BOOK REVIEWS By Satis Shroff
-
THE GURKHAS by Byron Farwell
“Review: The World Beyond the Mountains (Satis Shroff)
Byron Farwell: The Gurkhas, Penguin 1985, London, 317 pages, ISBN o-14-007569-0
‘The Gurkhas’ is a history of the finest infantrymen in the world who come from a country where ‘It is better to die than to be a coward,’ and where most bear the name Bahadur, which means ‘courageous,’ and who carry out their mission with the help of the deadly, curved kukris.
‘Ayo Gurkhali!’ Here come the Gurkhas! Is a battlecry that makes their enemies in battle wince, and sometimes abandon their weapons to save their dear lives. Younghusband marched unopposed into Lhasa on August 3, 1904 with his Gurkhas. During the Falkland War the Argentines fled when they realized that they were being outflanked by the Gurkhas.
Byron Farwell narrative about the Gurkha battalions and their military engagements are enhanced by citations from the books on the same, making it a jolly reading material. The readability score is good and the book is studded with historical photographs of the Gurkhas’ acts of gallantry.
Farwell served as an officer in North Africa and Italy in the Second World War and later also in the Korean War. He has travelled more than a hundred countries. His other books are: The Man Who Presumed, a biography of Sir Richard Burton bearing the title ‘Burton,’ Prisoners of the Mahdi, Queen Victoria’s Little Wars, the Great Boer War, and a social history of the Victorian and Edwardian Army with the title ‘For Queen and Country.’ In 1986 Viking published his ‘Eminent Victorian Soldiers’ and he’s a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature since 1964.
Farwell’s book is a comprehensive history of the lives and achievements of the Gurkha soldiers of Nepal in the Indian and later British Gurkhas after India gained its independence, and about the extraordinary relationship which existed, and apparently still exists between the British officer and Johnny Gurkha. Since the author served as an officer in the North Africa and Italian campaigns in the Second World War, it’s only natural that he enthuses about the cheerful, stocky hillmen of Nepal.
As to the sources used by the author, he has relied much on regimental histories and the autobiographical works of officers who served with the Gurkhas. Farwell has used the Indian Army’s English annual journal called ‘The Gurkha.’Besides that he used ‘The Khukri,’ a similar journal published by the British Brigade of Gurkhas and interview with some officers. It might be mentioned that not all acts of bravery were noted in the past. Citing an item on a Gurkha from the Third Battalion of the 8th Gurkha Rifles, he mentions: ‘Particular mention must be made of the courage of 86600 Rifleman Punaram Pun. Unfortunately he died. We never know how Pun distinguished himself.
The book has 29 chapters devoted to war and peace in Nepal, the role of the Gurkhas in Delhi, made famous by Attenborough’s ‘Gandhi’ film. The chapter on Character and Characteristics deals with how Johnny Gurkha ticks. There are chapters devoted to Gurkhas in Afghanistan in the olde days, the North East Frontier, how Gurkhas are recruited, the role of the Nepalese warriors in World War I (France), Gallipoli, Suez and Mesopotamia. A chapter on Gurkha officers, relationships, Nepalese festivals (Dasain and Tihar), home, family, preparing for battle (World War II), the North African War in the Second World War, South East Asia, Italy, retreat from Burma, Chindits, India’s independence and partition, the savage wars of peace, Borneo, reduction of force and retirement. The role of the Gurkhas today and tomorrow. The book has a four-point appendix and the last one is about the Gurkha tribes.
In the aftermath of the Falklands, the author stated, ‘there will continue to be a place for these Nepalese mercenaries in the British Army. In a world unwilling to abandon war as a means of settling disputes the Gurkhas will always play a role as warriors or as peace-keepers.
The steadfast, stocky, courageous Gurkhas have never deserted their British officers. But two Brit officers Major Boileau and Captain Butcher who deserted their Gurkha soldiers at the Residency, were court-martialled and cashierd.
The first edition of the book was published by Allen Lane in 1984 which was after the Falkland war. Farwell writes:’Mercenaries have been in bad odour in recent years, but the trade is an ancient and enduring one. He cites A.E. Housman who had praise for them in ‘Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries:
What God abandoned, these defended,
And saved the sum of things for pay.’
