Rushdian Matters

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Rushdian Matters

Do you know why the characters in Salman Rushdie’s novels are monstrous, handicapped, grotesque and sometimes lovely bastards?  It’s because his stories are dealing with issues of identity crisis in an environment of multiculturalism, post-colonialism hybridity, multiplicity, dogmatic power of religions and economic disfiguration.

Another interesting paradox is that he himself straddles a multicultural space – born in India in the post-colonial period and living in the West, drawing from both Eastern and Western cultural traditions.

Thirdly, his agency of depiction is pretty intriguing. He uses magic realism (interplay of fact & fantasy) and chutnification of language to traverse this field of ambiguity. Allusions are drawn with ease, on one hand from classical literature and the other from pop culture. He surprises and disorients the reader with his abandonment and disregard for established code.

Welcome to Rushdian matters.

In conversation with Prema Rocha, professor of English Literature at St. Xavier’s Mapusa and writer of a book on literary criticism of Salman Rushdie’s works.

I would like you to elaborate on the title of your book ‘Shaping the World, Stopping it from Going to Sleep: The Novels of Salman Rushdie’.

Salman Rushdie is generally considered a remarkable contemporary writer. He addresses concerns that are pivotal to our times, like identity, tyranny and terrorism. He believes that writers who are apolitical offer their vote for the way things are. That his books have been mired in controversy has not deterred him from the compulsion to be politically expressive. And indeed, in his own work he takes sides, starts arguments, shapes the world and keeps it alert. The title is a quote from Rushdie, “A poet’s work is to name the unnameable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world, and stop it going to sleep”.

 What are the overall themes that prevail in Rushdie’s oeuvre? Name the novels that you have critically analysed in your book.

 Midnight’s Children is concerned with the newly independent India trying to find itself and assert its own identity. This new nation is grappling with religious, social, economic, political and linguistic concerns like the protagonist Saleem Sinai. Shame deals with politics in Pakistan. The Ground Beneath Her Feet explores issues like migration, corruption in India and pop music through a love story. The Moor’s Last Sigh juxtaposes multicultural Spain with a Bombay that is getting increasingly communal. Fury is Rushdie’s first novel set in America. It deals with migration, politics and art. Shalimar the Clown zooms in on Kashmir. It critiques communalism and terrorism. Rushdie’s targets include totalitarianism and oppression in its various avatars. His fiction largely narrates the Indian subcontinent in the 20^th century and its association with the world beyond.

How does myth, classical literature, popular culture and films interweave Rushdie’s novels? Give a prominent example from one of his books.

Rushdie is credited with carving out a space for the Indo-English imagination on the global map with Midnight’s Children. The book was a landmark. It inspired an entire generation of creative writers and forged new directions. A significant part of the galvanising energy of Rushdie’s texts is contributed by the inter-texts. Allusions to cinema, myth, epic, fable, fairytale, gossip, proverbs, superstition, popular songs and films, comics, advertisements as well as his own other work are integrated on his canvas. Rushdie’s love for Bombay cinema finds expression in Midnight’s Children. The motif of switched babies forms the basic plot of the text. So also, the pattern of amnesia from a blow to the head. These are typically formulaic fare in Hindi cinema. 

_{You have devoted a chapter each on Rushdie’s linguistic ebullience and English writing in India – tell us a little about it.}

_{Midnight’s Children put Rushdie on the map and Rushdie put Indian Writing in English on the global map like never before. This literary renaissance has been acknowledged by writers, somuchso that most of the writers of the present day are considered “Midnight’s Grandchildren”.  Shashi Tharoor pays Rushdie tribute when he calls him the “head of my profession”. In Indian writing in English, Rushdie is hailed for his “chutneyfication”. Unlike writers who avoided writing in English, in order to write in their native languages, Rushdie embraced English as yet another Indian language. Rushdie’s Angrezi boldly reworks English as a language of India. He taps into Indian English speech and story-telling techniques. He defamiliarizes English by bringing India into English as a strategy. For example, Hindi expression are literally translated as in “whatsitsname, or “madman from somewhere”.  And he defiantly and strategically doesn’t provide a glossary to this hybrid Indlish.}

_{You say that Rushdie’s non-fiction work forms a manifesto for his fictional writing.  How?}

_{That’s right. Rushdie has a significant number of articles and interviews. His non-fictional essays are a wonderful read. They range from musings on his own experiences, other writers, world issues, and much more. These essays provide valuable insights to the understanding of his fiction.}

How did the transformation from one kind of unpublished manuscript into another, that is, from an unpublished Ph.D. thesis into an as-yet-unpublished book manuscript take place?

