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Karnataka
Calling Master storyteller's not quite crisp travelogue. By Ashok Chopra THE EMERALD ROUTE There has been something of a renaissance in literary travel writing in the past two decades. It combines factual writing with cultural and philosophical musings and a slightly teasing autobiographical sub-text, both components of modern fiction. Travel writing has now become a beggar of literary forms: part memoir, reportage and, most important, the novel. But it still remains pre-eminently a narrative told in the first person, authenticated by lived experience, as R.K. Narayan has done with The Emerald Route, first published in 1977 and now reissued in paperback. The Emerald Route is Narayan's account of his travels across his homeland in Karnataka. It is divided into five parts and describes the scenes, histories and the cultural heritage of a greater part of the state. Taken together, Narayan goes from Belur and Halebid to Gulbarga and Hampi, from the hills of Mangalore on the coast to the Kolar goldfields, from the battlefield of Tipu Sultan's Srirangapatnam to the rocks of Bellary. Bangalore and Mysore, where Narayan spent most of his adult life, are of course there -- along with the new shopping malls that have come up in recent times. Local food and delicacies and smells -- "homesickness begins with food" -- have now become an integral part of travel writing and Narayan slips that in too. Narayan is pre-eminently a storyteller and it is like a storyteller that he describes the places he visits, with a little bit of history, cultural traditions and personal reflections thrown in for taste. For instance, in his account of Mysore, a place which he knows like the back of his hand, he slips a long quote from his own memoirs: "I found the classroom windows revealing trees and birds, or meadows with cows placidly chewing grass and perhaps the cowherd sitting in the shade. In such a setting, I found the teacher's voice a meaningless drone, which one had to tolerate per force. From the eastern corridors of the Maharaja's palace, one saw the Chamundi Hill in all its fullness framed in arches along the parapet; Maharaja's palace was on the one ridge of the city with the hill and the Lalitha Palace on the other; in the valley between lay the city with the golden dome of the palace standing out. "During the political science hour, one could watch the shadows of clouds skimming the mountainside, alternating with patches of sunlight, or the mirage shimmering across the landscape, and nothing seemed more irrelevant than the lecturer's voice falling on our ears." The quote carries on for another two pages. There are similar such reflections spattered across the book. This raises a crucial question: what place do these have in a travel book? History and culture, of course, have to be woven into the story -- something Jan Morris, Bruce Chatwin, Colin Thuborn, Paul Theroux have done beautifully -- but reflections of this kind, which are non sequitur, make you wonder whether it is not just padding-up. (The book was commissioned by the Karnataka government, presumably as a guide for tourists.) One expects so much more from a great story teller of our times. A teaser trailer from a scintillating writer. By P Ananthakrishnan INTERPRETER OF MALADIES There must surely be in America a good number of non-resident Bengalis who are happy and contented. But we do not meet any of them in Jhumpa Lahiri's short stories. Well, till the last story. Her people are stylishly crotchety and they secretly wear their angst (is that the word?) as a badge of honour. Three of these nine stories are set in India. Two are about the underclass and they give you the I-have-read-it-earlier feeling. The third, whose title the book carries, is about a doctor's assistant who interprets Gujarati patients for his doctor five days a week and acts as a guide on the other two. An East Pakistani botanist who has trouble recognising a pumpkin, a housewife who resolutely refuses to learn driving, a passive Midwestern woman who sleeps with a married Bengali and lets him go when his wife arrives, a couple who keep getting religious mementoes in the house they have moved into -- these are some of the characters which people the other stories. Except Mr Pirzada, who keeps a watch set to Dhaka time to remind him that he has to go back, others seem to be adept at self-flagellation. Lahiri writes scintillating prose: "Instead of a knife she used a blade that curved like the prow of a Viking ship, sailing to battle in distant seas. The blade was hinged at one end to a narrow wooden base. The steel, more black than silver, lacked a uniform polish Mrs Sen lifted the blade and locked it into place so that it met the base at an angle. Facing the sharp edge without ever touching it, she took whole vegetables between her hands and hacked them apart she split things in half, then quarters, speedily producing florets, cubes, slices and shreds." She should not waste this splendid felicity on insubstantial stories about emigrants in agony. |
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