Imagine this. A debutant Can-adian novelist, a self-professed loner at theUniversity of Montreal quietly translating works on art, is accorded anunexpected 15 minutes of fame when a jury stationed in New Delhi decides hehas penned the best first book that year. Instead of reassessing hiswhimsical roller-coaster of a novel, however, critics back home scrutiniseit for compromise. Aha, they sneer, this hidden motive to please the Indiansacco-unts for the copious quotations from Shakuntala peppering his book.Go-sh, they sigh, what a sellout, what a blatant attempt to hoodwink us witha literary puzzle, while throughout heeding foreign sensibilities.If this fictionalised scenario in the wake of Jeffrey Moore receiving theCommonwealth Writers Prize for the best first book last week seems a trifleabsurd, it is a thought process that informs the reception of every `big'book by an Indian writer. The terms of debate are so very predictable andso very destructive. That is, sift any book deemed worthy of attention(read: any book picked up by a major international publishing house with amedia splash on the multi-digit advance offered) for Indian exotica peddledto maintain a neo-Raj mystique and for crosscultural links forged toacclimatise rea-der from cooler climes.Lost, in the process, is an honest appraisal of the writer's success in``opening up the universe a little more''. Denied to the reader, therefore,is balanced appreciation of the expanding boundaries of Indian wr-iting inEnglish, of the new mirrors being installed for reflection. And so, yearsafter the Rushdies and the Seths and the Roys led us through this meanderingpath, only to deposit us back at square one, Jhumpa Lahiri's Pulitzer Prizethreatens to propel us in that direction once again. Interpreting thismalady is best left to social psychologists, but perhaps that otherexpression of free-floating anxiety can be addressed: Will this global boomin Indian writing in English last? Writer Rukmini Bhaya Nair has linked thisever present worry to the current dotcom ru-sh. If for every successfulstart-up, there are a dozen fiascos, how many attempts at capturing Indianreality are needed to produce one Lahiri?But that is still a reassuring comparison. Maybe the fashion parallel ismore appropriate, especially if you take into account a baffling emphasis onthe perceived need for foreign publishers to continue their patronage towriters of Indian origin. So, if Liz Claiborne is heralding an Indian summerwith its zari-bordered, maharani pink sarongs, the obvious implication,given the logic of haute couture, is that next summer zari and pink will beinfra dig. If American readers, thus far rather delayed in popularlyacclaiming desi writers, have thrilled in Lahiri's tales of exile and ofshifting cultural identities compiled in Interpreter of Maladies, will theynow tire of Mrs Sen's urge to procure fresh fish near her husband's Americanuniversity? Will they now be more inclined to the Slovakian immigrant'stravails?It is just as well then that after the Pulitzer Lahiri's nine stories havebeen recatapulted for review. For they offer a healthy antidote to all theCassandras. Subtitled "Stories of Bengal, Boston and Beyond", theyostensibly chronicle the complexities of identity troubling the Indiandiaspora, yet cultural motifs mentioned are mere specifics. Many of us maynot have needed to dip austere biscuits in cups of syrupy tea to evoke afeeling of home, but the process is familiar. We may not be negotiatingemotional trauma while studying agrarian conflict in India at a Bostonuniversity, but the crevices between dreamworlds and reality are achinglyrecognisable.It may be simplistic to narrow down the themes explored by Indian writers,but survey the emerging genre and one stands out: the shifting sands ofbelonging. And whether or not they speak in italics or whether or not theythrill to the aroma or curry, this is a global state of being for urbanites.Didn't Rushdie once write "Bombayites like me were people who spoke fivelanguages badly and no language well"? Who better then than his legatees tointerpret the maladies tormenting an increasingly adrift world coping withmultiple ch-anges. And that's a motive that cannot be questioned.
