The Tragic Indian

Deviating a little from the past few threads, this post is about the literary scene in India as seen through my eyes – I still have a lot to see and so please forgive the oversights, if any.

I have recently been reading this book called Ladies Coupe, it is by an Indian author – you may have heard her name – Anita Nair.

The special thing about this book is that, it is just like all other books authored by Indians. It is melancholy. If there were colors I would assign to the world seen through my eyes, while reading it, it would be shades of grey, with a tinge of ochre. The book is about these women who spend their lives playing the daughter, the sister, the wife and mother and finally realize that they need to find their own identity in order to be complete.

I hate the sound of ochre.

There have been others – Jhumpa Lahiri interpreting maladies or walking us through the travails of Gogol; Salman Rushdie equating the hopes, aspirations and downfall of a country with the hopes, aspirations and downfall of a kid born at Midnight; Anurag Mathur apparently describing the desperation of an Indian adolescent to get laid in the US of A, but actually trying to depress us by insinuating that we Indians are too garish, hypocritical and are perceived to be funny the world over; Meera Syal explains ably that Life isn’t, in fact, all haahaaheehee and Indian women, be they in any corner of the world, are doomed to unsatisfactory existences; and then there is Dominique Lappiere who manages to be suitably morose describing the City of Joy – and he ain’t even Indian (Although to be fair to him, the theme is about the flame of hope burning amidst all that misery, but the misery is so vividly described that one doesn’t get to the flame of hope part)! And how can we forget Munshi Premchand, whose tales were mired in hopelessness and destitution.

Do not get me wrong – I think Indian writers are brilliant, they write lucidly, they capture details that actually make you think – since all those lives they talk about are in someway yours. The insights that Premchand brings into a simple tale of misery and starvation does affect you in some manner; the absolutely fantastic language and construction that Salman Rushdie uses leaves you stunned and Indian women – well, we all know what a hard time society gives our women and that is what these stories depict – our society.

What I am wondering about is – Is the Indian author so burdened by his own cultural dilemmas, his existential traumas – especially relevant in the new world, saddened by his own perceptions about kith and kin, his observations about everything I-N-D-I-A-N that his books are dipped in the sort of sauce that comes with resignation?

There were a few rare ones like Satyajit Ray, in the days of yore who would churn out Feludas and some like Sudha Murthy and RK Narayan now, who use everyday incidents to depict various shades of human life - all with a glint of humor. There are those like Ruskin Bond who say it with nature and although his tales are as poignant as they get, they are speckled with old-world villas with bougainvillea and winding blue roads under the water-color skies - the stuff of nirvana. And then of course, there is the Shobha De!

Looking at the bigger picture - What makes most of these Indian authors so sensitive? Why is their world-view so tragic?