have cleared the way for them. People like himself, in fact! And we’re going to to see what it takes for India to become a land of opportunity and success stories to unfold. For those who know what violence is simmering under the silk chunnis and colourful saris, his portrayal of contemporary India will not come as a surprise, but others will shudder.

For Balram the underdog barks very well, and that’s his first asset. It’s very hard not to listen to him. Only masters can do that, by the way. Only masters can make sure that people listen to what they say without being interrupted. Balram is a sly guy too: he is really a master, and at the same time he makes you pity him, he takes the pitiful mien of the pauper, the village peasant boy. Well, in fact it’s sometimes that voice we hear, sometimes the other one, the entrepreneur’s voice. But he does that because he has a secret to share.

He’s clever, because he tells us that secret from the start: he’s killed his master, and he’s become a master himself, says he. But we don’t believe him, because he’s shut up in a room somewhere, and he’s busy dissecting a “wanted” poster where his name and particulars appear. It sounds like bravado, and somehow we fear that all this is going to end up badly, that he’s in a mess and they’ll catch him. Well, they don’t. Not only that, but he’s caught them for once. Incredible, but he’s made it. He’s actually gotten away with it, and the whole book tells Mr. Jiabao how he did it, starting from his childhood in the village and ending in that office full of chandeliers in Bengalore. Whew.

The first trick was that his father, a consumptive rickshaw-puller, wanted him to go to school and learn how to read and write. Detail? No, it’s the heart of the matter. He didn’t lack pluck and good fortune after that, but that was the essential move. The book makes it clear that education sets you apart in a way we have no idea in the West, where every youngster is crammed full of knowledge he doesn’t even know he’s knowledgeable about. Over there, if you can read, you can become a driver, you can be sent to the big city, and be noticed by the right people, be hired, and then move on little by little by edging those who can’t read or write.

And so Balram ends up replacing the older driver he’s ousted and driving the master and mistress in Delhi. He doesn’t quite understand what shady business they’re up to at first, but it certainly isn’t fair dealing, given the amounts of money in transaction that he sees while driving their carriers between banks and posh hotels. He gets to know the drivers’ gang, who slowly initiate him to ways by which he might be able to trick his master, and we of course start seeing the connection. What’s he going to do? Where does the murder fit in?

The hitch is that his master, M. Ashok, is a kind guy. Yes, incredible, he’s even his defender. For all the other rich, mobile touting passengers, that driver is barely a human being, he’s a slave at best, and sometimes hardly more than an animal. But M. Ashok is always there to vindicate him, and underline his basic loyalty, his honesty, his serviceability. When Balram is tempted to tell him his grievances, he suspects he wants a raise, and hands him money without hesitation. How on earth do you get rid of such a considerate master? And most of all, why would you want to get rid of him? Having been brought out of your village, into the capital, being paid handsomely (true, he normally has to send the money to his family, but well…), and being looked after by a humane master, what more on earth would you need? Wouldn’t any underdog believe he’s won his life’s worth of satisfaction?

Now you would only believe that (suggests Adiga) if you don’t know you’re a slave, if your father hasn’t sent you to school, where poetry has opened your mind to beauty, because, as the great Iqbal said “the moment you recognize what is beautiful in this world, you stop being a slave” (p. 236). You might have been brought out of the “Darkness” of your innocent village, out of the darkness of poverty (1) that of ageless ignorance and repetitiveness, into the “Light” of the city, where modernity rages with all its splendour and violence, you are still a slave, a nobody. As long as your master has a right of life and death on you, what are you?  Because that is the case for Balram, no matter how kind Mr. Ashok is. He belongs to a caste of thugs and profiteers who will forever be crushing people like drivers and servants. These are sub-humans who down deep, are expendable. Just like that cyclist whom Balram’s mistress hits and kills while driving the car, completely drunk, one night. Because of his considerate ways, Mr. Ashok is a sort of exception, but only a sort. He would never think of Balram as a potential equal in terms of humanity. Balram for him is not much more than a good dog.