In his book Farwell is conspicuous for his branding the Gurkhas as ‘mercenaries’ throughout the text. During the Falkland War the British MoD was politically embarrassed by the Argentinians at the UNO that the Brits were using ‘mercenary Gurkhas’ for the battle in the Malvinas. This made the Brit government declare with emphasis that the Gurkhas ‘were an integral part of the British Army. If that was so why did Johnny Gurkha receive only half the pay of a Britsh Tommy all these years? Why weren’t the children of the Gurkhas allowed to go to British schools to earn their GCE ‘A’ levels? Generations of Asian schoolkids domiciled in England have been passing the exams and studying in British colleges and universities. Why not the Gurkha school-kids? When you ask such questions you either get a diplomatic silence or some silly excuse about a British-Nepalease Treaty dating back to 1816 forgetting that we’re in the 21 century, in here and now in the UK.
The sad part of the Gurkha-story is that the Brits never intended to integrate the generations of Gurkhas, who served in Britain’s Army and fought its wars, into the British society. This issue has always been taboo in British military circles. The Gurkhas should die serving the Queen and the Union Jack but they should return to Nepal when their service contract was over, much like Helmut Kohl’s Turkish guest-workers who were invited to Germany to run the factories for the German males had died in the war or were crippled and couldn’t work. Kohl hoped that the Turks would return to their homes. The Turks, Italians, Spaniards and Portugese weren’t obedient, disciplined and loyal like the Gurkhas. They knew what democracy was and that they had rights to live in Germany. The Brits sent the Gurkhas home to Nepal whenever there was disagreement. You could court martial a Gurkha for disobedience, but the so-called Gastarbeiter (guest-worker) in Germany weren’t soldiers and nothing could subordinate them. They fought for their rights, like the second generation of workers’ children who were born in Britain. The Gurkhas were left alone. Not one Brit officer came forward to fight for the cause of their oh-so-heroic Gurkhas because there were scared stiff that the MoD would fire them. It was a strange ‘special’ relationship between the Gurkhas and their officers. Not a single officer worth his grain opened his mouth. It took a Joanna Lumley, a woman, to corner a minister about the Gurkha Issue with a running camera.
Whereas Byron Farwell doesn’t look at the Gurkhas from the anthropological view, he does compare the Gurkhas among themselves in terms of tribes and clans, which is typical of colonialists out to seek the best of Mongolian hillmen from Nepal and to turn them into obedient, loyal fighting-machines. In this process he quotes from the sources listed on the last few pages of his book. What emerges is a Gurkha profile as an ideal rifleman who’s brave, tough, patient, adaptable, skilled in fieldcraft, proud of his military record and unswerving loyal towards their bread-givers: the MoD in London and Delhi.
It is said that the Gurkhas can stand hardships and anything, except abuse.
And yet they have been abused by both the Nepal Durbar and the British Ministry of Defence, despite the Gurkhas’ ‘selfless devotion to the British cause, which can hardly matched by any race to another in the whole world history of the world. Why they should have thus treated us is something of a mystery.’ It was General Francis Tuker who said that. Farwell adds: ‘Indeed; and a mystery which needs to be explored, for while the Brits undoubtedly had enormous affection for the Gurkhas, they failed in the event to match their loyalty.’
The author’s purpose in this book was to bring in a historical account of the Gurkhas from Nepal and how and where they fought under the Union Jack from Queen Victoria’s times till the Falkland War, for that’s where the book ends. The reader learns a great deal about the Gurkha regiments and Brigades in British India, independent India and the Gurkhas in Britain and Hong Kong, along with the role of the Gurkhas in Britain’s skirmishes around the world. Since this book was published in 1984 an up-to-date sequel is imperative to keep the readers abreast with new developments. Nevertheless, the author has done a good job in presenting the Gurkhas to readers around the globe for they have fought Britain’s wars in France, Gallipoli, Suez and Mesopotemia in the First World War and in almost every front in the Second World War from Singapore to Italy and North Africa.
