The Late Style

Random House

Pages: 176

Rs 350

Anita Desais Clear Light of Day (1980) came like a breath of fresh air in the world of Indian Writing in English,dominated at the time by the themes of East-West conflict,Indias spirituality and mysticism and so on. Anita Desais novel was not an Indian novel,but just simply a good novel; even today it remains one of her best. Her next novel In Custody,equally impressive,confirmed her status as a major novelist in India. The elegance and austerity of her language,as well as the intensity of her writing,set her apart from other writers. By the time she moved away from India in the Nineties,she had a formidable reputation,both in India and abroad. One was curious about whether the displacement would show in her work,and which way her writing would go after this move; after all,she had clearly stated that she could no longer relate to India. But would she still,like most diasporic writers,continue to write about India? Would she keep going back to what seems to become in time an imaginary homeland,the writers often seeing only the larger picture,unable to get at the dynamics of a swiftly changing society?

Fasting,Feasting,disappointingly,seemed to follow the trodden path of diasporic writing,but with The Zigzag Way she made a break and wrote a novel in which Mexico,not India,was present. Now,years later,she has come out with The Artist of Disappearance,a collection of three novellas The Museum of Final Journeys,Translator Translation and the title story,The Artist of Disappearance,in all three of which she has gone (come?) back to India. One wishes the book had given the reader a hint of when these stories were written. Are they early unpublished stories,or recently written stories?

These are three very different stories,but all of them are steeped in melancholy,a sense of decay,defeat and loss hanging heavily over them. In the first story,a young man,beginning his career as a bureaucrat,is posted to a small dreary place. He welcomes the chance to get involved in the story of an old zamindar family,when the clerk/caretaker requests that the sarkar take charge of a museum housed in the ancestral home. The family,a mother and son,is mysteriously absent. Almost each article in the museum is described in minute detail,but the museum remains just that,a carefully described place. What could have brought it alive the mystery of why the son sent these to his mother from his travels,and what happened to the son and why the curios stopped coming is missing; these mysteries remaining untouched. The story ends with the young man doing nothing about the caretakers request and being haunted later by the memory of his failure to save the last gift,a living elephant.

Translator Translated is (like In Custody) about the theme of a regional language,of translation and translators. An English lecturers sudden decision to study Oriya (it is her mothers tongue) leads her to translation. After meeting an English-language publisher,an old schoolmate,she translates the stories of an Oriya (woman) writer. The book is a modest success and when the writer tells the translator she may write a novel,she is excited at the thought of translating it. But the novel,when it comes to her,is disappointing and she finds herself almost rewriting the novel as she translates it. An interesting theme,but the story is flat,without any conflict whatsoever. The translator is nervous and guilty about what she has done,but there are no repercussions; neither the publisher nor the original translator react as she had feared. She,however,stops translating and goes back to her teaching. In fact,it is surprising how unsurprising this story is,how true to type the characters are: the translator is dull and defeated,the English-language publisher is smart and oozes self-confidence,and the Oriya writer is reclusive,almost invisible. The translators failure is almost inevitable,one doesnt expect anything else.

The final story is the most rewarding and brings back the Anita Desai one admires. Once again,there is a sense of melancholy,with a young man Ravi living in the ruins of his burnt-down house. But the life in this story comes from the outdoors,where there is freedom and where the spiders spun their webs in tall grass,a spinning you would not observe unless you became soundless,motionless,almost breathless and invisible … Everything is drawn with the tiny brush-strokes of an artist. There is also an unexpected touch of tenderness in Ravis relations with the Englishwoman who lived with him until she accidentally burnt the house down,and with Bhola,who unquestioningly looks after Ravis needs. Into this paradise come the city people,to shoot a documentary about the destruction of the environment of the hills. Familiar characters and one can predict that they will end up by becoming destroyers. Which is what happens; they destroy Ravis secret garden. Surprisingly,the book (a Random House book!) has the last pages (how many?) missing and one is deprived of the denouement.

In spite of being rather disappointing (one expected more from Anita Desai),these stories are still worth reading for the language alone. In this era of dumbing down of language,of elevating mediocre writing,The Artist of Disappearance proclaims that you dont need to be loud to be heard,that you dont have to go to a thesaurus to impress the reader. The use of the right word in the right place,the rhythm of a sentence,the felicity of a phrase these are enough. In this book,Anita Desai reminds us of the beauty of quietness and of elegant writing.