At this point we have to introduce a particular theme which is half-bakedness. That’s what Balram calls himself, half-baked. The schooling he’s got is unfinished. He’s only half-baked, but also already half-baked, mind you. Some are completely raw. He has something missing, but something the others lack. He’s an intermediate product, and that accounts for his need to constantly feed on sources of information in order to become more complete and understand life better. This half-bakedness has probably protected him as much it has “buggered” him. It is as much a matter of luck as of progress; and if he’s regretting it in part, he’s made the most of it. He’s not formatted as some Indians have been, through history, to the point that they have adapted too much to the role-models they were aspiring to, and as a result, have changed nothing in the society. They fitted, so why should they? Balram, still half-raw from his village and the pain of his ancestors, and having been given some means of escaping, escapes. But he’s not been shaped into climbing the ladder the civilised way!

Another fantastic image Balram comes up with is that of the Rooster coop:

“The great Indian Rooster coop. Do you have something like it in China too? I doubt it, Mr Jiabao. Or you wouldn’t need the communist party to shoot people and a secret police to raid their houses at night and put them in jail like I’ve heard you have over there. Here in India we have no dictatorship. No secret police.

That’s because we have the coop.

Never before in history have so few owed so much to so many, Mr. Jiabao. A handful of men in this country have trained the remaining 99.9 percent – as strong, as talented, as intelligent in every way – to exist in perpetual servitude; a servitude so strong that you can put the key of his emancipation in a man’s hands and he will throw it back at you with a curse.” (p. 149)

He then gives the answers to the two questions: “Why does the rooster coop work? How does it trap so many millions of men and women so effectively?” and “can a man break out from the coop?” Here are the answers:

“the Indian family is the reason why we are trapped and tied to the coop, and if a man wants to break free, it means he is prepared to have every single member of his (always very large) family “destroyed, hunted down, and burned alive by the masters. That would take no normal human being, but a freak, a pervert of nature.

It would, in fact, take a white tiger. You are listening to the story of a social entrepreneur, sir.” (p.150)

Ooo… This is big stuff. If any political party, any intellectual, any social reformer starts touching to the sanctity of the Indian family, he’s in for big and lasting trouble. Balram doesn’t want any harm to his family, of course. He’s as trapped as all the others. He’s just a chicken in the coop, and he knows very well that his neck can be wrung any day, for any reason. But, he also knows that everybody has a neck, masters included. He’s away from the immediate contact and pressure of his family, and afraid to fall into its trap (they want him to marry, to become even more tied up in the coop). Balram cannot forget the freedom he’s already tasted, that’s the rub. He’s been allowed to savour that taste, and it cannot be shaken off. He watches everyone playing a role in and around the coop, but he knows that there must be a way out of it for him.

Balram’s story is that of a man who has become immune to the strange mimetic dream that locks up his fellow sufferers inside the coop. He’s in it too, but to him, it feels like a prison, whereas for them it is the normal state of affairs, and if they become chief rooster in the coop, they have succeeded in life. They are under a spell. That spell makes them believe it is their master alone who could free them from slavery: if they recognize their slavish condition, they have no other hope than look to him for their well-being. So they treat their masters well, and this way they will be well treated. The same sense of total loyalty inhabited those who believed in the meaning of the king before the French Revolution. The idea that the king was bad was normal: that was part of the frame. The king was the top peg that held society together. But some blasphemers spoke about getting rid of him, worse, beheading him! For those conservatives, the very fabric of reality was based on a hierarchy, not on equality. Thus the revolutionaries were seen as nihilists, because their opponents couldn’t imagine what reality would be like in a situation for which there was no reference any more, and which would force people to live on their own private resources (the sacred font of power having disappeared), and their conscience full of a heinous crime.

That is exactly what Balram will face up to. OK, you know he does kill his master, and I won’t tell you how it happens to preserve some suspense, but the sense of freedom that he feels after that is also a sense of transgression, that almost nobody before him has expressed so clearly, because of the age long submission of the slave to the master, of the poor to the rich. On his own, he has guillotined the king! He knows he has unleashed the Terror of reprisals too, and he doesn’t want to realize that too much (he avoids any source of information), but he probably tells himself that all revolutions have a bloody path, it can’t be helped. And he does run the risk of saving little Dharam, the boy his family had sent to him in Delhi to learn the ways of getting money, like Uncle Balram.

