Counterrealism and Indo-Anglian Fiction

7. Fabulating the Real: Salman Rushdie

Paying a grand compliment to himself, Salman Rushdie, writing in a 1997 special issue of The New Yorker, refers to a short-lived but widespread virus called Rushdie-itis–a condition he claims affected many but from which Indian authors soon recovered to find their own voices.1 Despite the vanity of the assertion, it is possible to speak of a particular kind of literary tradition or a movement in Indo-Anglian literature after the appearance of Rushdie. Rukun Advani, for instance, claims in an issue of Seminar devoted to contemporary Indian writing that “in the beginning there was Rushdie, and the Word was with him” (15-16). Admittedly, there are several contemporary authors such as Anita Rau Badami, Rohinton Mistry, and Vikram Seth whose work owes nothing to Rushdie and who function largely within a tradition of expressive realism, very much along the tradition of nineteenth-century fiction. They have been immune to the virus that Rushdie mentions, and they belong to a different but equally distinctive tradition of Indian literature. Nonetheless, the predominant trend among the substantial number of Indian writers who emerged in the last two decades has been to lean towards the mode exemplified by Rushdie. A number of Notes to chapter 7 are on pp. 195-96. 143 CHAPTER 7 Fabulating the Real: Salman Rushdie authors, both Western and Eastern, have found in Rushdie a writer worthy of emulation, and South Asian writers in particular are candid in their acknowledgment of Rushdie’s influence. Rukun Advani, Shashi Tharoor, Rajiva Wijesinha, Adam Zameenzad, and Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, to name a few, have shaped their writing in ways that clearly echo Rushdie. Authors such as Vikram Chandra have drawn from both traditions, moving from one to the other in order to project a particular kind of experience. In their critical comments, Anita Desai and the Sri Lankan author Rajiva Wijesinha, among others, have tried to explain why Rushdie provided new possibilities for writers.2 Desai is lavish in her praise for Rushdie although her own fiction has remained stubbornly resistant to Rushdieitis. What Desai identifies as Rushdie’s contribution is a return to the demotic, a way of writing that taps into the oral tradition. Wijesinha’s work is no less distinctive, but it owes much to Rushdie and magic realists in general. His major fiction, particularly the novels Days of Despair and Acts of Faith, were written when political circumstances were far from favourable for writers in Sri Lanka, and the mode he chose to adopt, partly for reasons of expediency and partly because the political situation made allegory the rational choice, was remarkably close to Rushdie. It is possible to speak of his fiction as the literary equivalent of Rushdie’s work in Sri Lanka. In an essay he speaks of the significance of the Rushdie mode by saying that in the sort of society under consideration, the flow of information is generally restricted. As such, rumours proliferate . In the absence of credible monitoring systems, the exaggerated version of a story has as it were parity of status with the bare essentials. Correspondingly, the organs of the state arrogate to themselves greater licence simply because there are no objectively authoritative media restraints. Consequently, we live in a context in which excess has become the norm. (Inside Limits 39-40) 144 Counterrealism in Indo-Anglian Fiction Hence, according to him, the tendency of “political” writers to gravitate towards Rushdie allows them to adopt a mode that encapsulates the valency of gossip and rumour as a way of interpreting the political scene. The qualities of exaggeration, parody, and discontinuity become extensions of a particular social and political ethos. Yet another reading, no less original, has been offered by Milan Kundera, who, in his lengthy discussion of The Satanic Verses, links the particular narrative mode of Rushdie to the author’s larger project of seeking the contours of identity, not through social and cultural context, not even through the unconscious, but through the psyche which encapsulates more than one civilization. “Where is the rupture in those roots and how far must one go to touch the wounds?” (22) wonders Kundera. In his elaborate typology that involves the process of creating fiction, novel, reportage, short story, poetry, and essay cohabit a common space. In Rushdie the privileging of subordinate categories ensures the “musicality” of the text and that explains both the form and the experience. Until the...