Shunya's Notes

Shantaram: A Review

Gregory David Roberts, the author of this semi-autobiographical novel, is an ex-junkie and an ex-con. A one-time gun-runner; dealer in drugs, black-market currencies, and forged passports; favored associated of a Bombay mafia don; escapee from an Australian maximum security prison, Roberts gives us a novel based closely on the events of his remarkable life and calls it Shantaram, "man of peace." You are right to be skeptical. The story's narrator is not a peaceful man and the book is loaded with enough violence to propel the modern Bollywood-styled blockbuster that it's slated to become (starring Johnny Depp and Amitabh Bachchan, directed by Mira Nair, 2009). But then, to get caught up in that is to miss the point; Shantaram is the story of a violent man's search for the man of peace within himself.

The story begins in the early 1980s, with the narrator already a fugitive from the law. Having jumped from the towers of his Australian prison, where he was serving a 19-year sentence for armed robbery, he escaped with the help of friends to Bombay, where he hopes to stay out of trouble and lose himself from the law. He has no plan and little money, nor has he been to India before. But he is almost immediately in love with Bombay and within hours of being in the city, he meets the comically affable, young cab-driver, Prabakar, who, in the course of a day, helps him escape from a scene of mob violence, finds him a cheap hotel, and sets him up with a little dope to smoke. When Prabaker asks to know his name, the fugitive instinctively fishes for a false one and suggests "Lin," short for "Lindsay." Prabakar is tickled by this name, gleefully remarking that it sounds like an Indian word for "dick." Thus, it becomes the appellation for the man who struggles to know himself through the course of the narrative, faltering and stumbling, even as the earnest and loving Prabakar shines ever more brilliantly as the foil to Lin’s depravity.

Within a few days, Lin finds himself settled in Prabakar’s slum, living cheek by jowl with 25,000 of India’s destitute who have migrated from every corner of India to live in this city of dreams. He finds himself cast as the slum “doctor,” dispensing first aid to the stream of humanity that flows past his shanty door, and is quickly drawn into the lives of his neighbors, learning Hindi, making friends, and fully participating in the life of the community. He remains among them for two years, but he never reveals the truth of his past to any of his fellow slum-dwellers.

It is through Roberts’s observations of and attachment to the life of the slum that this book plants its foundation and Lin gropes for his own moral ballast. In vivid detail, Roberts lays out the lives of the slum-dwellers, the everyday mechanics by which they live, aiding each other in times of want, coalescing in a moment into efficient squads to combat floods, fire, and cholera. Justice is reckoned by a headman, who rules solely through the respect of his constituency, and dispensed by the community at large. As Lin is immersed in this cast of characters of every condition and persuasion, each one fully textured and brought to life as individuals with their own aspirations, needs, choices, he marvels at the miracle of it, at its inherent peace. That such a tangled mass of humanity, representing such a multitude of languages, beliefs, and lifestyles, could function as this chaotic, unified whole awes him. It’s only possible, he surmises, because of a kind of love, born of necessity, that fills up the wretched gullies, and spills out on all who come near, even a low-life such as himself.

And this, ultimately, is what Shantaram comes to be about: Love, in all its forms and degrees. The love of our fellows, our parents, our brothers and sisters and friends and mates. The love of ourselves. That most human engagement which drives us, completes us, injures us, heals us, ruins us, saves us. Never pure, simple, or clean, often untrue, it is nevertheless our unavoidable condition and our only hope. For such a tough guy, surprisingly, Roberts never flinches from his subject.

How Fiction Works

Good critics, seems to me, are as rare as good artists, and for some reason their skills rarely coincide in a single person. At the very least, a good critic situates the work in a larger context and challenges us to read more closely and to demand more from art. One critic I have profitably read for years is James Wood, via his essays on Hamsun, Martel, Updike, Zadie Smith, Coetzee, and others. The aesthetic qualities he values in literary art include psychological realism with "characters who've been let off the leash by their creator, and for whom the largest metaphysical questions are in play." In addition,

Wood is noted for coining the genre term hysterical realism, which he uses to denote the contemporary conception of the "big, ambitious novel" that pursues vitality "at all costs." Hysterical realism describes novels that are characterized by chronic length, manic characters, frenzied action, and frequent digressions on topics secondary to the story.