What does it mean to a Gurkha to be refused at a Gurkha recruiting depot? It means an anticlimax and shame to a prospective soldier. Most young men bid farewell to everyone they know in their villages in a solemn ceremony. The mother presents him a handful of coins which he distributes to his girl-friends who’re waiting along the path. Failed recruits don’t wish to return home. I knew a young man, a school drop-out, who went to the British Camp in Dharan (Nepal) was rejected, and instead of returning home in shame and ignominy, he chose to work as a school-teacher in a local school in the hills, and a year later passed the recruitment test to join the British Gurkhas. He returned home after two years with lots of presents for his family and relatives, and wore immaculate Hong Kong tailor-designed suits, and went for walks much like the elderly veterans in his hometown. According to Farwell ‘every young man who set off for the recruiting depot was confident of acceptance.
In reality the story of the Gurkhas isn’t always courage and glory. In letters home during the First and Second World Wars many Gurkhas wrote to their parents, friends and girl-friends about the loneliness, absurdity and fear in the trenches but these letters were opened, censored and never reached their destinations for they were withheld by the MoD, and now given free for public viewing in the archived of the British Museum.
The Gurkhas as a theme are topical, much like the US Navy Seals and the French Foreign Legion, and the significance of the Gurkhas and their tribulations and woes at the hands of London’s MoD which has, in recent times, led to court cases of the Gurkhas versus the MoD. This book provides a good background of how the Gurkhas, as a cheap mercenary force to fight Britain’s battles in the world fronts, on a hire-and-fire basis. To this end, young Nepalese men join the Gurkhas and are exposed a world of new experiences, depending on whether they are doing guard duty in front of the Buckingham Palace or elsewhere. In order to adapt they had only to do as they were told; the army took care of them.
Were the Gurkhas integrated into British lifestyle? The answer is no. They were confined to their barracks. If they ever fought against against discrimination, they were sent back to Nepal. They lived a parallel life, divided by culture and religion. There has always been a latent racial prejudice in the ranks of the officers and the MoD. British identity was seen in the 1950s in racial terms but in the 1990s Britishness became simply the ability to tolerate different religions, and ethnicity as an affirmation of who they are. Whereas outside the Gurkha barracks, youths of Asian and Carribean origin who were genuine British passport holders, fought for their political and social rights in Britain, and helped to generate political struggles against discrimination by creating bridges across ethnic, racial and cultural barriers, the Gurkhas have always had a ghetto existence in their British barracks, aloof from what went on politically in the United Kingdom. When the MoD came up with cuts in military manpower, the loyal, courageous, cheerful, obedient Gurkhas were obliged to accept it as their fate as ‘mercenary soldier’ who could be hired-and-booted out as the situation demanded. No insurance, no NHS-benefits, no accommodation outside the barracks. No chance to mingle and fraternize with the British civilians. They were kept, and still are, like the asylum-seekers in Switzerland. At 10 pm they have to be in their barracks.
There were always human resources in the hills of Nepal for the next battle anywhere in the world. Despite their sterling qualities, the Gurkhas have been given a raw deal in terms of remuneration in the British Army. Whereas the migration to Britain made central in the curriculum of secondary schools, whereby pupils are expected to learn core ‘Brit’ values such as tolerance, respect, freedom of speech and justice and learn of the shared British heritage, the Gurkhas and their children still feel alienated in Britain, and left out from the bebefits of the civil society. For its fighting force Britain recruits young, enthusiastic men from Nepal but what happens to the Gurkhas who have developed gerontological problems? The NHS turns a deaf ear and the MoD too.
The first migrants landed in Britain in 1948 and integration of Asians from India, Pakistan and later Bangladesh as well as West Indians has partially worked well. The interracial marriage between black-white is high at 40% but Asians prefer not to marry white women and Asian women are married off by their parents with partners from their former home countries or males who’ve grown up in Britain. The West Indians are also well represented in politics (MPs or councellors). Asian children are regarded as being diligent and assimilation in education is good. Education and employment go hand in hand. The hardworking Asians possess business acumen. Underlying racial prejudice still exists in the UK which is regarded as a ‘mind matter’ which no law can possibly change, much like in Germany where neonazis are facing trial for killing migrants who were shop-owners.
