Tags:
Journalism of Courage
The week that passed has been unpleasant for the novel. Two of its most feted practitioners Salman Rushdie and Ian McEwan received an unkind cut,being omitted from the years Man Booker longlist; in another outburst,a former Oxford professor condemned the duos work as well-crafted but hollow,denouncing the contemporary English novel as passing through a fallow period. A final word on what makes for literary excellence is neither possible nor desirable; a dialogue,on the other hand,on the state of the present-day novel is welcome,especially if you have just finished reading Saraswati Park,a debut novel by Anjali Joseph,a former commissioning editor for Elle. Joseph,incidentally,was listed by The Daily Telegraph as one of
20 writers under 40 to watch out for.
Ashish is a homosexual,and nervous,uncertain descriptions of his erotic escapades a kiss is a perfunctory swoosh by a fat,hot tongue first with a rich,callous brat from college and later with his English tutor are all the rising action that you would get out of the novel. The climactic point in the narrative is Lakshmis refusal to come back to her home and husband while visiting an ailing relative,the sign of a creeping frigidity in the marriage.
The rest of the book contains painfully meticulous descriptions of almost every activity imaginable in a middle-class Indian household,often employing images that are jarring,inadequate or downright bizarre an entire page is devoted to the kachrawalla and the task of taking out the garbage in the morning. Mohan,for example,would be sitting in the train,arms straightened like cantilever posts,while his wifes arms,in the act of wearing a sari,would be dancing as cheerfully as the limbs of an automaton to pay out the fabric,pleat it,and secure it at the front. Characters would be humming songs that bring forth vaguely poignant feelings,they would get up feeling insubstantial or behave oddly as though enacting a simulacrum. Their philosophy would put the quotidian to shame: You only saw yourself truly when you met your siblings,was that true or merely half true?
Mumbai its buses like oversized water buffaloes,its air conditioners that look like strange,rustic offerings,with its legendary spirit and chutzpah,its intoxicating allure of the glamorous and the forbidden,fails to bring Saraswati Park alive. Suburban life is dull,drab and monotonous and here it remains so,without any redemption or grace. There is no epic significance in our kirana stores,no certainty of an epiphany in day-to-day living,punctuated as it might be with brief episodes of loss and sorrow. The lack of that drama would make the book unappealing to an Indian reader.
As far as the West goes,next time Joseph should let the reader find out what a jalebi is,instead of burdening the narrative with the brittle coils of fried translucent dough,sticky with syrup.