Wood has ripped into lots of famous writers: Updike, DeLillo, Rushdie, Franzen, Pynchon, Toni Morrison, etc. — rippings I largely agree with. The writers he admires include Bellow, Chekhov, Lawrence, Woolf, and Naipaul. In his disdain for postmodern trends, he has been accused of betraying an evangelical zeal at times (he agrees). Notably, I found his own first and only novel, The Book Against God, rather unremarkable for its character and conflict, which a critic as demanding as Wood himself would have taken to task for its humdrum vision. His gifts are more evident in his two books of essays, to which he has just added a third one, How Fiction Works. Here is a rave review:

Kenneth Tynan, the doyen of theatre criticism, once said: "A critic is a man who knows the way but can't drive the car." Certainly, nobody, not even Tynan, became a critic in the expectation of receiving bouquets. Most writers have about as much affection for them as they have for head lice. But in an age when anyone with an opinion, however ill-informed or ignorant, can preserve it in print, post it on the internet and reach a receptive audience, the need for critics who can bring their authority, experience and perception to bear on works of art and articulate what makes them great or tat has never been more urgent.

James Wood is one such. Recently appointed a staff writer at The New Yorker and the professor of the practice of literary criticism at Harvard, he is arguably the world's leading critic, devoting his career to the study of fiction. Writers as diverse as Susan Sontag, Harold Bloom and John Banville have attested to his ability to burrow beneath the skin of a novel, showing why it is less—or more—than the sum of its parts. Like all the best critics, Wood is as dispassionate as a surgeon and as enthusiastic as a child with the latest gizmo. Whether he praises or pillories, he makes you want to read the text he has freshly filleted.

More here. Another decent article on the man here.

You Who Live Safe

You who live safe
In your warm houses,
You who find, returning in the evening,
Hot food and friendly faces:
    Consider if this is a man
    Who works in the mud
    Who does not know peace
    Who fights for a scrap of bread
    Who dies because of a yes or no.
    Consider if this is a woman,
    Without hair and without name
    With no more strength to remember,
    Her eyes empty and her womb cold
    Like a frog in winter.
Meditate that this came about:
I commend these words to you.
Carve them in your hearts
At home, in the street,
Going to bed, rising;
Repeat them to your children,
    Or may your house fall apart,
    May illness impede you,
    May your children turn their faces from you.

            (-- Prefatory text to Survival in Auschwitz by Primo Levi)

Peter Brook's Mahabharata

Earlier this year I saw Peter Brook's Mahabharata for the third time in fifteen years. Each time my admiration for it has grown. I consider it one of the greatest dramatic productions of all time. Its notable lack of appeal to Indians, except to a sliver, may be because it is in English and stars mostly non-Indian actors (including, heaven forbid, some black Africans in major roles!), not to mention that it treats the epic simply as a great work of literature, without the cloying religiosity that has informed most Indian dramatizations (with predictable "box-office" success).

The multinational, multi-racial cast from a dozen countries works brilliantly, driving home the universality of the Mahabharata. The script brings out some of its best philosophical nuances and existential dilemmas. Costumes are tasteful, music score hauntingly beautiful, dialog taut and poetic. Battle scenes are creatively shown, like the Chakravyuh that traps Abhimanyu.