We are now in Bangalore. Having escaped the police, Balram uses the money he’s stolen to start a rental company. What sort of man has he become? How does he live with his crime? What sort of retribution will be his? One day, something happens. An accident. One of his drivers runs over a boy on a bicycle. What will he do? He’s now in the master position. This time he clears his driver, and shoulders the responsibility. We are still in India, mind you, and corruption being what it is, he doesn’t risk much. He has bought the town police, and is acting in certain respects exactly like his former masters. But a half-baked moral perspective is now present. He goes to see the dead boy’s family, and pays them a hefty sum as compensation. He therefore recognizes the humanity of the dead cyclist, and the ties which linked him to his family. Even if Balram is still the former villager he used to be, and his consideration might be put down to underdog solidarity, or even payback, this is something that the preying headless masters would never have done, on principle, for fear of beginning to lose their status of “protectors” of the poor and the weak.

The exciting perspective that we have at the end of The white tiger is therefore one where good comes out of a necessary evil, and where this evil can and perhaps must be seen as necessary. Freedom from an existing evil sometimes (often?) needs to take the path of evil, so that freedom can win. Sacrifice isn’t always the best way, says Adiga. Sometimes (often?) sacrifice is just slavery. The coherent response to violence is sometimes another violence, because the greater institutionalised violence cannot be changed by non-violent means any more. Now of course this will shock and pain many ahimsa proponents.  Yet, now that the codes of non-violence have entered the brains of violent dealers, now that Gandhi belongs to the institution, it is possible in India to pretend to be a Gandhian and benefit from the institutionalised violence (see Parshuramer Kuthar).

The trouble with Adiga’s initiative is that it advocates an individual, anarchic response in a society where the normal way towards reform is democracy. But he makes the clear point that India isn’t a working democracy. Nevertheless, it is hard to legitimate violent crime, and against a defenceless person, who is certainly guilty of certain crimes, but who hasn’t been tried legally. The book does it, and we must forget some of our western principles if we want to do justice to its purpose. Or rather, Balram’s story forces us to alter our standard understanding of justice? On the other hand, it would be tempting, perhaps, to condemn him for abusive individualism: he decides to take the money and run, knowing full well what will happen to all his family. He chooses a freedom which means also comfort and affluence; and he sacrifices his family, whereas he already knew a better fate than them. One could only endorse this if one has cut away from a certain humanity, no? Well, perhaps like all revolutionaries, that is Adiga’s message, you sometimes have to cut yourself off from a certain type of humanity in order to reach out to a better one.

Only problem, the rarity of white tigers.

“You young man, are an intelligent, honest, vivacious fellow in this crowd of thugs and idiots (said the inspector coming to Balram’s school for a surprise inspection. In any jungle, what is the rarest of animals, one that comes along only once in a generation?

I thought about it a little and said:

“The white tiger”

“That’s what you are, in this jungle.” (p. 30)

A very thoughtful parallel is made by Jabberwock between Adiga's novel and Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist: go check it out!

Memories of rain, by Sunetra Gupta (1993) is a dark jewel of a book, a sombre and dense memorial stone made of darkness and yearning, frustration and anger. We are inside a sort of cenotaph: a young Bengali woman’s stream of consciousness and we never get a chance to hear anything else than her voice and the poetry which often resounds in the vault. It’s gloomy in a sense, but the prose is so dense and palpable that – as an unborn child waiting for birth - one is lulled and fed by its rhythm and texture. Sometimes you gasp for breath, but then, as opposed to the narrator, you can lay down the book and return to it later! I have to say that I have had trouble finishing the 200p novel: it isn’t long, but so little happens that one is at first unsettled and has to adapt. In fact everything has already happened, and what we read is the tremendous impact of what has happened.

She’s called Moni, and one day, during the Calcutta monsoon, Anthony, a drenched young Englishman, her brother’s friend, enters her house and life, and gets caught by her heavy aura of darkness. Like a satellite he is held prisoner by the gravitational pull of a dark star he hadn’t seen as he was cruising by. They marry, and she’s flown away to Bristol, England, where a short-lived period of agonized lust takes place, an Moni, keeping company to her dull mother-in-law, waits every day for Anthony to return from London. She bears a child, but soon their relationship deteriorates, and Anthony meets with Anna, a poet’s daughter and physically Moni’s contrary. The passion which starts between Anthony and Anna is the story’s main event. Moni now revolves around the two bright stars in a desperate orb of darkness and frustration. What she feels and thinks about while suffering because of them is the substance of the book.

