Indian Intellectual Snobbery

Over the last month, I have had the good fortune to read 4 books with Indian themes/authors namely Sea of Poppies by Amitava Ghosh, White Tiger by Adiga, Zoya Factor by Anuja Chauhan and Q & A by Vikas Swarup. The first two books are as distinct and different from the later two as cheese from chalk. The Sea of Poppies and White Tiger talk about the Dark  Age India with its burden of caste, creed and economic woes in all the glorified trappings of macabre morbidity  -  considered almost mandatory by the literati to garner Booker and other awards. The later two novels are about a resurgent, modern, positive and confident India – and perhaps more fun to read. A tad shallow compared to Amitava Ghosh but fun all the same.

Adiga and Ghosh would require a separate blog entry for comparison since both the books deserve a detailed dissection. At this point I would like to record my opinion by saying that I was amazed at the fact that the 2008 Booker went to Adiga.

Coming back to the central issue of this particular blog, there exists a certain degree of supercilious intellectual snobbery when it comes to Indian authors and theme – maybe a hangover from our colonial past. Why is it that a book which depicts Indian doom and gloom scores higher on the literary scale than one which depicts Indian boom and bloom? As a case in point, I am taking the liberty of comparing The White Tiger with Zoya Factor. I can already hear the cries of ‘Sacrilege’, ‘Ignoramus’ and whatever else that the intellectuals name lesser mortals.  I plead guilty to being an average reader and take special pleasure at being a non intellectual. I enjoy what I enjoy without heeding to the qualifications and labels. My moods decide what I read and like – my reading habits are not bound within the narrow confines of what the critics deem good.

But seriously – read the two books. Except for the rather brilliant stroke of using the Chinese premier as an anchor, I found the White Tiger absolutely ordinary. A typical run of the mill storyline, no creativity, the story telling is ordinary and the research definitely poor. The last factor can be vouched for by any ordinary Indian living in this country – there are enough fallacies especially about rural life in UP and Bihar. Perhaps the book appears charming and creative if you are wearing the blinkers of intellectualism with pretensions of being an Indian whilst staying abroad as a NRI.  Or it may appeal to the Gora Sahib who can smile indulgently at his brown protégé for having learnt the language, ways and views of the Sahibs!   My whole being cried out aloud that this depiction is not of the 21st century India – my India is alive and finally awakening to its tryst with destiny. I don’t need to parade the last vestiges of gloom in front of my ex foreign masters or others for critical fame. I must admit to the cowardice of pushing myself to finish reading the White Tiger since it was a Booker award winner. I did not want to squirm and appear illiterate in the company of my more intellectual friends who look down with disdain upon lesser mortals who can’t finish  repugnant Booker winners.

But I definitely enjoyed reading the Zoya Factor. The author, Anuja Chauhan, is from the ad world and as the write up professes, this is her first foray into writing anything longer than a 60 second commercial. She writes about a resurgent and contemporary India, about India winning the World Cup in cricket and not about India of the Dark Ages!  Admittedly the storyline is weak, perhaps bordering on comical, but there is zest, energy and contemporariness to the whole book. Reading it is like stepping out in the fresh air and light after the claustrophobic confines of Adiga’s India.  The language – especially in the first half – is amazingly humorous. Anuja probably has chosen her immediate environment and associates as the background for the novel and she has sketched the background and its characters beautifully. There is creativity, there is comedy, there is a certain contemporary Indianess to the writing and there are no pretensions at taking a shot at Booker. In fact given a good scriptwriter who can translate Anuja’s hilarious Hinglish into Hindi, we have a sure shot Bollywood winner here. Do I see noses wrinkling in distaste over the inane plot and comic Hinglish one liners amongst those who have read this book?  

This is the intellectual snobbery I am talking about. Describing the roadside open sewage in graphic details spread over three pages of text is intellectual but making the reader laugh and enjoy contemporary creativity is trivial. And that is precisely why I am writing about two books which are at the opposite end of the spectrum – The Booker award winning White Tiger and Anuja Chauhan’s first foray in writing – Zoya Factor. I admit that the comparison itself is unfair but the moot point is – I enjoyed reading about Zoya !!