The Gurkhas are known for their ability to adapt to different combat environments in the jungle, desert, craggy terrain, and he can also adapt in Britain’s jungle of concrete, given the opportunity by their officers, MoD and Her Majesty’s government. It’s high time the Gurkhas came home to Britain to roost with all the benefits that the British society has to offer for they have been ignored and treated as foster-children for too long. A start has been made by Gurkhas who have appointed solicitors to fight for their rights in British courts. It took long time for the Gurks, as they are fondly called by the Brits, to react in the British society. The Gurkhas are catching on and are absorbing so-called ‘alien, unregimental ideas’ which are democratic, humane and beneficial to them.
Why do the British use Nepal as a human warehouse for its wars? Kalunga (Nepal) has gone in the annals of British Military History as a bloody affair, and the British suffered greater casualty than the Gurkha, even though the latter were outnumbered. Balbahadur lost 520, the British lost 31 officers and 750 other ranks. But in the end Ochterlony defeated the Gurkha General Amar Singh at Jaithak, and once again in a decisive battle at Malaun. What followed was the Treaty of Segauli signed on march 4,1816. Nepal was obliged to give up the provinces of Kumaon and Gharwal, as well as the lower Terai. Moreover, Nepal had to accept a British Resident and the most curious and important clause in the Segauli Treaty was that it gave the ‘British the right to recruit Nepalese subjects.’ What remains of the two battles are two tiny obelisks erected by the Brits at Kalunga (20 km from the India border-town Raxaul) dedicated to General Rollo Gillespie and his British and Indian dead. The other obelisk is dedicated to their gallant adversaries. ‘The love affair’ between the Brits and the doughty little Mongolian hillmen had begun and has lasted 194 years.
Farwell writes: ‘the Gurkhas being mercenaries, enlisted for pay. Indeed the pay, low though it was, seemed attractive to those from a land where there is little hard cash. They also wanted to leave ‘the confined and restrictive life of the mountain village and to see the world beyond the mountains.
A scheme to admit Gurkhas to military institutions of higher learning began in the 1950s. A line boy officer cadet Bijay Kumar Rawat was the best overall officer cadet at Sandhurst.
Ironically enough in recent times the Brigade of the Gurkhas have been deployed in the Hindukush, and a Brit Gurkha officer was disgusted that a Johnny Gurkha took out the head of a Taliban he’d slashed with his khukri. During the World War II the war in Burma was brutal. A patrol of the 4/8th Gurkhas brought back to camp the severed head of a Japanese officer. Lieutenant Colonel Walter C. Walker, the battalion commander, had it nailed to the trunk of a tree near his bunker. The head had a ‘wispy beard and a drooping moustache.’
Byron Farwell speaks of the ‘zest of the Gurkhas in their pursuit of the retreating Japanese has been compared to that of terriers after rats.’ One British commander offered a reward for each head brought in and one Gurkha havildar returned with six bloody ears in his haversack. The commander asked where the heads were. The Gurkha replied, ‘Too heavy to carry, sahib.’
At another skirmish forty Japanese ran into a Gurkha trap and the Lieutenant Commander McCready of the 1/10th Gurkhas commented: ‘There was a great blooding of khukris and ..no wounded were brought back.’ Lalbahadur Limbu received an immediate award of the Military Cross.
Are told by veterans in the hills of Nepal. What the Gurkha did in Afghanistan was to re-live one such story he’d heard in his childhood. It was the British officers who encouraged and rewarded such feats and took delight in them and bragged about their men at the mess-halls and officer’s clubs, and they still do it.
Recently, a pensioned old Gurkha was going for a walk and was robbed by a white gang who took away the Rolex watch he was wearing. There’s no human warmth and consideration among the urban gang members, and they’re known to be ruthless and cold. A Gurkha’s past isn’t interesting to them and they don’t care what happens to them. Their cool heroes are Scarface and Goodfellas. Welcome to Britain today. Daylight break-ins muggings and car thefts are common in parts of London. Freiburg (Germany), where I live is known for its bicycle thieves. When it comes becomes dark the police in Brixton are unwilling to go to the trouble spots. 
