Krishna
We have reviewed The Ground Beneath Her Feet by the same author earlier and liked it.
Salman has a real gift of writing and telling a tale, and even his introduction about how, while working for the advertisement agency Oglivy, he wanted to write this book and took a trip to India which he had left many years ago, is fascinating to read, as much as, I expect, the book itself. But the expectations have a way of not coming true. This book was not to my liking at all. Why? Read on to find out.
The story is of Aadam Aziz (the spelling with two ‘a’s is the author’s) who, after studying medicine in Germany returns home to find his world turned upside down. His mother who was housebound in a veil is forced to work – she starts a gem business – because his father had a stroke and was incapacitated.
The flavour of Kashmir is there: Dal Lake unfreezing, the shikara boats plying across etc. Doctor Aziz is the grandfather of the narrator Saleem Sinai.
One thing that comes out: Even in this, his first book, the religious irreverence comes out. A boatman called Tai tells Aadam that he is so old that he had seen Jesus when, at the end of the latter’s life, he came to Kashmir. He describes Jesus as bald and a glutton. It was meant as the ramblings of an illiterate but fascinating storyteller.
Aadam Aziz had a huge nose, which Tai never tired of making fun of.
The local landowner Ghani’s daughter is sick and the regular doctor is also ill and absent so he sends Tai to fetch Aadam to attend to his daughter. The ‘firengi’ educated young doctor, slowly realizes that he is being called to look after his daughter Naseem who is interested and falls in love with her. They marry.
Salman tends to go off in tangents at times, and now he goes back to the main character Salman. But not to his life. He extols the virtues of dung both in Kashmir and Amritsar. Totally unnecessary and unfortunately not funny as the author intended. You have to look past these freak deviations to enjoy the story. The language too is a bit over the top – talking about the blood of first night on the ‘sacred’ blanket with a hole and how it was preserved by Salman’s grandfather Aadam and his wife.
Again unfunny. Not because of the scatological or sexual content but judged by its worth, looking at it for itself, it falls short in comedic or even narrative value as a jest. You again see why, in the midst of a good story, Salman’s narration irks – later he goes into spittoons and other trivia. This is incredibly frustrating to me, and perhaps some of you.
He also goes to Jallianwala Bagh where General Dyer commits mass murder, but escapes because he fell down at just the ‘right’ moment.
Mian Abdullah, also called the Hummingbird as he used to tunelessly hum all the time, was opposed to the fanaticism of the Muslim League which was bent on splintering the soon-to-be-free India into two countries : India and Pakistan. To counter their influence, he created the Free Islam Convocation and tried to rally support. He had Nasim Khan as his assistant. Angered by this, one night, a group of goons appeared and killed Abdullah with scimitars. Nasim managed to escape and went to the ‘doctor’s house’ for refuge. Meanwhile – another tangent – all the street dogs came to Abdullah’s house and tore all the assassins to bits. (Go figure – shades of Gabriel Garcia Marquez here. See our review of One Hundred Years of Solitude, We did not like it there either.)
Nasim is given refuge by Aziz, much to the chagrin of his wife Naseem who points out that they have three unmarried daughters in the same house. Aziz is adamant and enraged, Naseem refuses to talk to anyone and stays thus for years (Oh boy!).
Meanwhile Nasim and Mumtaz, the darker middle daughter, marry but Nasim is unable to consummate the marriage. When this is known, the youngest, Emerald betrays Nasim to her ‘friend’ Brigadier Zulfikar. But Nadir had vanished, giving release to Mumtaz by writing ‘Talaq, talaq, talaq’ on a piece of paper he left behind.
We learn an interesting tidbit here – Zulfikar refers to the double pronged sword used by Ali, the son in law of Prophet Mohammed and whose death caused the Great Schism – the Sunni Shia divide. So can I infer that Zulfikar is a Shiite name?
Now the middle daughter Mumtaz marries a trader called Sinai and renames herself Amina.
Now is the time for literary blasphemy. All these celebrated writers have this habit of excessively twisting their narration in search of style. For example, both Salman Rushdie and VS Naipaul go off into tangents that irritate the heck out of an ordinary reader like me. Give me Stephen King any day.
