Here’s a task for Internet explorers. Could they by any chance offer statistical confirmation that the last couple of years have seen a spectacular increase in the number of surfers Googling for Botswana? The south African land is considered an essential case study in any meaningful discussion on development economics; it is Joseph Stiglitz’s favourite conversation piece, the developing world’s good news story, in his sermon on the virtues of states owning the economic reform process. It also commands the attentions of epidemiologists alarmed about its HIV infection rates. But the Botswana that’s sought out by these suddenly enthused folks is different. It’s a country that beats to a gentle, resonant rhythm. In its capital, Gaborone, resides Mma Precious Ramotswe, the country’s first woman private eye. Founder and sole sleuth of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, this abundantly proportioned thirtysomething is committed to setting right irritants in her clients’ lives. Unscrupulous maids, suddenly rebellious daughters, missing sons. all problems can be solved for a fee, over endless cups of bush tea. A big heart, a woman’s uncanny instinct and a keen eye are her tools of trade. And diversionary meditations on the pleasures of her patch of Africa and on her pride in her people’s decency are the threads that tie together her sometimes giggle-inducing, often heart-tugging exploits. Modern publishing has few magical moments. The eagerness with which Alexander McCall Smith’s Ramotswe chronicles are received in Delhi and Dublin, Berkeley and Brisbane has to be one. At a time when the demands of globalisation threaten to impose a sameness on the culture industry, Smith is the message-bearer of a timeless assurance: that stories anchored in local sentiments can vault over mountain and ocean and strike chords among disparate peoples. It is perhaps a symptom of our comfort in labels that we cannot quite get a measure of his craft. Why are Mma Ramotswe’s cases so life-affirming for us? Is it that they remind us of the little community charms of Miss Marple’s St Mary Mead? But then, Precious handles no murders — as Smith says, his stories are about “good people living good lives”. Is it that her Gaborone bears resemblance to the familiar dynamics of Narayan’s Malgudi? Could be, but then that still does not account for the political concerns of turn-of-the-century Africa that blow into Mma Ramotswe’s office. That investigation has been given a fresh lease of life with the re-publication of a collection of short stories by Smith. Hollywood is adapting the Botswana dispatches for the big screen, but these stories enlarge Smith’s geographical sprawl. They also elicit more comparisons. An eccentric Zurich couple’s evening of gift-giving and revelry brings to mind the contained abandon of an L.M. Montgomery escapade for children. An American doctor strays into a post-colonial perversion in Lisbon, signs of Somerset Maugham. The distortions of racist Rhodesia invade a couple’s marriage, touches of Nadine Gordimer. An Australian woman thrills when her boring companion is consumed by a crocodile, obviously Roald Dahl. And so it goes on. Heavenly Date is thus more than an offering to keep our expanding Ramotswe fan club quiet till Smith, a professor of medical law in Edinburgh, churns out the next installment from Gaborone. It is a valuable reminder that in the small preoccupations of decent people can be located the big themes of literature.