“Creative Writing Critique (Satis Shroff): FIRE IN THE BLOOD
Review: Irene Nemirovsky Fire in the Blood, Vintage Books, London 2008,
153 pages, 7,99 Sterling Pounds (ISBN: 978-0-099-51609-5)
Denise Epstein was 13 when her mother Irene Nemirovsky was deported to Auschwitz, where she eventually died in 1942. The daughter is now an octogenarian and was instrumental in helping her mother attain her place in the world literature. Irene Nemirovsky was a writer who could look into the souls of humans and make music with words. Her masterpiece Suite francaise was published in France in 2004 and was immediately awarded the Prix Renaudot.
The characters of Fire in Blood are drawn from a rural French town in Burgundy, a wine-growing area where people are simple and stick together, want to retain their ‘peace’ and don’t like the police and the authorities. A place where all people show conformity and keep their mouths shut. Peace is a synonym for not wanting to be involved in the affairs of other people. The author’s attitude towards the characters has a universal appeal, for it could happen anywhere in the world in a closed-circuit society where outsiders are shunned and not generally accepted. Nemirovsky shows not only what people do to others but also what the passage of time does to us all. The characters aren’t flat and every character bounds into life and you an imagine the world that she creates in her 153 page novel still goes on with its own pace without much changes. The community itself shows a predatory behaviour of extreme cunning.
The major theme of Fire in Blood is love, poverty, arranged marriages and extra-marital affairs that lead to complications and new story developments. The protagonist Sylvestre also called Silvio tells the story in the first person singular and recalls stories in front of the fireplace about his beautiful, graceful cousin Helene and her daughter Colette, Brigitte Delos and Francoise, their marriages, happiness and boredom and the seasonal changes of the Burgundy countryside. Silvio speaks about impatient young people and the perfectly balanced older people at peace with themselves and the world, despite the creeping fear of death. The book is replete with the truths, deaths, marriages, children, houses, mills, dowry, haves and have-nots, stinginess, love-affairs, hatred, deception and betrayal. Nemirovsky is an excellent story-teller and reveals her tale of flaws and cruelties of the human heart in an intricately woven story. She builds up suspense and you feel the catharsis when an innocent-looking protagonist tells her version of how a man was murdered.
The theme is traditional and familiar and is psychologically and socially interesting in intent.
Silvio tells about his childhood and about children asking their parents how they met, fell in love and married. He also mentions past loves, former grudges, inheritances, law suits and who-married-whom and why in the French provincial setting. The story plot is slow at the beginning but gathers momentum, and the climax is not the murder but how the author unfurls the story of the confession. In the end Silvio confides to the reader how much he still loves his dear cousin Helene, who’s married to Francoise.
The intellectual qualities of writing of Nemirovsky are her cheerfulness, sudden twists and power of observation which flow into the story making it a delightful read. She gives you the impression that her tale is linear, only to show you that there’s a twist that takes narration in another direction. Silvio, the Ich-Erzähler, says to Colette, who wants to involve him in her family drama: ‘Tell them you have a lover and that he killed your husband.. What exactly did happen?’
wit and humour and there’s rhythm in the tale.
Nemirovsky employs the stylistic device of symbolism to characterise the farmers and their hypocritical nature, how they mob people they don’t prefer to have around them and how they indulge in backbiting. A stingy 60 year old farmer marries a lovely 20 year old woman and the gossips begin. Silvio remembers how Colette had once told him he resembled a faun: ‘an old faun, now, who has stopped chasing nymphs and who huddles near the fireplace.’
This is the confession of a man who had once fire in blood, and a meditation on the various stages of life, the passing of time, in which youth and age are at odds. A recurring theme is the seed from which problems grow: ‘Imagine a field being saved and all the promise that’s contained in a grain of wheat, all the future harvests…well, it’s exactly the same in life.’
Nemirovsky’s use of dialogue is very effective and takes the story forward.
Her literary oeuvre ranges from an extraordinary collection of papers, Fire in the Blood, Suite francaise, David Golder, Le Bal, the Courilof Affair, All Our Worldly Goods.
The Germany titles are: Die Hunde und die Wölfe, Feuer im Herbst, Herbstfliege, Leidenschaft, Die Familie Hardelot, Der Fall Kurilow and Irene Nemirovsky: Die Biographie.
* * *
Irene Nemirovsky: COLD BLOOD (Satis Shroff)
Subtitle: Moaning in All Eternity
Six decades ago,
My life came to an end,
In Auschwitz.
