topics: |  fiction | india | riot | epistolary

Book Review

Riot: A novel (later marketed as Riot: A love story) opens with news reports of the death of Priscilla Hart, an American volunteer working in the remote town of Zalilgarh (zalil = insincre, trickery). A poem by Priscilla, from her scrapbook, describes it as a dusty town of "bicycle-bells, cowdung sidewalks, and [...] red betel-stains on every wall" (p.15).

She has died in a riot following the Babri masjid demolition, and the New York Journal and her parents arrive in this dusty town to uncover her life.

The love story develops through a series of narratives from Priscilla - her scrapbook, letters to friends ("tear this up when you've read it, OK?" p.18), and also the journal of the district magistrate, V. Lakshman. Other voices include her father, who had spent time in India as an executive for Coca Cola, and had taken up an Indian lover, Nandini, due to which their marriage eventually broke up. It was thus Priscilla at twelve got her first exposure to India. There are also narratives from religious fanatics and secular scholars about the Babri Masjid demolitions and hindu-muslim relations and the events that led up to the riots.

Later she comes to India as a volunteer, and grows increasingly attached to the handsome, erudite Lakshman. On Valentine's day, 1989, when Lakshman's wife is away, she kisses him impulsively, on the cheek, but then they are kissing properly, and then they make love. The affair grows then in the multiple narratives of Lakshman and Priscilla, interspersed with diaries of her parents (who are coming together again), the journalist, and others.

Despite adopting the modern multi-viewpoint narrative style, the novel does not really deal in conflicts among the view points, unlike Ryunosuke Akutagawa's legendary In a grove (made into the movie Rashomon by Akira Kurosawa), or even the milder conflicts in Orhan Pamuk's My name is Red, a masterpiece of storytelling, published in the same year.

The book impressed me with its storyline and its characterization, though the dialogues were often a bit bookish. Also, quite a bit of the background seemed to have been written with the western reader in mind; however some bits of history like the Maulana Azad speech was new to me also.

Unfortunately, with Tharoor entering politics (and making quite a mess of it), his stock in literature seems to have declined... But I think this book deserves better attention than it has got.

Excerpts

The West believes that love leads to marriage, which is why so many
marriages in the West end when love dies.  . . . real love comes from
the commitment of marriage and the experience of sharing life's
challenges together.  - 103

I do not know what she sees in me, what the kindred spirit is that
ignites such a spark of recognition in her.  I believe I know, though,
what I see in her . . . I see it in her body as we are about to make
love, her limbs light with unspoken whispers.  I see it in her eyes at
night, the moonbeams playing with her hair, the shadows across her
hips like a flimsy skirt.  In the darkness, I raise her chin in my
hand and it is as if a flame has lifted itself onto the crevices of
her smile.  I let myself into her and my spirit slips into her soul, I
feel myself taking her like nothing else I have ever possessed, she
moans and my pleasure lies upon her skin like a patina of dewdrops,
she is mine and I sense myself buckling in triumph and release, and
then she trembles, a tug of her pelvis drawing me into the night.  And
I know that I love her.  - 104

I ask her, with studied casualness, about her old boyfriends, and she
replies quite unselfconsciously, in as much detail as I want. - 105

Maulana Azad: I am a Musalman

I am a Musalman and proud of the fact.
Islam's splendid traditions of thirteen hundred years are my
inheritance.  I am unwilling to lose even the smallest part of this
inheritance. In addition, I am proud of being an Indian.  I am part of
that indivisible unity that is Indian nationality.  I am indispensable
to this noble edifice.  Without me this splendid structure of India is
incomplete.  I am an essential element which has gone to build India.
I can never surrender this claim.  It was India's historic destiny
that many human races and cultures and religions should flow to her,
One of the last of these caravans was that of the followers of Islam.

   - Maulana Azad, religious scholar born in Mecca, educated in the
     Koran and Hadith, fluent in Persian, Arabic, and Urdu, an
     exemplar of Muslim learning . . . "every fiber of my being
     revolted" against the thought of dividing India on communal
     lines. "I could not conceive it possible for a Musulman to
     tolerate this, unless he has rooted out the spirit of Islam from
     every corner of his being."  Remember that his principal rival
     for the allegiance of India's Muslims was Mohammed Ali Jinnah,
     Oxbridge-educated, enjoying scotch and cigars...

From Priscilla Hart's Scrapbook July 16, 1989

Learned something interesting about the Hindu god Ram, the one all fuss about
these days. Seems that when he brought his wife Sita back from Lanka and
became king, the gossips in the kingdom were whispering that after so many
months in rAvaNa's captivity, she could not possibly be chaste anymore. So to
stop the tongues wagging, he subjected her to an agni-pariksha, a public
ordeal by fire, to prove her innocent. She walked through the flames
unscathed. A certified pure woman.

That stopped the gossips for a while, but before long the old rumours
surfaced again. It was beginning to affect Ram's credibility as king. So he
spoke to her about it. What could she do? She willed the earth to open up,
literally, and swallowed her. That was the end of the gossip. Ram lost the
woman he had warred to win back, but he ruled on as a wise and beloved king.

What the hell does this say about India? Appearances are more important than
truths. Gossip is more potent than facts. Loyalty is all one way, from the
woman to the man. And when society stacks up all the odds against a woman,
she'd better not count on the man's support. She has no way out than to end
her own life.

And I'm in love with an Indian. I must be crazy.