Books

Pointless tale

Magic Seeds by V.S. Naipaul; Picador; Price: Rs.495; 294 pp

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Magic Seeds resumes the biographical narrative of Willie Chandran, the feckless India-born protagonist of Half a Life who (for those who skipped the latter novel without missing much) was last seen in Berlin. He had fled there to his sister Sarojini living-in with a trendy leftie German photographer named Wolf who specialises in fomenting third world revolutions and displaying heart-rending photographs of starving black and brown babies and associated third world horrors. How he escaped from India where his father was a temple priest and Willie an ineffectual fortune-teller-cum-beggar on the premises, was recounted in Half a Life. Briefly, this is the story: By constantly bombarding a high and mighty worthy in faraway England who had once visited the temple with pathetic, importuning letters, Willie’s high caste father (who to spite himself marries an ugly low caste woman) and begets Willie and Sarojini, wangles the former a scholarship to study in London.

Instead of seizing the opportunity and learning a skill or trade, Willie wastes his time in Blighty though he manages to write a novel which is miraculously published and is promptly forgotten. But the ‘success’ of the novel manifests itself decades later. Also in London Willie meets Ana, an Afro-Portugese mulatto woman with whom he drifts into an sub-optimal sexual relationship. Ana’s family has estates in a nameless African country, presumably Angola, to which they return to start a new life together. A major portion of Half a Life recounted Willie’s lotus-eating existence in Africa where for mysterious, unexplained reasons, he refuses to become invol-ved with his in-laws’ agri-business, frequents prostitutes and luncheons and parties of expatriates under siege from a threatening African nationalist movement. In the nick of time without much compunction or regret, Willie escapes from Africa to Berlin where this novel under review begins.

In Berlin which has a large community of leftist poseurs and Tamil refugees from the civil war in Sri Lanka, to inject some aim and purpose into Willie’s life, Sarojini informs him that the "most important man in the world", one Kandipalli Seetharamiah, is spearheading a peasant revolution back home in India. She persuades Willie that he will find himself and overcome his anomie if he joins Seetharamiah’s revolutionary movement to liberate poor peasants in India. Willie accepts her advice and journeys to India where after a long wait during which he is immediately introduced to poverty, filth and sub-human deprivation — ability to cope with is the prerequisite of revolutionary commitment — he is inducted into the peasant revolution.

A greater portion of Magic Seeds recounts Willie’s seven years as a revolutionary within a movement driven by quasi-literate leftist dropouts protesting oppression of the peasantry but which is perhaps as brutal and as oppressive as the government(s) it half-heartedly seeks to replace. It takes Willie Chandran seven years of aimless marching, camping, hiding and random, anarchic murder in the deep rural hinterland of the subcontinent to discover that his ideologically trendy sister has sent him to fight for an ill-defined and unwinnable cause.

Following the arrest of Seetharamiah whose "mind had gone" by then, the peasant revolt loses direction and Willie artfully arranges his own surrender under the mistaken belief that he will be granted amnesty. Instead he is sentenced to ten years in prison. Meanwhile following the death of their father, Sarojini returns to India and takes charge of his ashram metamorphosing into a prominent social worker. Stricken with remorse that by supporting revolutionary causes from the safety and comfort of Berlin she had sent Willie and likewise "many people to their doom in many countries", she engineers a pardon for him through Roger, a London-based liberal do-gooding lawyer who unearths Willie’s long-forgotten novel and arranges to celebrate and project him as a pioneer of modern Indian writing.

Back in London, Willie is offered home and hospitality by Roger in toney St. John’s Wood where he lives with his curiously nomenclatured wife, Perdita. Willie promptly repays Roger by seducing Perdita who is simultaneously conducting an open affair with "a man with a big house" to spite her husband. Roger introduces him to a wealthy banker who hires him to write for an architectural magazine published by him. Miraculously bestowed magic seeds which could revive his hitherto purposeless existence, the second half of the novel focuses upon Willie’s half-hearted attempts to get a life.

Inevitably Magic Seeds is replete with deft characterisation and brilliant insights into the human condition for which Naipaul is justly famous. In particular the acuity with which the celebrated writer discerns pedestrian motives in champions of great causes is extraordinary. Moreover towards the end of the book there is a magnificent broadside against haywire British welfarism which encourages serial promiscuity and rewards women breeding bastard children with monetary benefits and housing.