Moni’s tragedy is that she’s a doomed woman, engulfed in a destiny of resignation and self-abasement; she cannot shout out, she cannot rebel and plead; she’s made to accept from the start, to resign herself to whatever happens to her, and we as readers watch as disconsolately what she is unable to change as much in front of her as within her, in the sediments of feminine behaviour that she’s made of. Here’s an extract from the book:

She will steal away like a sorry child, without dignity, she cannot confront him, the language of their love was silence, but now the space between them is dull with forgotten emotion, she cannot use silence to convey her pain, they stand upon Parliament Hill, the child unravelling her kite, Anna’s hair shimmering like a net upon the morning wind, the smoky profile of the city stretches out in the distance, she is still a stranger to this land, she watches the dark lust upon his eyes as they twist about in the sea of pale gold that blows upon his face, her hair, she reaches out for his trembling hand, he looks round in surprise, she has not reached for him in many years, she takes his quivering hand in hers, she will know the depth of his desire, she will feel the keenness of his lust, she will intercept the waves of passion that roll towards the emerald eyes, she must remember how much he once loved her to enjoy the prospect of leaving him, for she will not have the pleasure of his despair, she must steal away, when he would least suspect, in the few holy hours before a birthday party… (p.98-99)

This is in fact what Moni will do, this is the only action she will be capable of: slide back to her old place in her parents’ home, get back to her world, to her ring of safety and balance, where the forces that have played upon her and jolted her numb are no longer felt, where poetic oblivion can once again engulf her and soothe her like a child. Moni is as much a woman as a child; her femininity is omnipresent, her body and desires are heavy and rapturous, yet her will is childlike, strangely she can accomplish and impose nothing. In front of her husband’s desire, she submits; in front of his mistress, she submits, and all she needs is to remember, to live her feelings in the past and in song. If she had fought against her rival, God knows what would have happened. But all she can summon is that silent retreat away from him, because she knows he’s involved in an absolute of reality that she can’t even name for herself. He at least knows this absolute, even if she hates him for it. And yet, no, she doesn’t hate him. Not any more. What she feels is that numb distance, that frigid friendliness with darkness, whom she says has been her friend ever since she was little. We see her at times making strange love to this darkness, opening her body to it…

So the paradox and strange attraction at the centre of this story is  a mixture of powerlessness and intensity: she's transfixed, like the toad her brother wanted to anaesthetize and dissect, but on the other hand, it is Moni who creates, she’s the one who magnifies, who churns love into beauty, light into night, song into silence. What Anthony (and everybody else around her) has done is merely at the surface. She inhabits the immense caves of emptiness. The sombre, black-blue beauty we are washed into comes out of her only. It’s sometimes hard to see its colour, but when you do see it, Anna’s golden hair and green fairy eyes are just speckles of day which the huge Monsoon is about to swallow. Moni the dark witch, the drowned queen, the Mermaid of memory, has a power which can hurt no one, but which makes her utterly ill-adapted to the grassy playfulness of human frivolities. No wonder her prince left her to her depths. Having been caught by the spell of her moist black hair, he has quickly let go, and surfacing, has dabbled in the shiny beauty of Anna’s sunniness. She was his truth.

Not everybody will like Memories of rain. Critics say it is indebted to Virginia Woolf’s famous style of writing, but it also probably has the idiosyncrasies of the first novel that it is. Wading through it, I was wondering whether it could possibly become a movie, and I found myself answering yes, surprisingly enough, provided the director could transpose some of its thickness, some of its “glueyness”. I’m sure they are ways to recreate the feeling of hopeless imprisonment that pervades the story, along with its magnificent exploration of the realms of dark femininity. Moni could be interpreted by warm and stubborn Tabu, who has the sombre quality needed, as well as the voluptuousness; then Anthony might be any light-skinned actor, but who would have to have the intelligence and perceptiveness of a sophisticated Englishman!