I guess it really helps to have a good publisher.  All credit goes to the team. Publishing house Goa1556 did an excellent job. The affable Frederick Noronha is a one-man army when it comes to publishing in Goa. His concerted efforts have changed the publishing scape in our state.  Goa 1556 took care of everything when it came to technicalities, including the creative sketch for the book by Bina Nayak. The project is also associated with Golden Heart Emporium. I am grateful to the Directorate of Art and Culture for the scheme for Goan authors which supported the book. I consider it an honour to have Padma Shri awardee, author and educationist, Dr Maria Aurora Couto write the foreword to the book. She was one of the first critics to engage with Midnight’s Children way back in 1981.

It’s hard to pick up a dissertation and hear its author’s voice. Most of the time the author is quoting from other greats – critics, authors. Revising a dissertation is partly a matter of making the writer’s text speak up. Explain the process.

 It was Issac Newton who is credited with the statement, “If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants”. Research, after all, builds upon previous research. It is imperative that one takes into account the body of existing work. Having said that, one has to keep one’s argument in focus and let one’s own voice and view be heard.

A wise dissertation director once counselled a doctoral student that the dissertation would be the last piece of his student writing, not his first professional work. Every editor at a scholarly publishing house knows this, too. How did you negotiate around this field?

That is so true! Research teaches you humility, among other things. Knowledge is expanding exponentially. In addition, the internet has changed everything. Prof K.S. Bhat, my Ph.D. supervisor and Professors Nina Calderia, Kiran Budkuley and Rafael Fernandes, my teachers at the Goa University provided valuable insights and timely suggestions. They did remind me that the completion of the Ph.D. marks the beginning of the journey. I realise now what they meant. And I try to keep writing!

 Speak about the targeted readership that will benefit from your scholarly book. 

 Being an academic endeavour, the book is aimed at a very specific readership viz teachers and students of Rushdie, those interested in Post Colonialism, Diaspora Studies, Indian Writing in English. I am happy to receive feedback from students who say the book has been of assistance to them. It also pleasantly surprises me when unexpected people stop to say they have seen the book at the wonderful Central Library or elsewhere.

There are very few who have the ability and courage to take on ‘Satan Rushdy’.  Prema Rocha is one of them. 

Magical Realism Of Joseph Anton

                    Magic Realism of Joseph Anton

Salman Rushdie claims his story of terror and alienation through the years of the Fatwa in his memoir: Joseph Anton. Hiding under a false name, an alias created by adjoining the names of his admired writers – Joseph Conrad and Anton Chekov, he led a decade of nightmarish existence. A true story by the writer who lived each moment of it; catapulting through emotions of fear- faith, love- betrayal, horror- security, doubt – resolution. A writer who conjures up imaginative worlds and characters became a fictional character on the run battling a personal war which acquired gargantuan proportions of conflict on the world stage.

The narrative is in third person and begins with the watershed moment of the declaration of the death sentence. Thereafter he begins at the beginning, his relationship with his parents. The seed of impartial, objective study of theology was sowed in him by his father Anis Rushdie.  A drunkard who squandered his wealth away, but passed on to his children a staunch secular faith – a godless, irreligious man who questioned and thought a lot about God and the foundation of religious faith.  The legacy of his original name – RUSHDIE, which wasn’t his father’s name but invented by the latter in his admiration for Ibn Rushd  - the famous 12^th century Spanish – Arab philosopher. Rushd was acclaimed for his commentary on Aristotle’s works and his inquiry, analysis and argument for the freedom of philosophy from the stronghold of theology. When hell broke, and Rushdie’s life turned topsy –turvy , he was proud to be called Rushdie,  perpetuating  an inquiry in Satanic Verses, begun 800 years ago by Ibn Rushd himself.

The most poignant narrative in the book is about his relationship with his sons Zafar and Milan. When the world explodes around him, he can think of nothing but being with his son Zafar, then 10 years old. A universal constant that people all over feel in times of stress and danger. “It was Zafar who finally brought him back to himself. Zafar whom he worked constantly to see – and the protection police drove back and forth to bring about these intermittent meetings possible”.  In a weak moment for acceptance he signed an apology prepared by a confederation of Muslim leaders – losing the war of freedom of speech and expression in his writing for which the world over he had such an ardent following. But then these very moments of defeat and defenselessness fired his resolve to fight the battle to the very end.