One thing I noticed more this time -- which you won't find in popular Indian renditions -- is Krishna's ambivalent role in the story (he's not "cute" either). Nor is he above cheating and murderous advice (for e.g., to kill Karna, to hit Duryodhana's thigh, sacrificing Bhima's son). The conclusion is inescapable: even the Creator is flawed, much like His creation. In the end, with the catastrophic destruction of the war, we wonder if Arjuna's doubts were any less profound than Krishna's "divine truth". Was it all worth it? Should one aspire to act without attachment to the fruit of the action? A perfectly defensible interpretation is that Krishna brainwashes Arjuna into "understanding" his duty (or dharma), after which the great warrior exhibits no further doubts -- hardly a desirable state.

In this production, Bhishma is wonderfully quirky and stubborn, with some memorable lines to boot, all delivered in a charming Malian accent ("I abjure forever the love of woman". "I am troubled. The question is obscure."). Kunti imparts a fitting gravity to her role. Duryodhana is extraordinary, weaving in the right mix of lust for life and power. Mama Shakuni is consummately crafty. Bhima is well cast: loud, brawny, and impetuous. Karna is suitably intense and conflicted, though he appears to have done a few too many Shakespearean tragedies before this role. Yudhisthira is an introspective man of truth with a debilitating blind spot. The greatest wonder of all, he observes, is that each day death strikes, and we live as though we were immortal. Draupadi comes across as willful, submissive yet strong, driven by her public humiliation to hardness and gory revenge.

Brook's device of bringing in Vyasa and his scribe, Ganesha, into the story works well. Vyasa doubts, ponders, clarifies, which, by revealing the creative process in his mind, also serves to diffuse the authority of the narrative voice. Even at nearly six hours, this is one show I've watched in a single sitting all three times. I only wish it was twelve hours long!

Diary of a Bad Year

On this 4th of July, here is an excerpt from a longer excerpt of JM Coetzee's new novel, Diary of a Bad Year, due out in Jan 2008.

When the phrase "the bastards" is used in Australia, its reference is understood on all sides. "The bastards" was once the convict's term for the men who called themselves his betters and flogged him if he disagreed. Now "the bastards" are the politicians, the men and women who run the state. The problem: how to assert the legitimacy of the old perspective, the perspective from below, the convict's perspective, when it is of the nature of that perspective to be illegitimate, against the law, against the bastards.

Opposition to the bastards, opposition to government in general under the banner of libertarianism, has acquired a bad name because all too often its roots lie in a reluctance to pay taxes. Whatever one's views on paying tribute to the bastards, a strategic first step must be to distinguish oneself from that particular libertarian strain. How to do so? "Take half of what I own, take half of what I earn, I yield it to you; in return, leave me alone." Would that be enough to prove one's bona fides?

Michel de Montaigne's young friend Étienne de La Boétie, writing in 1549, saw the passivity of populations vis-à-vis their rulers as first an acquired and then later an inherited vice, an obstinate "will to be ruled" that becomes so deep-rooted "that even the love of liberty comes to seem not quite as natural."

It is incredible to see how the populace, once they have been subjected, fall suddenly into such profound forgetfulness of their earlier independence that it becomes impossible for them to rouse themselves and recover it; in fact, they proceed to serve so much without prompting, so freely, that one would say, on the face of it, they have not lost their liberty but won their servitude. It may be true that, to begin with, one serves because one has to, because one is constrained to by force; but those who come later serve without regret, and perform of their own free will what their predecessors performed under constraint. So it happens that men, born under the yoke, brought up in servitude, are content to live as they were born...assuming as their natural state the conditions under which they were born.

Well said. Nevertheless, in an important respect La Boétie gets it wrong. The alternatives are not placid servitude on the one hand and revolt against servitude on the other. There is a third way, chosen by thousands and millions of people every day. It is the way of quietism, of willed obscurity, of inner emigration.