Well! I’m pleased to announce that I too have escalated the Everest… Er, I mean I finally read Vikram Seth’s 1472 page novel “A suitable boy”, and that it has been a fascinating experience: thanks M. Seth! Such a length is said to be unparalleled in English literature, and indeed the length in itself is amazing. Fancy actually writing that incredibly long story, and controlling it from beginning to end. It took him seven years to complete, he said (and three to recover). Some people actually complained it strained their wrists, LOL. But there you are, if you are a lover of classic writing (some have said Austenian), if you love reading beautifully well developed prose, you’re the one for A suitable boy.

Now if you haven’t read the book and you are planning on reading it, come back when you’re through, because what I want to discuss needs looking at the plot and the narrative choices which Vikram Seth has made (so unavoidable spoilers!). But before I do that, I’ll quote what Steven Wu has written about the style, and which I find myself unable to express better:

A suitable boy is a superbly well-written book. Although I thought at first that Seth's tone was far too flippant, [our one disagreement here, I found no flippancy at all] I soon came to appreciate the simple, unpresuming, but eminently readable style that Seth adopts from the first page to the last. It's really remarkable that in over 1,300 pages of densely spaced text, Seth at no point wrote a single sentence that I found awkward, melodramatic, or out of place. Nor does Seth sacrifice content to maintain such a high quality of writing--the book includes everything from straight-up action to long brooding descriptions, from fast-paced dialogue to moody soliloquies, from lovely portrayals of India and its landmarks to involving emotional moments.

Do you know (I am now assuming my readers have now read the book. And if you haven’t, what are you waiting for? What are you doing here? Aren’t you a lover of literature?) that some readers actually thought the novel was too long??? Yes, look at this:

“And it's so long. I love long books as I read fast - I generally finish a book in a few days or less, so having a substantial tome to work through is pleasant. But seriously, A suitable boy is just a beast, I have been slogging through for about 6 months now with no sign of the end.” I'm about halfway through at the moment, and am undecided whether to carry on. Who here has read it? Is it worth continuing? Does it progress beyond endlessly recounting of the minutia of the lives of its characters?” (link)

(Because on the contrary some people have “read the book for the fourth time early this year”!!!!!!!!!!!!! - Interestingly, I’m busy doing the same thing as this remarkable person: he’s also involved proving wrong another bored reader of the book! – the one with the weak wrists!)

SO: here’s the answer to the question “is the book too long for its own good?”

ANSWER: NO. The book is just amazingly readable, so it’s not too long, it’s too short, one is hankering for a sequel! (This is exactly what Mystic wanderer says:

“However, patience is richly rewarded as the people and locales grow on you and upon completion, there is a longing to surmise what could possibly happen next. In other words, a wish (no, I’m not kidding) for it to be even longer.”

(OK the truth is that it is a little long. If the novel was a straightforward escapist succession of social and romantic events, yes, it would rather be filled with unnecessary material.)

But let me explain: the long bits were delicious moments of patient rapture as one the most elegant prose unfolds, and the bonus at the end of the effort (if one doesn’t skip these long passages) is that you discover they were in fact fascinating! For instance at one stage we follow Haresh the shoe-maker and the detailed procedure necessary to make a certain type of shoe: certain people might not like reading about that, but I think that this is what literature is all about: the reinvention of reality. A suitable boy is long because the reality which Vikram Seth is awake to is so full! (one might say: and India is after a [sub]continent) The book opens your eyes to the miracle of reality, which is in fact a creation. Reality is a creation, and the writer of such novels (Balzac, Dickens, Hugo, Tolstoy) sees that SO MUCH is happening before his very eyes. There is an incessant creation going on every second, and they have seen it. Others haven’t, they are blind to this continued creation happening before them. How, why, I don’t know, but these writers have the gift of open eyes, and they make us see it, hurray!

I think that this comes from the fact the Vikram Seth is a poet. People just don’t know what a poet is nowadays. Or let us say that so painfully few people do! Can you imagine that I’ve read people actually criticizing him for having rhymed his table of contents! Yes, that delightful bonus, that free gift to the reader, they just thought it was to show off! I was stunned, I was so grateful! I showed it to the people around me, and beamed at the gratuitous bonanza of bathing in that type of crazy luxury! And then you have the sheer constant virtuosity, all that poetry, eg the witty, ludicrous Kakoli couplets that some readers find so bad – ha, they’ve never tried to write poetry! Let them have a go, let them just write “silly” couplets. It takes a good poet to forge idiotic-sounding stanzas! Well, anyway, I just want to say that I was filled with the gratifying readability of the text. And it isn’t impersonal – you feel the presence of the author, in a very satisfying way, because he’s on your side, he tells you the things he knows and which characters do not know, he’s another, slightly better informed, you!

