The Namesake

Lahiri has definitely done her homework! More importantly however, she has structured her story around a very small, often overlooked, aspect of a life - the christening. Really, what's in a name? And how many of us have bothered finding out the reason behind our most obvious identity - our names? But in that simple event, the writer has managed to intertwine larger questions and conflicts of existence. Especially existence as an outsider. A foreigner. The reality of being the other and the consequences of it. She spins a story out of the basic human habit of naming things (and people).

The idea is refreshing, mostly because it is simple.

The central character's conflict of identity is encapsulated largely within his unease regarding his name. Like he says, Gogol is no name for him. It makes no sense as it is neither Indian, like his ancestry nor American, like his nationality. His discomfort with having a Russian name is therefore obvious. A name which cannot be explained away on either pretence - ancestry or nationality.

Some aspects of life as an Indian in America have been portrayed very well. The characters have been sketched with a sure, deft hand. The ghettoism that Bengalis are infamous for, is also presented remarkably, and is one of the many conflicts that Gogol faces in the course of the tale.

The descriptions of history and architecture are vivid and evocative. They do not confuse and alienate the reader with jargon, unlike Vikram Seth's incessant jargonistic babble which goes by the name An Equal Music.

English, August

Agastya Sen. Bengali eyes in an Anglicized mind. Hybrid roots, cocktail blood, confused sensibilities. The clash of cultures within the mind of one individual. Agastya, August, English, Ogu. The schizophrenic existence of a mind divided.

Product of a Bong-Goan unision, his name (as his life) completely undermines his mother’s existence. She is removed, from the story as also his mind, after having served the purpose of procreation. He is his father’s son. Nothing more, nothing less. The son of a Bengali bureaucrat, whom life ensnares within the red tape of bureaucracy. Like father like son. Or is it?

English, August is the story of one man’s journey in to the villages of Western India. The story of the conflicts of a mind torn between a cosmopolitan existence and a job that takes him anywhere but. Like many of us he finds himself torn between cities, between loyalties, between facets of his own existence.

This is a man’s story. The writer, as also the protagonist, is male. What follows therefore, is a frame-by-frame narrative from a man’s perspective. The male gaze is so obvious throughout the story; that in hindsight it irks the senses (of anyone who even remotely identifies as feminist). August is witty, even self-deprecating sometimes, but never anything more than a man. Women are, more often than not, mere objects of desire, instruments of sexual gratification, obstacles in man’s great, meaningful (or otherwise) journey, but pit stops he must make anyway. Despite himself.

All the major characters are, well, men. As can only exist in (what I can only assume) a misogynist’s worldview. The pivotal roles are comfortably male. All the characters, barring none, are irksome, even monotonous. The writer has taken too many liberties with the stereotypical images of the Indian babu, rural India, and whatever else you can think of, so much so that the narrative often borders on being predictable. The fat civil servants, the rich sarcastic journalist, the dissatisfied writer, the lonely/drunken civil servant, lecherous babus, greedy politicians, half-naked hungry urchins, the ideal bureaucrat, the rebellious/communist woman friend, barbarous tribes, selfish Naxalites, 20 something junkies who can’t decide what they want from life. This story has them all. Ready masala for a potboiler. Chaterjee knows what sells, and he has delivered.

It is one man’s struggle to stay sane (or is it insane?) when his sensibilities are assaulted by worlds that he has, heretofore, been protected from. It is an upper middle class “gentleman’s” nightmare, as seen through the eyes of a wisecracking cynic. Don’t we all love those? Funny men. Most men believe they’re funny. Very few really are. August is one of those few. He is, in many senses of the word, a rarity. And it is therefore hardly surprising that he sticks out like a sore thumb in his rather conventional choice of profession. He is very urban, typically cocooned - as most progeny of post-independence upper middle class Indians are, and he is skeptical of everything – as most 70s onwards youth have tended to be.