And Saleem is now in Amina’s womb and she realizes that she is pregnant.
The story moves on as the family moves to Bombay and they are sold a house for cheap by a departing Britisher, who asks them not to change anything until the stroke of midnight at independence.
Truly weird storytelling and sense of humour that rankles. The story continues with how Salim had been switched at birth, the semi European features obscured by the equally fair Kashmiri parentage. His wife Padma comes in and out and shrieks. It is all a confused heap of mixed descriptions. Personally, I find the narration unappealing.
Then comes the weird powers that Salim gets. He can read thoughts and has to pretend that he is normal as, when the nine year boy revealed the secret in his excitement, he was ridiculed and Ahmed, his father, slapped him so hard that he became deaf in one ear.
The core of the plot comes out now. And it sucks even worse than the limp story so far. All the children born between midnight and 1 AM on August 15, 1947 (One hour after the Britishers left India) have special powers. Why? No explanation. The ones born closest to midnight have the greatest powers but the ones born later have less. Why? No explanation. And Salim thinks he should be the leader of the group! He is the one recognized by no less than Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India, as the first ever baby born in Independent India.
Oh my God, the ridiculousness of it all. Meanwhile, Amina, Salim’s mother, pines for her ex lover who could not consummate the marriage.
Go figure. I like it less and less, the more I read.
He goes to Pakistan with his Uncle Zulfikar, where he witnesses firsthand Ayub Khan’s coup against the government. Comes back.
And goes into increasingly insipid statements. It is all oh, so, boring. I now remember why I do not like the style or imagination of this celebrated author.
More surrealist crap about how the next Indo Pak war obliterated Saleem’s whole family except his sister who has gone religious fanatic and thanks to her mesmerizing voice is now Jamila the Singer, who is an icon in Pakistan. (Yeah, in case you are wondering the whole family has moved to Pakistan). A girl betrothed to the son of a general refuses to marry him. She cannot openly object so she achieves her aim by refusing to mature and thus declared fit to be married.
Such crap descriptions abound. Even then the master of surrealism, Gabriel Garcia Marquez did it in One Hundred Years of Solitude, we did not like it much. This is a much poorer version of the same technique and irritates the reader no end. (That is, if the reader is like me!)
At this point about three fourths of the book has been read, and the reader has lost all hopes that the story will go anywhere at all. If you are like me, you will go through and finish the rest of the book, only because of the investment of time and effort already expended on the book.
He goes even to Bangladesh as a part of Pakistani army just before the battle of liberation. Like Forrest Gump he seems to be everywhere without causing significant impact anywhere. He is now a disinterested, unfeeling, man nicknamed buddha (both the Hindi or Urdu meaning of ‘Old’ and the detached enlightenment of Gautama).
He is met by one of the old Midnight Children, Parvati the witch. She wants to bed him but he only sees a decomposed face of Jamila, his ‘sister’ whom he had improper thoughts about, when he looks at Parvati. So Parvati goes, finds Shiva and has a baby with him. And Saleem marries her, after having her convert, renaming her Layla. However, he still cannot consummate his marriage. The baby born to Layla has huge ears, like an elephant. He is named Aadam Sinai.
The background of the story is Indira Gandhi and the emergency. A personal tragedy strikes Salim now and he falls victim to the forced sterlization of the Emergency sarkar.
Saleem watches the forced sterlization mob – surrealism here because all women in the forcing team are Maneka and all men are Sanjay and who should come for him but Major Shiva, his archenemy and the baby who was indeed swapped for him by Mary Perreira?
All absurd.This book won the Booker prize when it was published and established Rushdie as a preeminent literary author. This is the second book he has written and the blurb inside says, in a rush of promotional hubris, “This is the Booker of Bookers, the best book to win the Booker Prize”. Really?
I still don’t get the charm in the book because it looks like a poor imitation of Forrest Gump, as I had said, even when you finish the book. What am I not seeing?
2/10
== Krishna