I have read mostly Indian fiction since I've been here, and I thought I would write up my impressions in a series of posts exploring Indian fiction in English, past and present.
My greatest discovery has been the amazing novels of RK Narayan (1906-2001). I am ashamed to say that I had never read anything by Narayan before coming to India, but now that I have, I realize that many of my favorite Indian writers were influenced by his work. Narayan is considered the first major Indian author to publish exclusively in English (he is also derided for this). His first novel, Swamy and Friends, was discovered by Graham Greene in 1935, who recommended it to his British publisher. Narayan sets all his novels in the fictional South Indian town of Malgudi. His work was adapted into an extremely popular public-TV series in the 1980s, and if you mention the word "Malgudi" to anyone here, that is the connection they will make.
I have read five or six of his novels now, and my favorite is probably The Guide. The title character, Railway Raju, works as a tour guide for foreigners visiting Malgudi. I was especially interested in him because we have met so many of these guides during our stay here. Narayan--who always knew his audience included a large percentage of foreigners--surely counted on this. Anyway, the plot gets going when Raju takes a scholar and his wife to see some ancient caves near Malgudi. Raju promptly falls in love with the wife--and she, neglected as she is by her workaholic husband, falls for him. I don't want to reveal too much, but it is a fantastic story of reinvention and rebirth, and ultimately of disappointment.
My second-favorite Narayan novel is The Vendor of Sweets, a refashioning of the prodigal son story using a Malgudi sweet-vendor and his expatriate son. The son returns with a foreign wife and a new set of morals. It is reportedly Narayan's saddest book, although that honor would have to be shared, in my opinion, with The English Teacher, which draws on Narayan's own experience as a young widower. Finally, I also recommend The Painter of Signs, a copy of which was given to me by my sister (thanks, Megan!) just before we left the US. This one is about feminism, population control, and the way love sometimes takes a back seat to principle.
Okay, one more Narayan book. I would be remiss if I did not mention My Dateless Diary, Narayan's memoir of the year he spent in the US (I think it was 1953) on a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation. He's not exactly the Indian de Tocqueville, but he's close. Maybe if de Tocqueville had hung out with Aldous Huxley in LA...
Moving on. Few English majors these days earn their BA without having read Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie. The book is a standard text in "post-colonial" literature courses, and with good reason: it is a masterpiece of historical fiction. The protagonist, Saleem Sinai, was born at the strike of midnight on August 15, 1947--the moment when India was declared independent from Britain--and so his life is an extended metaphor for independent India. Rushdie also riffs on three major Indian religions (Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism) and a host of other topics which make for excellent term papers. The thing is, few English majors really enjoy the book. I was lucky enough to have missed it in college--I say lucky, because when I finally read it a few months ago I did not have the baggage of a first, forced reading. I thoroughly enjoyed Rushdie's playful, rambling prose, his cartoonish characters, and his deft treatment of historical circumstances. If you know the basic outline of 20th-century Indian history, it is even more fascinating.
Another Bombay-focused novel that I enjoyed is Rohinton Mistry's A Fine Balance. Somebody told me this was an Oprah book. I guess that's possible, but if so, it was an unusual choice. It's about two sets of characters--a group of Parsis and a group of Hindu Dalits (or untouchables)--who end up together in a small apartment during Indira Gandhi's martial-law Emergency in the mid-1970s. Mistry's narration is much straighter than Rushdie's, but no less masterful. Because his mode is more realistic, you see the characters and their circumstances more clearly. For example, Mistry takes you inside a jhopadpatti, or shantytown. But because his aim is not to shock you with the horrible conditions, he portrays it like any other neighborhood. Kind of.
If you are interested in slum life, I highly recommend Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts. You may have heard of this novel. It's by an Australian convict who escaped a maximum security prison and fled to Mumbai, where he reinvented himself as a slum doctor and mob operative. There's no telling how much of the book is real and how much is fiction, but it follows the outline of the author's life fairly closely. But shock value is not the reason to read Shantaram: this guy is actually a hell of a fiction writer, and the 900 pages feel like half that many. He takes you inside the Cuffe Parade slum in Mumbai (where he set up his accidental clinic) and the notorious Arthur Road Prison, where he was beaten and starved to within an inch of his life. There is even a love plot--with some very flowery, Bollywoody sex scenes. I don't normally like crime fiction, but I loved this book.
Next time: Indian pulp!