Agastya is Upamanyu Chatterjee’s reflection, in what (again, I can only assume) could easily be a semi-autobiographical account. The 70s angry young man who is too used to a comfortable lifestyle and is therefore too lazy to do anything about anything. All he wants is to be happy, with no clue whatsoever as to how to be it. He is too laid back to fight the system, but he has humor enough to indulge in minor subversive tactics to keep him amused. Also, he has means to stay disconnected from the life he has chosen to lead. So at most points in the narrative we find the protagonist stoned. Typical escapist ploy when one is too afraid/unconcerned/whatever to actually do something concrete to escape the present. He tries to both relive his past as also run away from it. The result of which is, predictably, confusing and leads to even more conflicts within his mind.

English, August is a fascinating journey into one person’s mind. Agastya’s loneliness is evident in everything he does. His alienation is palpable through every page of the book. A dislocation borne not only of ineptitude, but also of literally belonging to another world. A world that is safely insulated and includes only a handful people. Where ones biggest worry of the day would probably be ‘which movie to watch?’ or ‘what kind of eggs to order for breakfast?’ or ‘how to get more stuff to roll the next fifty joints?’ A world where reality has nothing to do with starving children being lowered into defunct wells in search of water, or tribal women being molested, even raped, by government officials, or doctors who make it their life’s work to help lepers live a life of dignity borne of self-sustenance.

English, August is a selfish account of one man’s discomfort with reality. Of his insistence on disconnecting with anything even remotely problematic, anything that threatens to burst the bubble of his cozy little existence. Agastya’s journey is amusing only at first impression. It is on rethinking his story that one realizes the problem. The problem is not what the protagonist would have you believe – alienation/loneliness/whatever. The real problem, in fact, is nowhere close to being that grand. It is petty, because it is selfish. The problem is Agastya’s divided self that in no circumstance finds a way to reunite into a coherent whole. So never mind where he may be, he finds himself divided. Never once realizing that the problem does not lie outside of him – in his immediate surroundings where he continues to search – but inside his own mind. Where he is more torn than he would like to acknowledge, or even know.

The story is a mere fragment of Agastya’s life. It is but an account of one year of his journey. What we do know is that despite no conviction, Agastya sticks it out to the end (of, at least, his training). We know very little of what came before, and nothing of what comes after. The story has no definitive end. It has cleverly been left open to interpretations and conclusions. The hopeful among us will tell ourselves that he finds some balls in the time he takes off of work to ‘think’, and that he finds a path more suited to his inclinations, or at least a general direction towards that end. The cynical among us will know that he doesn’t. Because he doesn’t bother. It’s just so much easier to disconnect mentally than to put any real effort into disengaging from an unwanted alternative. That between aimless wandering and flights of fantasy, many choose the latter. Because escape is easier than confrontation. Because never mind what one may ‘have to do’ in life, nothing can imprison ones thoughts. Because a Utopia of the mind is more easily attainable than any that reality will ever be able to offer.

One Hundred Years of Solitude

I had heard a lot about this book, and having studied Garcia Marquez in college, I always wanted to read this legendary work of his. It is needless to say that this time around too, his work has left me in an intellectual turmoil – where every now and then, my mind is overcome with burning questions regarding human existence.

The title itself brings an important question to mind - Whose solitude? For there are so many solitudes that overlap within the story. Each remarkable in it’s own way.
The way I see it, the story is not about how the various characters grow in their interaction with each other. It is about how they grow in their solitude from the world. How they interact with the thoughts and memories deep within themselves and who they become after that interaction.

Each character, whether vivacious or subdued, comes to a point where it retires from the world of daily living into a shell. Some do it to escape the sordid realities of life, some to take the time to study abstract phenomena. Some to avoid questions regarding their existence, some to pay the price for having crossed lines that tradition and family had imposed upon them. Not all the characters, however, withdraw physically from daily life. Some simply detach themselves emotionally, whereas others withdraw into the deepest darkest recesses of their mind and live in a solitude of their own making, crossed with the ones (solitudes) that life and circumstance thrust upon them.

