There is no dearth of ambitions among the writers of the sub-continent. But ever since Salman Rushdie had won the Booker Prize for his “midnight’s Children”, authors in the subcontinent have stopped writing simple and beautiful stories so as to devote time for writing books of epic dimensions. Greed for big money and glamour of big prizes is making writers in the sub-continent search for big international events and then somehow joining them with a story line.
In Rushdie’s Midnight Children, the main protagonist is born at the midnight of 15th August, 1947 when India and pakistan wins their freedom. Then the protagonist charts his family history and finds that his grandfather was a Kashmiri. In the process of telling about his grandfather, Rushdie tells about the the generation of Kashmir problem. The same man then travels to Punjab and witnesses the Jalianwala Bagh massacre, then lands in Pakistan and then in Bangladesh to track the history of Bangladesh Liberation war and the state of India when PM Indira Gandhi had imposed emergency in India.
Events of epic dimension, landmarks in history and important personalities like Nehru, Jinnah, Gandhi, etc are thus sewn together for the western readers who can identify the Indian subcontinent only on the basis of these. The cock and bull stories thus created seldom match reality. Rushdie was never known to be a writer who is much read by the people whom he claims to represent. His language is also dull and his books are often very tedious to read. But so what? Readers of west is all that matters to people like Rushdie.
Now Rushdie is inspiring a generation of writers in the subcontinent and the Indian and Pakistani diaspora to write such stuff. No need to scratch one’s head on style. No need to find a coherent heart warming story either. And certainly there is no need to be real. The recepi for a good novel are as follows:
a) Pick up some imporatnt historical events
b) Pick up some important personalities from histroy who are still talked about
c) Join whatever you have picked. To do so make your protagonist travel to all these lands and meet such people who are somehow associated with these events and personalities.
The latest writer to have tried this marvellous technique is Pakistani author Kamila Shamsie.
In her latest book Burnt Shadows, Kamila’s protagonist is a Japanese lady who survives Nagasaki Bombing. Before the Bombing, she was married to a German soldier who had died fighting in the second world war. The German soldier’s sister lives in India. So the protagonist can now travel to to India and here she gets close to a Muslim man who suffers pangs of Partition and migrates to Pakistan. She follows this man to Pakistan later where the Muslim man’s son becomes a Islamist terrorist planning to attack USA. Finally the protagonist moves to USA where her sister-in-law who once lived in India, has also shifted. The sister-in-law’s son has now joined the CIA so that the reader can now get the view of CIA also. The story finally ends with the 9-11 destruction of twin towers.
Epic in scope though, the question is ” Is it literature?” Badly written, unconvincing in its approach and sweep of events, such books are however the toasts of the west. The problem is that it is discouraging serious writers from attempting anything serious in the sub-continent. This may be good for some individual writers like Kamila Shamsie, for the overall development of literature in the sub-continent, this is something we have to guard against.