I, Irene Nemirovsky, a writer
Of Jewish-Russian descent,
Died in Auschwitz.
I live now in my books,
In my daughter’s memories,
Who’s already an octogenarian,
Still full of love and fighting spirit:
For she fights against
The injustice of those gruesome days.
I was thirty-nine,
Had asthma,
Died shortly after I landed in Auschwitz.
I died of inflammation of my lungs,
In the month of October.
That very year the Nazis deported
Michael Epstein, dear my husband,
Who’d pleaded to have me,
His wife, freed from the clutches
Of the Gestapo.
They also killed him.
My daughters Denise 13,
And Elizabeth 5,
Were saved by friends
Of the French Resistance,
Tucked away in a cloister for nuns,
Hidden in damp cellars.
They had my suitcase with them,
Where ever they hid,
Guarding it like the Crown Jewels.
To them it was not only a book,
But my last words,
That I’d penned in Issy-l’Eveque.
I wanted to put together five manuscripts
In one: Suite Francaise,
That was my writer’s dream.
I could put only
‘Storm in July’ and ‚Dolche’
Together.
I passed away early in August 1942.
Too early.
In my two books I’ve written
About the flight of the Parisians
From the victorious Germans,
The awful situation in an occupied hamlet.
Small people and collaborators,
Who’d go to extremes
To save their skins,
Like ants in a destroyed ant-hill.
It’s sixty years hence,
But my work hasn’t lost its glow,
Like the lava from an erupting volcano.
You can feel its intensity,
When an entire nation
Was humiliated and had to capitulate,
Losing its grace, dignity and life.
I was born in Kiew,
Fled to Paris via Finnland and Sweden,
After the Russian Revolution.
I was a maniac,
When it came to reading,
Had a French governess,
Went often to the Cote d’ Azure and Biarritz.
I studied literature in Sorbonne in 1919.
Shortly thereafter,
I began to write:
About my Russian past,
My wandering years.
The colour of the literature I wrote
Is blood from an old wound.
From this wound I’ve drawn
The maladies of the society,
Human folley.
I was influenced by writers,
From Leo Tolstoi to Henrik Ibsen.
An unhappy childhood,
Is like when your soul has died,
Without a funeral:
Moaning in all eternity.
The Inheritance of Loss and Intercultural Competence (Satis Shroff, Freiburg)
My characters are purely fictional,’ says Kiran Desai. In her book (The Inheritance of Loss) she has tried to do exactly that, namely to capture her own knowledge about what it means to travel between East and West, and to examine the lives of migrants who are forced to hypocrisy, angst of being nabbed, and have biographies that have gaps, and whose lives are constructed with lies, where trust and faith in someone is impossible, as in the case of Sai and Gyan.
Migration is a sword with sharp blades on both sides. The feeling of loss when one leaves one’s matribhumi is just as intensive and dreadful as having to leave a foreign home, due to deportation, when one doesn’t have the green-card or Aufenthaltserlaubnis. Everyone copes with such situations differently. Some don’t have coping solutions and it becomes a traumatic experience for the rest of one’s life. Some pull up their socks, keep a stiff upper-lip and begin elsewhere.
The problem of illegal migration hasn’t been solved in the USA, Britain, France, Germany and other European countries. It is an open secret that the illegal migrants are used as cheap labourers according to the hire-and-fire principle, for these people belong to the underclass. In the USA it’s chic to have Hispanics as baby-sitters, just as Eastern Bloc women are used by German families to do the household chores. Nepalis work under miserable conditions in India as darwans, chowkidars, cheap security personnel and the Indians have the same arrogance as the British colonialists. The judge, Lola and Noni are stereotypes, but such people do exist. It’s not all fantasy. I’m sure the Gurkhas looking after photo-model Claudia Schiffer and singer Seal’s house and guarding the palace of the Sultan of Brunei are well paid and contented, in comparison to other people in Nepal and the Indian sub-continent.