Solitude then, in Garcia Marquez’s story, is multi-dimensional and must be unearthed layer-upon-layer. The longest solitude is that of Ursula – the mother who takes on one solitude after another as she becomes grandmother, great-grandmother, great-great-grandmother. As her solitude increases, one sees her shrink beneath its weight. But she lumbers along, undaunted. Her will power is commendable, to say the least.

The repetitious nature of the names of characters makes a family tree an absolute necessity. Except that I think it should’ve been added at the end of the novel, rather than the beginning, as the editor/author have done. Bearing in mind that it is hardly my place to say so, I make this single observation with the view that it somewhat diminishes the mystery of the unfolding story by telling us beforehand, who ends up with who. With more than 40 characters to deal with (including the ones outside of the family tree) the reader can only realize the true extent of the author’s genius once the story is over. For it was in my solitude that the many solitudes from the story crept into my mind. And one by one, made their presence (and necessity) felt.

This is not some book you can read and forget. It haunts you and continues to unfold myriad mysteries long after it is over. This is a book that’ll take a long time to sink in… and an even longer time to digest. As an avid reader, I have to excuse those who’re in the habit of swallowing down stories without bothering to chew on them first. I will also go so far as to say to such people, “This one isn’t for you, not unless you’re ready for a hard lesson in digestion”. And even as I laugh at my own gumption, the laughter of a character comes to mind. Pilar Ternera – always on the sidelines, but always there. Instrumental to many events and their revelations, Pilar is a solid presence throughout the story, if only for a short while. She is the other woman in the story (besides Ursula) whose strength is paralleled only by her solitude. If Ursula is the quintessential “angel in the house” then Pilar is her nemesis. The “mad woman in the attic”. Only, this time around, she is neither mad, nor is she relegated to the confines of an attic. And that, only because she manages to stay just outside of the vicious circle of the institution of marriage. A lucky coincidence for her, or sheer genius on the part of the author; this simple fact about her life makes her one of the very few characters who are free from familial bonds per se. She encapsulates the notion of a free spirit, and yet doesn’t ever move outside of her world. She is free by a mischance. Her betrothed didn’t show up and she spends the rest of her days as a “scarlet woman”. Nobody, however, looks down upon her for her profession. She is what circumstances make her and she lives whatever life she can manage with every iota of dignity she can muster. Her perpetual companion through the many nights of various lovers is her solitude. Swamped in company, she is still alone, at all points.

At some point it seems as if every character has a tendency toward resigning themselves to their fate – solitude. And they trudge along that lonely path magnificently transcending their human selves and moving on to the more intangible world of the mind.

The story then is not about the daily lives of a people; it is about the larger issue of existence and how people transform - personally and as a race.

Somehow, at least in this story, the Y-chromosome is much more active than its counterpart. And in that mischance we witness the lives (and deaths) of many an offspring who could’ve carried on the family name.

Despite this fact, it is in the women that we witness a strength unforeseen. The female characters are by far the stronger ones, defeating even the most macho character when it comes to will power and endurance.

As in many cultures, the women of Macondo are relegated to the home and hearth, the master puppeteers who pull the strings of family ties to keep alive every semblance of family life. The men, as usual, go out into the world, make war, make money, squander it away, make babies by the dozen, none of whom survive to carry on the family name. Fate or misfortunes lead them, many-a-time, to outside lands, only to come back into the fold like prodigal sons. However rich they may get, however many parties they may throw and women they may keep, a solitude haunts these characters, enveloping them in its grip along the way and taking them down with it.

This is a story of one bloodline, as it lives through different, and many-a-time difficult, changes – in love, in life, in tradition and society, in a world that is slowly taken over by newer inventions and discoveries, ideas and rituals.

We witness not just the birth and death of characters; we also witness the birth and death of a place and a people who with courage, determination, love and respect had established a world of their own against all odds and where none seemed possible!

