|
A few pages
into Sniffing Papa, Tan, the narrator, sounds his war cry: Nothing is
incongruous. We already know this, having assimilated with the very first
sentence ("Papa, he smelt so good"-not quite "My mother
died yesterday", but not disgraceful) that Papa is not the cocaine
user the title suggests he might have been.
|
|
SNIFFING PAPA
By Inderjit Badhwar
Tara
Price: Rs 350
Pages: 483 |
Throughout this overweight first novel, Tan-Papa's son, desi export
to the land of ultimate opportunity known as the US of A, man of passion,
man of ideas, even man of action on occasion-will attempt to prove his
thesis. In juxtaposition, there's Xavier Cugat and Mallikarjun Mansur,
a delightfully tough sister who overturns the stereotypes of Indian womanhood
and a meltingly challenging lover who's a walking cliche of Indian womanhood
in the US, Danish pastries and partridge baked with cumin, Vietnam and
the Vedas-it's all grist to Inderjit Badhwar's melting pot.
The style is equally eclectic, moving from direct authorial intervention
to apparently interminable conversations, cut with lyrical descriptions
of the landscape of Raipur and of urban America, leavened with diatribes
about the new Indian moneyed classes (Le Bumptiousie, in a somewhat unwieldy
phrase) and corrupt politicians. Badhwar's aim is to lure his reader in
with a smorgasbord of everything, to seduce the reader into believing
that nothing is incongruous.
 To
the extent that he succeeds, it's because of Tan's zest. And because of
Papa and his avatars: dying zamindar with empty coffers, inventor, atheist,
caring parent and, most memorably, Papa as the shikari. As Raipur changes
around him, the shikari continues hunting. These scenes are the most moving
and the most evocative in the novel, bringing to life the richness of
terrain that no longer exists and the laws of the true hunter. The shikari's
discipline usually yields results; even when the quarry's elusive, he
continues his pursuit.
Raipur provides fertile ground for Badhwar's skills in inverse proportion
to America, which is where we shift along with Tan. While he struggles
to prove himself as, surprise, surprise, a young writer, he makes friends,
discourses (interminably, again) and falls in love with an Indian woman
whose soul is American. Serita, Tan and their other friends play out sexual
politics even as they join in the politics of protest, but in the place
of actual discussion there are endless lists of names: Miller and Lawrence
and Whitman and Anais Nin; Kant or Heidegger or Hesse.
As for Serita, she's married but will leave Ben for her Indian love.
Many long conversations, bouts in bed and far too many chapters later,
she'll leave Tan too, generously gifting him their child to bring up in
India. They have their moments, those sections that deal with people self-consciously
leading conventionally unconventional lives, but not enough of them. Tan
returns with his son-named Godot, a detail that reminded this reviewer
of the Bengali boys of a certain era called Stalin Sen and Bertolt Bannerji-to
conduct the shikari's funeral in a setpiece that lurches between mawkishness
and genuine emotion.
When Badhwar the journalist doesn't give in to the temptation to editorialise
and Badhwar the author takes over, it's clear that Sniffing Papa is more
ambitious and passionate than most debuts. But he attempts to pack in
so much that it becomes an overstuffed suitcase of a novel: by the time
you've sorted the contents out, the fun's over.
|
CURRENT
ISSUE APRIL 15, 2002
India
First
Parties
and Party Politics in India
School
Without Walls
Oh
My God: The Nature of Divine Faultlines
The
Penguin Book of Gardening in India
){kind=link}