Yet in the final reckoning, Naipaul’s swansong tells a pointless tale. Someone with the great man’s ear should inform him that stories of solipsistic navel-gazers such as Willie Chandran in search of their ‘identity’, roots, place in society etc, have had their day and are too tedious to plough through in search of brilliant insights and turns of phrase. In the rapidly globalising world which offers new opportunities and challenges, people crave to read about doers and achievers who take on great challenges and either triumph or perish in the process. Yet it is a character trait of Naipaul to focus exclusively upon losers, drifters and derelicts in societies he chooses to write about.

In his devastating expose of the seamy side of Naipaul In the Shadow of Sir Vidia (Hamish Hamilton, 2002) writer and once-friend Paul Theroux perceptively observed that at street level for the brutal thugs of the neo-Nazi National Front, Naipaul for all his titles and literary attainments, is just another nut-brown Asian immigrant, probably a corner shopkeeper. By picking on hopeless losers in third- world societies, the Nobel laureate possibly derives sub-conscious comfort that even with his ex facie second class status, he is better off in shabby, worn out Britain notwithstanding its growing population of council estate rabble.

Dilip Thakore

Unidimensional biography

Rahul Dravid — A Biography by Vedam Jaishankar; UBS Publishers; Price: Rs.200; 168 pp

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Thanks to this partnership India declared at a total of 657/7 and on a crumbling pitch Harbhajan Singh’s spin bowling pyrotechnics bundled out the Aussies for 213. It was perhaps the most famous victory in the history of test cricket and paved the way for a 2-1 series win. "Rahul Dravid showed yet again that in crunch situations he had no peers in this Indian team. He was the one who would put up his hand and be counted again and again," writes cricket columnist Vedam Jaishankar in the eponymous biography of India’s vice captain, who for his impregnable defence and stoicism in crisis situations, has earned the epithet of the Great Wall of Indian cricket.

The book traces the Dravid story back four generations to a Brahmin priest who travelled from Tanjavur in Tamil Nadu to Gwalior. The Brahmin was employed by the Peshwas as a high priest. The residents, perhaps uncomfortable with his name, referred to him as "Dravidian", which was shortened to "Dravid". According to Jaishankar, Rahul was a serious-minded boy, who grew up with old-world values. He was respectful to his teachers and elders, bright in his studies, and juggled his time well, balancing academics and cricket.

The book briefs us on Dravid’s rise up the ranks, through his school days, Ranji Trophy, and India ‘A’ side. A couple of incidents in the Ranji Trophy matches demonstrate his passion for the game and dislike of anybody who treats it lightly. Jaishankar recounts his stern rebuke of a childhood friend who threw away his wicket in a Ranji match, despite constant calls for caution.

The biography doesn’t follow a strict chronological order. Instead, each chapter is devoted to a facet of Dravid’s cricketing personality and stages in his career: his school and college days, Ranji Trophy, his struggle to make it into the national team, and so forth.

The other chapters deal with captaincy, match preparation, overseas record, one-day performances, and an English county season. Jaishankar (formerly sports editor of The Indian Express, Bangalore) takes pains to stress that Dravid is one of India’s most accomplished players, and despite his contribution, has been unfairly treated by the selectors and cricketing establishment — a passion which perhaps affects his objectivity. This prompts him to make constant allusions to "sections in the media" who have "planted stories" about Dravid’s unsuitability for one-day cricket and targets an unnamed commentator who "probably believed that Rahul edged him out of the Indian team", of denigrating Dravid’s allegedly painstaking batting.

Jaishankar has therefore concentrated almost entirely on performance. He provides a plethora of evidence to support his claim that Dravid is one of the greats; but this being a biography could have included more than a recitation of his exploits on playing fields around the world. The most conspicuous omission is of his interaction with Karnataka’s other internationals, such as Anil Kumble, Javagal Srinath, Sunil Joshi and Venkatesh Prasad (all good friends of Dravid), in the narrative.

The other significant omission is the match-fixing scandal, the biggest crisis in Indian cricket history. Dravid was very much part of the team then, but Jaishankar doesn’t tell us what he thought of it or how it affected him. Indeed the scandal isn’t mentioned at all.

Unfortunately though well intentioned, this biography is a uni-dimensional work of a multi-dimensional personality. The chapters on Dravid’s boyhood and teens are densely detailed, but one suspects that the author succumbed to pressures of deadline thereafter.