What does a person feel and think when he or she goes from a rich western country to the East? And what happens when a poor Indian comes to the USA (land of plenty) or Germany (Schlaraffenland)? Is there always a feeling of loss? I’ve been living thirty years in Germany and I have met and seen and worked with migrants with biographies from Irak, Iran, Turkey, Nepal, India, Pakistan, Vietnam, Kosovo, Albania, Croatia and East Bloc countries. The worst part of it is that the Germans ignored the fact that it had already become, what they call ‘ein Einwanderungsland.’ They thought they’d invited only guest workers after World War II, with limited stay-permits, not realising that they’d encouraged human beings with families and emotional ties, hopes and desires of a better future in the new Heimat with for their children and their grand-children.
Kiran Desai flashes back and forth, between Kalimpong and New York, and she uses typical clichés and Indian stereotypes that have also been promoted by Bollywood. She’s just as cynical and hilarious with her descriptions of fellow Indians in the diaspora, as she is when she describes the Gorkhalis in Darjeeling. Her portrait of the Nepalis in Darjeeling is rather biased, but what can one expect from a thirty-six year old Indian woman who has been pampered in India, England and the USA? Her knowledge of Kalimpong and Darjeeling sounds theoretical and her characters don’t speak Nepali. She lets them speak Hindi, because she herself didn’t bother to learn Nepali during her stay in Kalimpong. The depiction of a Gorkhali world might be true, as far as poverty is concerned, but she has no idea of the rich Nepali literature (Indra Bahadur Rai, Shiva Kumar Rai, Banira Giri to name a few), and folks music in the diaspora.
Gyan’s role was overdone, especially when Sai demands that he should feel ashamed of his and his family’s poverty and so-called low descent. What is Gyan? Is he a Chettri, Bahun, Rai Tamang, or even a Newar? Describing a country, landscape is one thing, but creeping into the skins of the characters is another. The Gorkha characters remain shallow, like caricatures in Bollywood films, and she overdoes it with the dialogue between Sai and Gyan.
For someone like me, who also went to school in Darjeeling, Kiran Desai’s book was a pleasant journey into the past, where I still have fond memories of the Darjeeling Nepalis, their struggle for recognition and dignity among the peoples of the vast Indian subcontinent. I’m glad that peace prevails in the Darjeeling district, although I wish Subash Ghising had negotiated more funds from the central Indian government, and a university in Darjeeling. Gangtok (Sikkim) also does not have a university. The recognition of Nepali was a positive factor, but a university each for Darjeeling, Kalimpong and Kurseong would have given more Nepalis (pardon, Gorkhalis) the opportunity for higher education and better jobs, if not in the country, then abroad. To eat dal-bhat-tarkari at home and acquire MAs and PhDs within one’s familiar confines would have immensely helped the Gorkhali men and women, even more than the recognition of Nepali. We can regard it as a small step towards progress.
The description of Gyan’s visit to Kathmandu was extremely superficial. Kathmandu is a world, a cosmos in itself, with its exquisite temples and pagodas and stupas and the culturally rich Newaris families from Lalitpur, Bhadgaon and Kathmandu.
Kiran is, and remains, a supercilious brown-memsahib, like the made-over English characters of Varindra Tarzie Vittachi’s fiercely satirical book ‘The Brown Sahibs’ in her attitude towards Gorkhalis and the downtrodden of her own country. I can imagine that the Nepali author D.B. Gurung is piqued about Desai’s portrayal of the Nepalis in Kalimpong as ‘crook, dupe, cheat and lesser humans’ and his own emotional rejoinder regarding the Bengalis as ‘the hungry jackals from the plains of Calcutta.’ Since D.B. Gurung is known for his poetic vein, perhaps he can treat the long standing problems between Indians and Nepalis, or as Desai puts it, Bengis and Neps, in his lyrical verses. But please, less of the vitriol and more of tolerance, because even a poet and novelist can make or break human relations. I, for my part, am for living together, despite our differences, for variety is the spice of life in these days of globanisation. Vive la difference.
The story is served like a MacDonald’s Big Mac for the modern reader, who has not much time, and there are multi-media distractions craving for his or her attention. As small morsels of information, like in a sit-com. I found the story-pace well timed and interesting, and she has a broad palette of problems that migrants face when they leave their homes, and when they return home. You can feel with Bijhu when he embraces his Papa in the end. A foreign-returned son, stripped of all his belongings. It was a terrific metaphor. I’m glad that there are women like Kiran Desai and Monica Ali (Brick Lane) who’ve travelled and experienced what it is like to be in the diaspora and try to capture the emotional and historical patterns in their lives as migrants.