A poet Vikram Seth really is: the more I realize it, the more it explains things. It explains why so much happens in the book that doesn’t directly make the plot move forward, because he’s so preoccupied by the recreation (poiêsis) of the world, in its delicate and fragrant nostalgia-feel, as well as in its fascinating technical minuteness. The inflamed speech of an angry politician, for example, offers the poet a terrain of unparalleled exploration of the language he loves, it turns him into a director of a symphonic orchestra! He can summon all the rhetoric, all the oratorical powers that exist, all the effects he likes, and recreate the rise and fall of empires through the unique power of the Word. Compared to that intoxicating experience, that of feeding the reader’s expectation with a few tidbits of romance is poor play.

Okay, so now, the story…

But, I don’t know whether I should tell you the story. You’ll find it on Mystic wanderer’s page, for example. There isn’t ONE story in A suitable boy. I’d say there are at least four: Lata’s story, Maan’s story, Haresh’s story, and Mahesh Kapoor’s story. Naturally the four are interconnected, but they are also sufficiently independent to have an interest which is completely their own, and owes little to the other three. One might add also Dipankar’s story, and that of the Nawab sahib of Baithar. Then there are some sub-plots, of course related to each of the main strands. For example Pran’s section, revolving around Brahmpur University; the events here are connected to the Lata main strand through her sister, Savita, married to Pran (the book starts by their wedding and ends with Lata’s).

In Haresh’s story, there are many sub-stories, which we follow as he goes from job to job, revealing for us the surprising realities of shoe-making in India during the post-war period. Mahesh Kapoor’s plot revolves around politics, and thanks to that strand, we discover the life of ministers and their aides, the subtle intricacies of law-making, the strategies of elections, etc. A complete historical perspective is laid out before us, Northern India in 1952. Dipankar is our guide to the religious dimension which is explored in the book (the Kumbh Mela notably), and connected to him is the Chatterji family from Calcutta, an eccentric upper middle-class of flashy beauties and idle young males, completely opposite to Haresh’s practical and matter of fact world of entrepreneurship, for example, and of course an easy target to criticize anglo-Indianness.

Maan’s strand, together with Haresh’s, was perhaps the one I most appreciated: it tells the story of this rich politician’s son, made idle by Papa’s fortune and power, and it serves as an introduction to the world of tawaifs, those courtesan-singers we’ve already spoken about several times, as well as music and singing (ghazals), urdu poetry (Mast), urdu spelling (Saaeda Bai, his enchantress, makes him learn the language), myths and legends connected to the heroes mentioned in the songs, the rise and fall of singing masters and disciples… Maan also takes us in the country (he’s banned there by reasons too long to describe), where we get to know the village people, and this spoilt brat becomes a keen observer of the folk he thought he despised. All these passages are packed with insights on country customs and stories, crowded with unforgettable characters (amazing Moazzam, spellbinding Mr. Biscuit, for instance), and, among so many other impressions, the feel of the night breeze blowing freely as the voices and noises of the village are heard to rise and fall.

Lata’s strand is naturally presented as the core of the book, probably because of its title, but also because it connects most of the actors and events. But not all! (a few examples: Meenakshi’s infidelity, Maan’s love affair, Tapan’s schooling…) Nevertheless, she’s at the center, together with her inimitable mother, Mrs Rupa Mehra, a extraordinary character that you and I will from now on remember all our lives. That’s really one of the book’s particular strengths, the vividness of the characterization. I just have to open the book any page, and see a name, and immediately a complete picture springs up, not only a physical portrait, but a social background, a story with its various causes and consequences… So in fact the book is less striking for its story than for its gallery of characters (and of course its remarkable style): of course we follow what happens to them, but that’s because they’re so close to us.

