<*I read Satanic Verses a few years ago in Pakistan, having borrowed it from a friend. In Islamabad it is quite amusing to discern the number of upper-class Pakistanis, who trump their “modern Western ways”, by prominently displaying Satanic Verses on their bookshelves.>
Midnight's Children
Having recently seen the production of Midnight's Children performed in the Barbican by the Royal Shakespeare Company I thought that I would pen my scattered thoughts on such an intriguing and frankly baffling play. Midnight’s Children is a novel authored by Salman Rushdie and concerns the trials & tribulations of the Sub-continent in the modern era. I am somewhat averse towards Rushdie’s writings because of Satanic Verses*, which had no clear insight because of its wholly allegorical nature**.
A neurotic narrator complemented by colourful imagery from the Sub-continents history drove the play forward. Throughout the showing of Midnight’s Children I was reminded of the history of my paternal grandmother’s family, which so paralleled that of the narrator. Though of Islamic ancestry, but no longer of the Muslim faith, both families were emigrés from a historic region (the narrator’s from Kashmir, mine from the United Provinces or as rendered in Hindi, Uttar Pradesh), who settled in the Muslim district of Delhi only to be torn by partition, with some migrating to Sindh, Pakistan whilst the rest mired in Maharashtra, India. Nevertheless though there were close parallels to my own familial history, I was unable to identify with the play since it did not shed any light into this unique sub-culture.
Nevertheless I could be accused of parochial griping since the narrator to symbolise the spirit of freedom India***, the timing of his birth perfectly coinciding with the birth of that nation. His self-assurance at first represented the dreams of a confident nation eagerly exploring the paradigm of being both nascent and ancient. His descent into neuroticism, teetering on insanity, whilst still adhering to his beliefs in spite of the brutal reality is meant to mirror the decline of democratic virtues in India.
Nevertheless I rejected that analogy since Salman Rushdie had imbued a heightened sense of exaggeration merely to drum up the significance of his plot. For instance the emasculation of the narrator, on the orders of Indira Gandhi, meant to symbolise the loss of India’s freedom under her emergency rule was rife with hyperbole. India’s democratic freedoms may have been somewhat suspended for a short period but it certainly did not inhibit the spirit of Indian democracy.
Nevertheless the play’s depiction lacked the sufficient depth and provided no intrinsic knowledge of the Sub-continent. Salman’s play caricaturised Pakistan’s elite as Anglophile military types, granted that may be true yet for someone like Salman Rushdie, whose upper class family finally emigrated from Bombay to Karachi in the 70s, one would have expected a greater degree of insight even if of a comic nature****. Concurrently the perceptive angle cast at India did not do justice to her intricate nature and in mirroring her events through the life of Sinai, the main narrator, the play did not provide a native outlook rather one coloured by years in the West.
Salman’s severe lapse was to indulge in metaphorical imagery as a mean of illustrating his point since at times the play descended into such ridicule that the audience was left bewildered. Case in point was a ridiculous scene where Pakistani soldiers made frantic love to Hindu goddesses (probably the analogy is the rape atrocities committed by Pakistani soldiers upon Bengali women) since the play had not developed an adequate context and one suspects that it was inserted merely for the purposes of eroticism.
Rushdie nevertheless delightfully wove his belief of the fluid nature of the boundaries demarcating Indian society into the play. Sinai, born to an illicit relationship between a departing colonial Raj and Hindu servant, and his exchange at birth with the true Muslim son, who is instead raised as a Hindu, was the perfect illustration. The Muslim son is given the name Shiva and grows to symbolise militant Hinduism and the antithesis of Islam. The Christian nurse who exchanged them at birth, goaded by her soon to be shot communist boyfriend, further illustrates the dynamics underlying Indian society. The barriers between master and servant, colonial and subject, Hindu & Muslim, dissipate through Rushdie’s repeated attempts at obscuring familial history and genealogies. There is an interpretative sub-text to the incestuous relationship between Sinai and his beautiful sister Jamilah (though as he reminds her that they are not brother and sister) since it is meant to symbolise the deep longing mingled with abhorrence between India and Pakistan.