Five Chinese Classics

Have you read, or heard of, the great classical Chinese novels written between 14th and 18th centuries? Still part of folk culture, they're known to most Chinese. I learned of them and their contexts while reading The Search for Modern China by Jonathan Spence. Here are five of them:

Journey to the West: "China's most beloved novel of religious quest and picaresque adventure" ... published in the 1590s in the waning years of the Ming dynasty, when "essayists, philosophers, nature poets, landscape painters, religious theorists, historians, and medical scholars all produced a profusion of significant works, many of which are now regarded as classics of the civilization." The novel's hero, "a mischievous monkey with human traits ... accompanies the monk-hero on his action-filled travels to India in search of Buddhist scripture." * It's "a first-rate adventure story, a dispenser of spiritual insight, and an extended allegory in which ... pilgrims journeying toward India stands for the individual journeying toward enlightenment." Indeed there aren't many books in which "go west, young man" would be a call to go to India. :-)

Golden Lotus: Published anonymously in early 17th century, this is a "socially elaborate and sexually explicit tale, the central character (who draws his income both from commerce and his official connections) is analyzed through his relationships with his five consorts, each of whom speaks for a different facet of human nature." It can be read as "allegory, as a moral fable of the way greed and selfishness destroy those with the richest opportunities for happiness; yet it also has a deeply realistic side, and illuminates the tensions and cruelties within elite Chinese family life as few other works have ever done." *

Dream of the Red Chamber: "China's greatest novel," was written in late 18th century by Cao Xueqin, and in simple outline is a love story. It "presents a meticulous description of the Jias, a wealthy Chinese extended family who occupy a series of linked mansions in an unnamed big city" that bears resemblance to Nanjing and Peking ... "the 'dream' that is ascribed to the 'red chamber' constitutes an elaborate yet mysterious foretelling of the fates of the main female protagonists who are related or linked to the Jias in some way." * "The novel is remarkable not only in its huge cast of characters — over 400 in all, most of whom are female — and its psychological scope, but also in its precise and detailed observations of the life and social structures of 18th-century China."

Romance of the Three Kingdoms: Stories in this novel "existed as oral traditions before any written compilations," and are based on "events in the turbulent years near the end of the Han Dynasty, and the Three Kingdoms (220–280)." It's current form is attributed to Luo Guanzhong in late 14th century, and illustrates his gift for storytelling with a rich tapestry of personalities ... Characters take on "exaggerated and mythical characteristics, often becoming immortals or supernatural beings with magical powers." It reflects the Confucian values prominent at the time ... "loyalty to one's family, friends, and superiors [was] one of many measures to distinguish good and bad people."

Water Margin: Attributed to Shi Naian (same as Luo Guanzhong?), "the novel details the trials and tribulations of 108 outlaws during the mid Song Dynasty ... The group was active in the Huai River region and eventually surrendered to government troops in 1119."

Read more about these and other classical Chinese novels here and here.

* Most quotes for the first three titles above are from The Search for Modern China by Jonathan Spence. The rest are from Wikipedia.

Youth

(A Poem by Czeslaw Milosz )

Your unhappy and silly youth.
Your arrival from the provinces to the city.
Misted-over windowpanes of streetcars,
Restless misery of the crowd.
Your dread when you entered a place too expensive.
But everything was too expensive. Too high.
Those people must have noticed your crude manners,
Your outmoded clothes, and your awkwardness.

There were none who would stand by you and say,

You are a handsome boy,
You are strong and healthy,
Your misfortunes are imaginary.

You would not have envied a tenor in an overcoat of camel hair
Had you guessed his fear and known how he would die.

She, the red-haired, because of whom you suffred tortures,
So beautiful she seemed to you, is a doll in fire,
You don't understand what she screams with her lips of a clown.

On Telling Stories

We often ask what it is that makes us human, and much has been written about the unique (or not) gifts of humankind: our fully opposable thumbs, in-line toes, upright stance, tool use, large brains, reason, language, self-awareness. But if I had to choose a single defining feature of the human animal, I’d have to say it’s our penchant and need for story-telling: human beings are the story-telling species; in fact, we’re story junkies.