A suitable boy does not have a reformist ambition; it is a social book, but there are no revolutionary ideas, no ideological denunciation. It has ironical and satirical aspects, but its main intention is descriptive and evocative. So the issue that we have at hand, the question which makes the book flower and bear fruit, is a psychological one, which borders on the aesthetic: why does Lata choose Haresh? We have of course the book’s own answers: Kabir is too passionate, indeed she herself is too passionate, and she decides that she doesn’t want passion: she wants the other type of love, the “calmer, less frantic love, which helps to grow where you were already growing…” (p.1420 – end of section 18.21). That’s what she explains to Malati, her confidente and fellow-student. She doesn’t want a love that will lift her off her feet and dispossess her of herself. “Haresh’s feet touch the ground; and he has dust, and sweat and a shadow. The other two ethereal are a bit too God-like and to be any good for me”, she says.

Now that’s an important question, believe it or not. Today passion, or romantic love, is almost always considered as a transforming force which contains its own justification. One rushes headlong into it, trusting it to contain its own value and meaning. One yearns for and relishes the head-over-heels feeling it brings. Its craziness is considered rational and its childishness a maturing process. Cool-headedness sounds strange when speaking about love. When you are “in” love, goes the popular notion, you cannot do wrong, because somehow love contains its own morality, it is oriented towards the good and it humanizes its beneficiaries. The common belief is that one becomes a better person when one loves or has loved. I realize that there is a distinction to be made between love and passion, and that only passion might be considered dangerous: but who can really distinguish love and passion? Isn’t true love a passion, a dispossession, a loss of the drop of water which is your identity into an ocean of bliss?

The 1400 pages of Vikram Seth’s book are telling us that this overriding experience at the core of human values, this love at all cost, this pot of gold, this life-fulfilling passion can and must be resisted. If the book has one message, that’s it. A writer of  Escapist literature (and the same works for a movie director) would have enabled, through some trick or other, the reunion of Kabir and Lata, which every reader needed so much to happen. But with A suitable boy we have a different outlook on passion and love. Look at this (link):   

“Upon reaching the last page, I tried carefully to analyse my own feelings, but my disappointment was inseparable from my admiration. On one hand, I detested the girl - I was seething with fury - because she had chosen a nice boy over a gorgeous boy. Why do writers do this to their characters (and to their readers, for that matter)? Why must literature echo the cold brutality of life? Professor Higgins and Eliza Doolittle, in Pygmalion; Laurie and Jo, in Little Women; Edmund and Mercedes in The Count of Monte Cristo.

But here’s what this reader says next :

On the other hand, I admired Lata for being so well-grounded in reality. She was able to understand that her love for Khabir would not necessarily translate into a successful marriage, and she was also able to distinguish the man who could bring her happiness. In short, Lata chose to follow her head over her heart, and it was a decision that displayed maturity. Far too many novels romanticize reckless relationships without depicting the consequences (i.e. life after the happy - and, in many cases, abrupt - ending).

There, the lesson is learnt ! What is strange is that Vikram Seth himself says he is not completely ready to support Lata’s decision:

Miss Lata Mehra: Why did Lata marry Haresh and not Kabir... why why why...

Mr Vikram Seth: Now, now, you know better than to give the plot away for those who haven't read it yet. As for why, do you think I decided the matter? Lata decided for herself, and I'm not sure I approve of her decision. (Rediff On The NeT: Transcript of the Vikram Seth Chat)

Perhaps he didn’t want to elaborate, or appear, as a person, to be distinguished from the choices of himself as an author… But yes, so many Bollywood films (and other forms of art choosing to tell Love’s story) opt for the happy jump into the trap that nature has laid for us: charm and beauty, intoxication and wonder… But what about what comes after? Well, our civilization behaves as if it doesn’t really care, and it has equipped itself with the means to do just that, enable people to go from one love to another, and hope for the drug to work its magic each time. Lata’s frustrating choice flies in the face of romantic presuppositions, such as: “passion is the only thing worth living for”. And Vikram Seth achieves a far more original result with this choice than if he had somehow made the two predestined lovers help create the foundation for a better understanding of cross-cultural relationships. For his point about the choice of a reasonable love over a more dispossessing passion, but which is normally thought to be more fulfilling, goes aesthetically, psychologically, and anthropologically further. Even if this means upholding the traditional views of arranged marriages!

