Arundhati Roy, after navigating through the dense forests of God of Small Things, and disliking the book with its darkness, quaint twisted language and sad semi-autobiographical sketch, I was quite sure of not picking up her second novel. So when a new friend, gave me the book and said she didn't want it back, I just kept it for a while on my bookshelf, not knowing what to do with. Three days ago, I began reading it and finished last evening.
This book, I really did enjoy, even though I somewhat rushed through it, afraid, I wont be able to finish it, if I stopped now, cause the book drops names, poems, songs at such rapidity, mixed with true sounding dire stories, theories, lots of animals and the desolateness of a human heart with such avalanche-like turbulence, that unless one goes through it quickly, one would not want to do it again. The protagonist, who initially for almost half the book seemed to be a hijra, Anjum, turns out to be a second person, Tilotamma, actually Arundhati herself, an architect, who had studied in delhi but from Kerala, a broken home, a strange unloved childhood. Smoking and living on the edge of society. The book really grips one's attention, specially the parts in Kashmir, the tale of Gulrez and Musa, the Kashmiri father turned militant. There is so much pathos, and like Roy says in an interview somewhere- you need to read the book again and again to get what it is saying.
I cant bring myself to do that immediately. But this is what the first reading gives me. Roy is suggesting that India will pay a price for what is happening in Kashmir. Somewhere, between modernity and tradition another truth lies, which does not go to either extreme. While the book reflects dislike for all modern developments, at one point convincingly says that perhaps Kashmir belongs to neither countries but to its wild animals, is modernity such an evil thing? Quite many a paragraphs talk of extreme physical discomfort in hot climates, in filthy surroundings, and when Tilotamma meets her erstwhile lover, she allows him near her only after he has had a good shower with soap and shampoo! Surely we need our buildings, our bathrooms and our showers! And while the book treats animals at par with humans, it equally discusses rogan josh and kebab with salivation.
Honestly, the book tires. My eyes feel tired, I feel I am seeing the filth of our cities- non stop. Am seeing the utter inhumanity of humans. The utter non sense of what we call our lives. India, a country of one billion bigots. I almost want to see a more positive movie straight away, to pull myself of the darkness of the book. Only this darkness is compelling. It makes me want to go back and try to adjust my eyes so I can glimpse at the outline of the figures in the dark. To understand what really is going on in this mad world and in India today, what makes me call myself an indian, and why though born 'upper class, upper caste', my life was brutalised by cruel convent nuns, constantly judged by family, and abandoned by friends, doesn't feel like a great solace for being born so, yet is actually a boon compared to being born as anything else.
It really isn't the system that hurts you, its just who you encounter in it.
For me at times I feel, all life could be just like in the movie 'Life is Beautiful' where a child is made to believe, thanks to his father's inventive stories that his life as a Jew in a concentration camp in Germany was just a game, that life really was beautiful.
Could we not invent some way in which to make all the ugliness that is India today go away with another narrative? Or many such narratives. Many stories are balms, many are wounds. Utmost happiness gives utmost sorrow, is a wound.
I don't want to stereotype one more person. The book stereotypes the world. Every human being has the constant ability to do something that he has done a million times the same way, this time anew.
Perhaps there is no way to tell a tale without stereotyping. But all life is in the unexpected, the unpredictable- the kindness of strangers.
More, after the next dip into the book..
This book, I really did enjoy, even though I somewhat rushed through it, afraid, I wont be able to finish it, if I stopped now, cause the book drops names, poems, songs at such rapidity, mixed with true sounding dire stories, theories, lots of animals and the desolateness of a human heart with such avalanche-like turbulence, that unless one goes through it quickly, one would not want to do it again. The protagonist, who initially for almost half the book seemed to be a hijra, Anjum, turns out to be a second person, Tilotamma, actually Arundhati herself, an architect, who had studied in delhi but from Kerala, a broken home, a strange unloved childhood. Smoking and living on the edge of society. The book really grips one's attention, specially the parts in Kashmir, the tale of Gulrez and Musa, the Kashmiri father turned militant. There is so much pathos, and like Roy says in an interview somewhere- you need to read the book again and again to get what it is saying.
I cant bring myself to do that immediately. But this is what the first reading gives me. Roy is suggesting that India will pay a price for what is happening in Kashmir. Somewhere, between modernity and tradition another truth lies, which does not go to either extreme. While the book reflects dislike for all modern developments, at one point convincingly says that perhaps Kashmir belongs to neither countries but to its wild animals, is modernity such an evil thing? Quite many a paragraphs talk of extreme physical discomfort in hot climates, in filthy surroundings, and when Tilotamma meets her erstwhile lover, she allows him near her only after he has had a good shower with soap and shampoo! Surely we need our buildings, our bathrooms and our showers! And while the book treats animals at par with humans, it equally discusses rogan josh and kebab with salivation.
Honestly, the book tires. My eyes feel tired, I feel I am seeing the filth of our cities- non stop. Am seeing the utter inhumanity of humans. The utter non sense of what we call our lives. India, a country of one billion bigots. I almost want to see a more positive movie straight away, to pull myself of the darkness of the book. Only this darkness is compelling. It makes me want to go back and try to adjust my eyes so I can glimpse at the outline of the figures in the dark. To understand what really is going on in this mad world and in India today, what makes me call myself an indian, and why though born 'upper class, upper caste', my life was brutalised by cruel convent nuns, constantly judged by family, and abandoned by friends, doesn't feel like a great solace for being born so, yet is actually a boon compared to being born as anything else.
It really isn't the system that hurts you, its just who you encounter in it.
For me at times I feel, all life could be just like in the movie 'Life is Beautiful' where a child is made to believe, thanks to his father's inventive stories that his life as a Jew in a concentration camp in Germany was just a game, that life really was beautiful.
Could we not invent some way in which to make all the ugliness that is India today go away with another narrative? Or many such narratives. Many stories are balms, many are wounds. Utmost happiness gives utmost sorrow, is a wound.
I don't want to stereotype one more person. The book stereotypes the world. Every human being has the constant ability to do something that he has done a million times the same way, this time anew.
Perhaps there is no way to tell a tale without stereotyping. But all life is in the unexpected, the unpredictable- the kindness of strangers.
More, after the next dip into the book..
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