Reading Rushdie in India

Speaker's Corner: He carried a Rough Guide on the subcontinent, but James Mutti also devoured "Midnight's Children," Premchand's "Godaan" and other classic works of Indian literature. Those readings, he later realized, influenced his experience of India.

07.23.06 | 10:11 PM ET

I landed in New Delhi earlier this year with Salman Rushdie’s novel Midnight’s Children in hand. I had read nearly all of Rushdie’s novels as well as much of his controversial social commentary, but I had never read what is commonly considered his masterwork. I felt it would be a good start to my month-long excursion through India. For the next 10 days—as I fled from the maddening noise and crowds of Delhi to the small, tranquil mountain towns of Haridwar, Rishikesh and Nainital—I spent my meals and cool nights engrossed in the adventures of Saleem Sinai, Rushdie’s protagonist. Nearing the end of “Midnight’s Children,” I stumbled across another book in a small bookshop in Nainital, an English translation of Hindi writer Premchand’s 1936 classic Godaan. I began it the next day.

Day after day, I read more and more. By the end of the trip I had read “Midnight’s Children”; “Godaan”; Everybody Loves a Good Drought by P. Sainath; essays defending the traditions of rationalism and public debate in Indian history called The Argumentative Indian; a collection of short stories about the Partition of 1947 by Sadaat Hassan Manto; Rohinton Mistry’s A Fine Balance; Rachel Dwyer’s 100 Bollywood Films; dozens of daily editions of The Hindustan Times and The Times of India; and, of course, my trusty Rough Guide to India.

For most of us, travel affords us time to choose to do what we want. For me this includes reading, whether for entertainment, educational or practical purposes. Often times all three. I hadn’t thought much about how reading about India while I was in India influenced my visit there. Of course, looking in the guidebook for a hotel or restaurants or sites made me more self-sufficient than I would have been otherwise. Reading the newspaper daily kept me abreast of local and national current events (important when the airport workers’ strike was making air travel difficult or when trains were cancelled after a clash between police trainees and medical students).

But after returning home to Seattle, I thought more about how my reading shaped my understanding of the country and provided me with a filter to look at my trip through. I also began thinking of the specific associations between what I was reading and my immediate surroundings. It began to seem that my reading had eerily complemented my experiences. I arrived in the city of Lucknow reading Godaan, which made reference to the very neighborhood I was staying in and to the Gandhi Khadi Ashram just down the street. I happened to buy Rachel Dwyer’s “100 Bollywood Films” across the street from the Raj Mandir Cinema in Jaipur while I waited for a showing of the latest Bollywood blockbuster “Rang de Basanti.” I had been looking for this book for weeks with no luck.
 
As I looked back on my trip more closely, my reading and traveling experiences intertwined comfortably and harmoniously. There was something Rushdie-esque about the train ride from Delhi to Haridwar; the pudgy 8-year-old girl who bought food from every wallah passing by—chai, sandwiches, fried rice, tomato soup; the awkward, gangly college student who accidentally dropped his suitcase on a baby’s head drawing the attention of the whole car of passengers; the beautiful young mother deep in animated conversation, her face lit up by a diamond-like bindi on her forehead, a wide smile, and a bright knitted stocking hat.

As I read “Godaan,” the fictional story of a poor farmer and his family in the early 1900s, I also read “Everybody Loves a Good Drought,” filled with journalistic accounts of the struggles of the poor in India today. Northern India was also being hit at the time by unseasonably cold weather, leading to closed schools, ruined crops and the deaths of over 100 people. At the time, I was descending to the poorer, more crowded plains from the more pleasant rural Himalayan foothills and my thoughts turned towards the problems of poverty, which were flung in my face each day in some of Uttar Pradesh’s largest cities. By giving me a more human way of understanding poverty, these very different books changed the way I looked at my surroundings, making me more curious and thoughtful about what I saw as I hopped trains, buses and rickshaws from Lucknow to Agra to Fatehpur Sikri to Bharatpur. Daily newspapers allowed me to inject the engaging narratives of “Godaan” and Sainath’s essays into the world I saw around me making me better able to imagine and empathize with the struggles of ruined farmers and struggling homeless ragpickers.

In Jaipur, I picked up “100 Bollywood Films.” Articles stirring up controversy and hype about a new Bollywood offering starring Aamir Khan—set to open on the Republic Day weekend I would be spending in Jaipur—had been in the papers for the last few weeks, piquing my curiosity. My Rough Guide also suggested that if you only see one Bollywood movie while in India, see it in Jaipur’s magnificent art deco Raj Mandir Cinema. I set off for the cinema, bought my ticket, and before the show began I went across the street where Rachel Dwyer’s “100 Bollywood Films” awaited me. The film, “Rang de Basanti,” was an engaging and thought-provoking look at the intersection of Indian history, patriotism, radicalism and today’s generation of privileged middle-class twentysomethings. My experience was made even more memorable by the raucous audience and a group of medical students who befriended me and took me out for lunch afterwards. My latest Bollywood experience compelled me to spend that evening in the airy roof top restaurant of the Hotel Pearl Palace going through Dwyer’s book—curious to see what she thought of some of my favorite Bollywood movies, and to discover other classics. 

Along with “100 Bollywood Films,” I bought Nobel Prize winner Amartya Sen’s “The Argumentative Indian.” Sen’s articulate argument undermines the clichés of Indian spirituality, conservatism, and obedience to authority by highlighting the traditions of rationalism, tolerance and public debate in Indian history. This narrative appealed to my own aversion for Westerners’ romanticizing of Indian religious beliefs, but also supported what I saw around me in Jaipur and later in Delhi. The Jantar Mantar in Jaipur is an elaborate observatory complex built in the early 1700s by Rajput king Jai Singh. Among people I know in the States, India is not known for its history of sophisticated astronomy. And Delhi, of course, is one of the world’s premiere showcases for a diverse, thriving and thoroughly democratic modern metropolis made possible only by acceptance of difference and the cultural means to accommodate those differences.

As I prepared to leave India, I began Rohinton Mistry’s “A Fine Balance”—a novel that had been highly recommended by more than one person I had met on my trip. I also flew through Saadat Hasan Manto’s “Mottled Dawn,” an exquisite collection of translated short stories describing the horrors of the partition of British India in 1947. Neither book shies away from the difficulties and injustices found on the subcontinent; indeed, the brutality of life is front and center. Yet both clearly celebrate the humanity and hope and individuality that is found even in such hardship, something that my third trip to India had made clear to me. I felt this pair of books magnificently summarized the India I had been immersed in for five weeks.

I love reading, but while traveling had thought of it as something to fill the time as I waited for a meal or a train or for sleep to overtake me. Once home, I realized it was much more integral to my trip. Whether a novel or a newspaper or a guidebook, my reading played an important part in the processing of my experiences and in my memories of my trip. Never again will I travel and consider reading a way to simply kill time.

Tags: Literature, Salman Rushdie, Asia, India, Mumbai

.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) has recently returned from his third trip to India. He has a master's degree in South Asian Studies, and has written for INTHEFRAY and Travelmag. He will be returning to India this fall as a Fulbright Fellow.


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