From stories around the campfire to wandering minstrels, movies, television, gossip, books, speeches, performances: we listen to stories; we tell stories. All the time. Everywhere. I’m doing it right now. We have no other way of being in the world; our apprehended reality is a network of stories, part fictional, part factual. We listen to news and other “true” stories to get information about our world, but what function does pure fiction fulfill? Why do we love a good yarn?

While facts provide us with hard and specific information, fiction helps us understand the relationships between those facts. Through stories we expand upon our empirical knowledge to grasp those aspects of experience which are factually empty.

Mythological stories serve this purpose within the purview of religion. As larger-than-life narratives, explaining or describing the human relationship to the cosmos, they become the bread crumb trails of culture that guide members of a community through a chaotic universe. But the power of stories on the human mind is not only a matter of rarefied existential wonder; they also aid our understandings of matters more mundane by serving as the training ground for emotional and intellectual exploration, taking us to places in our minds without cost or danger to our lives or livelihoods.

Stories allow us to explore alternate lives and ways of thinking and being in the world, and they do it by engaging us fully along the breadth of our deepest emotional, moral, and rational capacities as human beings. Stories bring us ideas in a way that can both appeal to and bypass our reason, while sustaining the uncertainties, complexities, and deep mysteries of life. They allow us to explore through virtual experience notions that don't easily or entirely lend themselves to factual or purely logical analyses. When we’re involved in a character’s life, we learn something without even realizing we did.

Stories also appeal to us at different levels. The most popular do so because they let us experience deep passions, emotional roller-coasters, or the epiphanies of heroism, which we may otherwise feel our ordinary lives are lacking. Tawdry stories appeal to us because they allow us safely to transgress morally or sexually in ways we never would dare to in real life. Other popular stories give us hope, idealized role models, or a sense of validation in our own lives. Perhaps the stories with the widest appeal are those that pander or speak more to our desires and fears, our unfulfilled emotional capacities or drives. But this is what we are, and even these stories, operating on these simple levels, feed us.

But stories certainly can be larger than this, too, and the most powerful and important fiction is that which engages the whole being and transports both the mind and soul. It grabs us by the bones, jogs our complacency, and takes us to new realizations. Such stories present us the opportunity to wander through our own complex natures as individuals and human beings, helping us to chart our inner landscapes and move towards greater self-knowledge.

The same stories clearly don't have the same power or meaning for every individual—or even at different points in the same lifetime. But this is a strength of fiction: we each carry ourselves into it to have our unique experiences within; when we emerge, we each bring back unique gifts from it, which may at times take the form of an averse reaction. But even in finding a work of fiction "untrue" or out of resonance with ourselves, we are enriched for having made the journey.

Putty in Her Hands

(An excerpt from a novel-in-progress)

Sasha calls on Saturday afternoon, ‘Are you free?’

Sasha is a Russian escort, 28, slim, dark-haired, with dreamy green eyes. She needs a ride in an hour to Plaza Hotel, downtown. After a three-day break, she accepted a two-hour job today, but her car will not start. ‘I’ll make up to you,’ she adds suggestively.

Ved imagines her pacing the living room in her red silk robe. He can practically smell her perfume on the phone. ‘I’ll pick you up in fifty minutes. Be ready and wait downstairs.’ He showers, gets dressed, and leaves.

He found her nine months ago on an escort girls website. Fragments of her online ad have stayed with him: I am all natural and very fit … I specialize in fantasy role-plays: nurse, housemaid, nun, schoolgirl, cheerleader (special requests welcome) … My Russian accent will make you putty in my hands, in all seven languages I speak.

In one online photo, a profile pose, she was down on all fours on what seemed open grassland. Her makeup and ornate dress, bunched above her bare butt, evoked for him disreputable belly dancers. Another was a close-up shot of her bust, donning nothing but a two-string pearl necklace.

He vividly remembers their first meeting last winter in a mid-range hotel. It was Friday. After much uneasy deliberation, he had called her during the day for a two-hour appointment. He left work an hour early that day to allow time for a shower and snack. On a whim, on his way out of his apartment, he picked up the Russian Matryoshka doll that a friend gave him a long time ago and to which he had built no special attachment.

