Narcopolis put me off Jeet Thayil. The Elsewhereans brought me back

Judging a writer by one book

But Elsewhereans is why one should not stay away from a writer because one of their books did not work for you. I loved it. Ignoring all the labels that came with the book — documentary novel, genre bending — I read it like a real story, happening in front of me, to real people, in front of Jeet. Ammu and George, Jeet’s parents, became our Ammu and George, meeting for the first time in 1957 in Kochi when Kerala was getting its first elected government.

Jeet put photos of Ammu with her trophies, and George in his suit. Would you believe that the Ho Chi Minh look-alike you had always thought George to be actually had a youth and a life before journalism? This, by the way, was T J S George, the great journalist and writer. My friend had not stopped with “she didn’t like Narcopolis” — she had added, “but she liked your father’s columns.”

That would not have been so bad if I had not learnt from Jeet’s book about the great silences between father and son, and apparently between George and most anybody (“After a lifetime of silence, George has discovered conversation”). But he talked to Ammu, the finder of new homes in every new place they went to, and George had a habit of hopping cities, states, countries, and continents. They were ‘Everywhereans’. I imagined Jeet and his sister Sheba picking a little from everywhere — language, culture, and strange habits they could not later trace to their origins. But where did Jeet learn to write like that? It can’t just be the typewriter clacking on his father’s desk, unless actual words managed to float from the keys and pour down on the son.

‘What’s a Jeet Thayil’

I greedily grabbed Jeet’s sentences and wrote them down, like my friend—the introducer—once advised. These were words I knew too. Why didn’t I think of putting them together like that? It did not seem to me like Jeet was trying to write beautifully, but more like an accident — he wrote, and voilà, there was beauty in it. He wrote that Ammu became a better version of herself when she thought only about numbers and nothing else. So did I, but I have never been able to put it like that. I had to pause now and then to admire his way with words. Of course he has a way — it is his job to have a way. He is a poet, and this too was knowledge my dear friend passed on to me years ago.

“Do you like Jeet Thayil?”

“What’s a Jeet Thayil?”

“A poet.”

But Jeet has a sense of humour, and years of living everywhere — inheriting the Elsewherean-ism of Ammu and George — meant he would have seen and experienced all kinds of humans. If his tales are to be believed (and I have chosen to do so), he was slapped in Germany and caught for shoplifting in Paris. But I was happy to find humour in the words of a poet, and imagine us saying cheers over having at least that going for us. I am sure Jeet found my friend’s words hilarious, and stored them away as documentary fiction.

(As I See It is a space for bookish reflection, part personal essay and part love letter to the written word. Opinions expressed are personal.)