His wrath and hopelessness about India – the land of his birth which was the first country to stop the importation of the Satanic Verses makes up an important part of the narrative.  A country surrounded by unfree societies of Pakistan, China, and Burma, yet free and secular itself with a supreme democracy; proved to be unfree, claustrophobic and flawed

The world of books was split in multiple ways. Everyone had an opinion and a choice to make.  Publishers and translators alike were threatened and had to seek cover or come out fighting wild.  While the author of Satanic Verses and many a European publisher crouched behind kitchen shelves and bullet proof glass, the American coterie of publishers and writers reiterated their oath to free expression and held book readings “Free people publish books, Free people sell books, Free people buy and read books”. The book was available at each bookstore and library in America. No doubt Rushdie finally migrated to the US and acquired an American citizenship.  If the list of betrayals was unending so was the colossal support of friends, writers and bureaucrats across the globe. He expresses his heartfelt debt to Andrew Wylie, Gillon Aitken(literary agents who travelled country to country to persuade publishers to print the controversial book), Liz Cadler (his first editor whom he had substituted with an American one for more money later- still she stood by him through the crisis), Gurmukh Singh(gave him shelter and the mobile phone a new invention at the time to stay in touch with family and friends). Each small act opened doors and made it possible for Rushdie to hope and live.

‘International Gorillay’ a Pakistani film (pg 254) was a story of a terrorist group out to kill Rushdie, the author portrayed as a drunk in safari suits. In the end he is killed not by the jihadists but a thunderbolt from heaven – God’s justice.  Imagine him in safari suits – a big laugh. The sartorial choice really wounded Rushdie, when he saw the film. But the heavy decision that rested with him was if he wanted to be protected by the arm of censorship. He chose otherwise and retracted from legal recourse. The film was licensed by the British Board of Film Classification but disappeared from the horizon within no time – for nobody would spend money to watch a rotten, dreadful film.  A great lesson in free speech argument- the more we hide, repress people, things, ideas, the stronger it becomes with demonic proportions. 

At the outset when the Satanic Verses was published in Britain, it was only a novel discussed in pure literally terms and was also short listed for the Booker Prize.  Within a short period of time with the furore that followed its publication it became something smaller and uglier: an insult and the writer an insulter. He often pleaded to people who wanted to help, “Defend the text”, he said. Surrounded by hatred and revenge, he despaired that if he wrote timid, apologetic, or angry, vengeful literature, his art would be completely destroyed beyond repair. Somehow through the enveloping darkness he must continue his writing imbued with the same integrity and faith. At his son’s insistence he embarked on a different genre of writing – that of children fiction, whose initial editor was none other than his son himself. The outcome was – “Haroun and the Sea of Stories”. Publishers refused or procrastinated in their commitment to publish his new writings but he nonetheless continued with his persistent effort, and next in line was “The Moor’s Last Sigh”. A volume of short stories – ‘East, West’  and essays ‘Imaginary Homelands’ along with book reviews and poems, an oasis in an otherwise shattering existence. The process of writing which entails his skill of taking cues from real life incidents and reworking them to fantastical elements is an invigorating refreshing read, a peep into a brilliant writer’s mind machinations.

The trivia juxtaposed with profound insights too finds great footage in the book.  He proclaims in his writings about his childhood – ‘to gossip and scandalize is an art I learnt from my mother’.  Self critical analysis runs rather thin, but settling scores or at least venting his angst on personalities like Peter Mayer – the Penguin Publisher, his wives Marriane and Padma and people he could not stand like Roald Dahl. On the other hand, the lucid renderings of his rapport with the British Police personnel, meets with another side to his personality. The complications and strictures arising from close proximity and confined shrouded hiding places, impinging on each other spaces, sets up a narrative resulting in close bonds of trust and camaraderie.

Salman Rushdie’s fiction celebrates levity, a tantalization of existing reality or the deconstruction of reality. Joseph Anton is an attempt at ground zero rooted to gravity, of a phase of stark reality in his life. But the entire episode appears fantastical to a reader leading a mundane , routine life. Therein  lies the magic realism of JOSEPH ANTON!