The lobby was almost empty when he arrived. No one noticed his nerves as he went through a long corridor and knocked on her room. The door opened to reveal her face. She signaled him in from behind the door. Inside, he introduced himself and gave her the doll. It amused her instantly, broke the ice. She wore a pleated pink chiffon skirt, knee-length. He was at once charmed by her youthful voice and accent. Putty in her hands, huh.

A Qawwali Concert

A year or so ago, I attended an open-air Qawwali concert in Jaipur by the famous Sabri Brothers, who claim direct descent from Mian Tansen himself, the legendary Hindustani musician in Akbar’s court. Qawwali, for the uninitiated, is the devotional music of the Sufis of the Indian subcontinent. A famous recent exponent of the form was Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan.

 

The concert, hosted by Rajasthan Tourism, was free to all. I noticed that the first quarter of the audience space was far better lit; it had nice sofas and comfy chairs and the quality of seating steadily declined further back. This front section was of course for “Invitation Only” pass bearers. (No points for guessing where I was.) I watched sodas being served by liveried waiters to these chosen people, cordoned off from the rest by ropes and policemen. At least one person expressed solidarity as I grumbled about this open discrimination at a tax-sponsored event.

 

The concert of course couldn’t begin until the chief guest had arrived, who was none other than Shrimati Vasundhara Raje Scindia, the Chief Minister of Rajasthan. As my father had predicted, she showed up an hour late – apparently a habit with her – in keeping with the time honored way of Indian honchos asserting their importance to the masses. Meanwhile, the audience had rearranged the neatly laid out chairs and blocked all passageways. I looked around from where I sat – there was no way to leave except to climb over chairs, which were now all occupied. In other words, I was trapped in the middle of a crowd getting boisterous by the minute. My attempts to relax and see the humor in the situation were proving only partially successful.

   

The concert finally began. The speakers were piercingly loud but the crowd fell silent for the most part. The two brothers sang rapturously of the glory and mystery of the almighty, His inscrutable ways, His grace and beauty manifest in the things of this world. This I liked; the music was pleasant enough, punctuated by energetic bouts of virtuoso vocal callesthenics. They represented a non-denominational religiosity that I no longer possess myself but which I understand and appreciate intellectually. To varying degrees, such mystical expression has flowered in every human culture.

   

Songs to the divine were interspersed with songs of love, suggesting that uniquely subcontinental mood of longing and desire for the human beloved. But the beloved they sang of was invariably and literally young, with flowing dark tresses, glowing fair skin, supple gait, intoxicating eyes. The idea of two graying, balding, paunchy men whipping themselves up in a lather conjuring up idealized feminine qualities best found in a few nubile women struck me as both perverse and comic. I wondered: How can this obsession with physical form qualify as great poetry?

 

A surfeit of puerile and soppy sentimentality from middle-aged men is what drove me off ghazals (a sister form of qawwalis) in the first place. Nothing of her mind or will; if she reacts at all, it is to tease and withhold; or she is adored like an ethereal being. It seemed to me that to these men, it was unthinkable to sing of the love of, say, a 60-yr old man for a 63-yr old woman. But the crowd was mighty pleased, bursting with wah, wahs – a stylized approval for a stylized emotion.

 

Most of their love songs struck me as no more sublime than a school-boy's crush, born of sexual inexperience. Indeed, too many secular love songs of the qawwali and ghazal kind that I recall have this quality – fitting products of a prudish culture where the youth typically acquired no "hands-on" experience with the opposite sex. Then they married a stranger, fossilizing many of their mawkish ideas about love. I couldn't help thinking: if only my fellow middle-class citizens got laid more often in their youth – experimenting, falling in/out with a partner or more before marriage – they would likely have less arrested ideas about love and the poetics of love.