Because that is of course the risk he has run. Lata does what her mother, Mrs Rupa Mehra, wanted her to do, and has always thought best for her. It isn’t just a coincidence. Lata’s choice is a conscious decision that includes her mother, her family and the type of society which upholds that model. She doesn’t see herself in any future severed from her family, something the romantic orthodoxy would relish, the lovers shutting out the rest of the world, or at least finding it impossible to sacrifice their new worldview on the altar of family ties and any other interests. On the contrary, the common assumption is that traditional ties based on outdated ideas such as social and religious suitability need the groundswell renewal of experience and feelings which will bring it closer to the essence of life. And it’s up to the new generations to regenerate society in such a way. Such ideas can be read in the message of a number of Bollywood movies, which perhaps also use them to bolster their romantic choices. In short, in Desire lies Truth.

Well, Lata’s choice disproves this. Because she knows what it is to feel the burning of passion, to bask in its pleasure and its magic. She has felt the intoxication of dispossession. Lata knows how deeply this love fits who she is, what she likes, what she needs. Such a love is for her like blood in her veins. It fits her body and it fits her brain. As her friend Malati so forcefully says, Kabir and Lata are made for each other, like the two halves of the complete being they would be if she had chosen him. But she renounces him, and this really recalls the hero’s choice in Corneille’s plays. For Corneille, the hero is never more glorious than when he lifts love so high because he renounces it. But Lata (and Vikram Seth) have perhaps beaten Corneille: Lata actually chooses love, she doesn’t renounce it! She sacrifices love because it is too passionate, but embraces another more reasonable version: what a marvelous compromise to the old aesthetic dilemma! Romantic heroes in Corneille’s tragedies have to cut the strings of their heart because of their duty, and the beauty of their gesture is that they magnify tenfold the love which they renounce. Lata sacrifices Kabir and the corresponding fulfillment of her youth. But she bets on the fulfillment of her maturity, and the bonus is – who knows – that she might this way regain a love which she thought she had sacrificed. For such is love that it springs out of realities one had no idea contained it. So finally, this betting of hers (she isn’t happy with it, there is an element of uncertainty) makes her go beyond the tragedy of love seen as passion, into the reality and humanity of love understood as a gift. The love she chooses is indeed more given than received: there is more love, in a way, in her type of love.

One last word concerning what V.S. suggests as the modus operandi of Lata’s choice: she starts to give in at the moment when her sister’s baby is born. This birth acts as a confirmation of marriages or settlements which have been agreed upon by the community one belongs to. The baby is the proof that life and joy are at the heart of traditional customs which are the foundations of a given community. This comes to weigh as much, if not more, in Lata’s mind, as her love of Kabir. Then there is also Haresh’s sacrifice. The suitable boy she chooses has, like her, been forced to sacrifice a love for a girl from another religion (Simran, a sikh). This theme is shown as bringing them closer together. And then finally there’s Lata’s rejection of dispossession, which on the surface only might appear selfish and worldly. Lata doesn’t own much, but she possesses a self which is the core of her strong-willed being. She would perhaps have accepted to lose part of it if Kabir’s gate had been open for her. But it is shut, shut by the widowed mother she loves and won’t disappoint. So she now knows she will be able to keep a self she feels eminently comfortable with. She’ll be Haresh’s equal, in a rather satisfyingly feminist way, whereas as Kabir’s lover and wife she would have had to settle down for a relationship with him as a Lata she couldn’t control completely. She would have owed him a part of herself which she can now decide either to give or to keep. As it is, her choice makes a natural leader, an independent decider of her fate, and this autonomy corresponds to her personality down deep.

The movie which could be made with A suitable boy would have to be split up between several episodes, so long and dense is the story. In fact the BBC had been thinking of such a serialization, but so far it hasn’t seen the light. It wouldn’t be very difficult to pick good actors for this or that character. So let’s have a bit of fun! Could Tabu be Lata? Preity Zinta (or Vidya Balan?) and Raima Sen could be Kakoli and Meenakshi; perhaps Mann could be played by Vivek Oberoi and Kabir by Atul Kulkarni? Mahesh Kapoor could, I’m sure, be Anil Kapoor. Perhaps Haresh could be taken by Shiney Ahuja?! I think Rani Mukherji would be a good Savita, and I still need a Mrs Rupa Mehra… Let’s think… well, after all, you tell me!