There is a fundamental duality when Sub-continental literature casts its eye back to the past for the modern history of that region exerts such a force that it could very easily overwhelm the narrative. Salman’s play failed to establish an independent identity rather it relied on the power of the Sub-continent’s modern history to carry it forward and redeem its blunders.
Conversely Vikram Seth framed his novel, “Suitable Boy”, in such a way that his characters would respond to moments in history through the prism of their own lives. Thus he would leave the reader to subtly realise how the fundamental political and economic shifts in post-Independent India affected the disparate echelons of society. Vikram Seth, through highlighting the diverse threads that constitutes India, managed to artfully illumine the underlying tapestry that binds and unites them to a common fate. In “Suitable Boy” one is imparted with the quintessence and richness of India whereas in Midnight’s Children one is felt bereft of any insight into such a fascinating nation rather overwhelmed by a flurry of esoteric parables.
*I read Satanic Verses a few years ago in Pakistan, having borrowed it from a friend. In Islamabad it is quite amusing to discern the number of upper-class Pakistanis, who trump their “modern Western ways”, by prominently displaying Satanic Verses on their bookshelves.
** I can barely remember the theme of Satanic Verses except that it concerned an actor who believed himself a Prophet. Salman Rushdie contemporised the state of Prophethood and adeptly showed how it skirts, ever so perilously, the fine line that delineates it from delirium. Nevertheless though I dislike Rushdie’s writing style (I prefer Vikram Seth, whose novel is perhaps the epitome of Sub-continental modern literature) I was compelled to read his books, Midnight’s Children and Satanic Verses, in straight sessions. The sway of his novelistic insight was overpowering at times.
*** Rushdie is writing from & for an Indian perspective and writes Pakistan off as an authoritarian state from the beginning, only to serve as comic relief. Though at times Midnight's Children captures and portrays Pakistan particularly well. A notable instance is when the spinster aunt, performed by Nina Wadia of Goodness Gracious Me fame, convinces her frivolous niece, Jamilah, by pontificating about the "purity of the Pakistani nation", which I enjoyed since it straddled the line between licentiousness and parsimony. There is one scene where Rushdie perfectly captures the duality struggling in the deep recesses of the Pakistani mind when the beautiful singer, Jamilah (draped in the full burka), sedately captivates her audience with a traditionally Pakistani ghazal whilst fantasising of dancing about in a miniskirt and singing American pop music. Salman amplifies the Islamic undercurrents of Pakistani society by dressing the women in full purdah, and this is an interesting topic which I shall discuss in future web-log post.
****Anyone with even a passing familiarity with our elite could author a riveting novel on the foibles of the top strata of Pakistani society.
Notes:
I ask exasperated readers to indulge my attempts at reviewing just as they did for my dismal poetry.
It is interesting that Salman Rushdie captures the crux of the matter when he depicts the proto Indian and Pakistani family as Delhite Muslim émigrés from Kashmir. It is perhaps a reflection of the two most politically dominant ethnicities in the Sub-contiennt. The Muslim émigrés from Delhi form the upper crust of Pakistani society for even Musharraf was born in that city. Pakistan derives its intellectual and cultural leadership from the Muslim Delhi-Lucknow belt whereas in India the reign of the Nehru-Gandhi political dynasty is indicative of the political power once concentrated amongst the Pandit (Kashmiri Brahmin) community.
These are the historic political classes of the Sub-continent and provided leadership to their respective communities. Naturally in the Sub-continent there are observations that can be made of the particular castes & communities and their respective preponderance in certain spheres of life. Parsis contribute disproportionately to the economic life of the Sub-continent, Tamil Brahmins are renowned for their mathematical ability, Bengali Brahmins for their waxing of literary epics and prose whilst west of the Thar desert the inhabitants were once feared & admired as the stirking martial races.
Zachary Latif 12:21
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