When you read the last page of the Desai’s book you feel a bit dissatisfied because you wish that the unequal love affair between Gyan and Sai will go on and take a positive turn. There are so many Nepali-Indian couples who live happy conjugal lives with their families. I know at least three cases of Nepali women who’re married to Bengalis. The Nepali women speak perfect Bengali, but their husbands don’t speak Nepali, even though they live in Gorkhaland. They are proud that they can speak English instead. Nepali (Gorkhali or Khas Kura) is such a colourful and melodious language and we ought to listen to Sir Ralph Turner’s when he says: “Do not let your lovely language become the pale reflexion of a sanskritised Hindi.”
Dinesh Kafle calls Desai ‘schizophrenic.’ Well, when you talk with an Indian he always praises the achievements of India in terms of the second Silicon Valley (Bangalore), the Agni and Prithvi missiles, the increasing nuclear arsenal, the expanding armed forces etcetera. But, Gott sei dank, there are Indians, who like Gandhi, are humble, religious, practice humility, are poor, deprived, castless, untouchables and, nevertheless, human and full of empathy, clean in their souls and hearts, and regard this world as merely a maya, an illusion, an earthly spectacle
to be seen and felt---without being attached. D. B. Gurung is wrong when he assumes that Desai seems “unable to acclimatise herself to either the western milieu or her own home.” But where is her home? She’s a rootless, creative jet-set gypsy, who calls India, England and USA her home. The gypsies (Sintis and Romas) were originally from India (Rajasthan), weren’t they?
Even V.S.Naipaul (Half a Life, The Mimic Men), J. M. Croatzee (Youth), Isabel Allende (The Stories of Eva Luna) and Prafulla Mohanti (Through Brown Eyes) haven’t gone so far in their description of a race or nation the way Desai has in her book. What is missing in her writing is the intercultural competence. Instead of taking the trouble to learn Nepali and acquiring background knowledge about the tradition, religion, norms and values, culture and living style of the Gorkhalis in Darjeeling and the Nepalese in Nepal, and comparing it with her own Indian culture, and trying to seek what is common between the two cultures and moving towards peace, tolerance, reconciliation---she just remains adamant , like her protagonist Sai. She does not make an ethnic reflection, but goes on and on, with a jaundiced view, till the bitter end. The dialogue between Neps and Bengis, between Neps and other Indians (Beharis and Marwaris and others from the plains) or between the British and Indians cannot be described as successful intercultural dialogues. The dialogues are carried out the way it should not, because there’s always a fear that one is different in terms of social and ethnic status, even between her two main protagonists: Sai and Gyan. There is no attempt to reveal the facts behind an alien in a new cultural environment, no accepting of the problems of identity and no engagement for equality and against discrimination.
If you’re looking for frustrations-tolerance, empathy and solidarity with the Gorkhalis in the book, it’s just not there. The characters necessary for intercultural interaction are joy in interaction with foreign cultures (not arrogance and egoism), consciousness of one’s own culture, stress tolerance, tolerance of ambiguity, and bucketfuls of empathy. Had she shown empathy towards the Nepalis from Darjeeling and Kalimpong and made a happy-end love story between Gyan and Sai, the Nepalese would have greeted her with khadas and marigold malas. The way it is, she has only stirred a hornet’s nest. Kiran just doesn’t have empathy for Neps, despite the Booker Prize. Great women are judged by the way they treat the underprivileged and downtrodden. With 36 years, it’s time for meditation and self-searching in Rishikesh, like the Beatles, I suppose.
About the Reviewer: Satis Shroff is a writer & poet based in Freiburg (poems, fiction, non-fiction). He writes regularly for www.Americanchronicle.com and its twenty-one affiliated newspapers in the USA. He has studied Zoology and Botany in Nepal, Medicine and Social Sciences in Germany and Creative Writing in Freiburg and Manchester. He describes himself as a mediator between western and eastern cultures, and sees his future as a writer and poet. Satis Shroff was awarded the German Academic Exchange Prize.”
Kommentare
Kommentar veröffentlichen