When I mention laughter, it becomes important to add that very few other characters laugh. It seems trivial, but somehow despite tales of immense gaiety and merry-making, laughter is one of the basic absences in the story. In fact, Pilar’s laughter is memorable simply because it somehow continues to ring dismally in the growing silence of the book. Perhaps, it is exceptional simply because it is singular.

Magic makes various appearances within the text. However, it is not the same kind of magic as we find in the works of Enid Blyton, or even the more contemporary J. K. Rowling.

Magic, like so many other things, is instrumental in this tale. While on the one hand it explains the inexplicable, on the other, it is basic to the very nature of the tale – from start to finish. Sometimes magic is attributed to the gypsies, and sometimes simply considered a trick that the mind is playing. At other times, however, it is portrayed as an ever-present entity visible only to those whose mind has been sharpened by that one crucial tool – solitude.

Nature is also a prominent presence within the novel. Inhabiting a village that they carved out of the wilderness, detached from any form of contact with the outside world, the people of Macondo live in the lap of nature, in a symbiotic relationship that time and scientific progress erode.

The emotion of love makes sporadic appearances too, and it disappears just as suddenly as it had come. There is no preamble and no ‘afterword’ either. At certain points within the tale, it just is. And at all other times it is conspicuous only by its absence. It isn’t all pervading, simply because this is not a love story. This is the story of a world that changed – at the hands of outsiders as much as those of the people within it. Even so, somehow, many loves live on through every page. Just beyond sight, just beyond earshot, just beyond feeling. Always bubbling under the surface, burning inside the minds and hearts of those who carry them – like an eternal fire.

It may be that the author is trying to make a point about the futility of love. I doubt it! But we do get an insight into the powerful emotion it can be. Amaranta lives and dies with it. Rebecca, Meme and Aureliano do pretty much the same. Except that in Aureliano’s case, the object of affection changes over a period of time.

Hatred is another emotion that seethes through many-a-page. The object being different for every person who feels the emotion. Sometimes, it is hate for a person, sometimes a rule and sometimes an ideology.

As in many human stories, love and hatred become the driving forces behind the various turns that the story takes.

It is necessary, however, to remember Ursula’s belief that these aren’t turns along a linear path at all, but simply those that lead one back to a place they’ve already been to – at another time, somewhere in the past. That life comes a full circle… over and over again.

A world comes into existence, and with the passage of time dies out, right before our eyes. There could be many reasons for its disappearance, but in this story, Macondo dies because it has served its purpose – of telling us about the way lives change with time, with migration and immigration, with love and without it, with science and economic progress. Of how the merging of worlds becomes one of the many factors responsible for change in our lives; and all these changes lead to that one inevitable truth – solitude. Nothing remains, but solitude!

By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept

A love story raging within a circle of spirituality. I have to say, the obvious ending was nothing but disappointing. But it would've been equally disappointing had it ended in the exact opposite manner.

The story is confused, and many a time, plain confusing. I do not see the point behind making the protagonist a "spiritual teacher". He could've been a passionate musician, artist, poet, anything. After all, if a conflict of emotions/passions is what the writer wanted to portray, any conflict would've done just as well, to come in conflict with that other passion - love.
Immersing the central conflict into a swamp of spiritual/religious mumbo-jumbo seems like a flimsy way to piece together a story.

Coelho has his moments though. Some ideas are very well presented, but they get lost in the jargonized labyrinth that is the book By The River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept.

Having read two books by this author, I am forced to acknowledge that he's somewhat obsessed with the notion that life is mundane. That each day is like every other day. That human beings are becoming, more and more, like zombies. It seems to me quite a negative outlook to the glorious adventure life is and can be.
If in Victoria Decides to Die, Coelho manages to affirm the beauty of existence, in this book he only manages to repeatedly announce how bleak and dreary the entire experience can be.
This definitely isn't a book I'd recommend to anyone. The one thing it accomplishes is that it makes it necessary for me to read more Coelho just so I can figure out what kind of writer Coelho is and why in the world is he a celebrated one. For now we will just put our feelings on "ambivalent" - very much so!