Story and the novel
IN the "Literary Review" of April 1, two pieces appear which take diametrically opposed positions on the novel. Ajit Duara, on the first page reviewing the most astonishing novel I have read in recent years Govardhan's Travels, is uneasy because the book does not have a conventional storyline. On the second page of the same issue, Tabish Khair in a general reflection on the state of the novel today laments that there is too much storytelling in the novels: "too little of anything else in the global book market".
Khair reminds us that `newness' is inherent in the name of the genre. "Hence one can argue that the premium should be not on story-telling, which is an age-old art ... but on experimentation and contestation in the novel as a whole."
Faint praise
The reviewer of Govardhan's Travels damns the book with faint praise because it is a novel entirely without precedent. The `newness' does not excite, it troubles him — "that is not what we are accustomed to in a novel," he confesses. Duara tries to tackle the novel seriously at first, coming to grips with its most riveting feature — bringing together people from the past, both real and imaginary (Dara Shikoh, Umrao Jan, Ibn Batuta, Ghalib, Bharatendu Harishchandra) — to engage them in a drama across centuries to explore issues of justice and power. But by the end, Duara gives up the attempt finally deciding that a novel should not question life too deeply. If it does it becomes a `philosophical treatise' and that will not do because it might put off "the average reader."
Duara's "average reader" is, I think, a regular consumer in what Tabish Khair calls "the supermarkets of literature" who does not want to be shaken out of his certainties. Khair wonders if we have "become incapable of reading novels that make us question our own roles and assumptions, our own complicity in the horrors of the world."
I share his concern. Dismissing a book as brilliant, original and disconcerting as Govardhan's Travels by applying some frozen criteria of what a novel ought to be seems like an opportunity missed. Duara does not like the author speaking directly to the reader because Jonathan Swift and H.G. Wells did not do it, but if he must have precedents from the West to be assured of what is acceptable, all the Victorian novelists indulged in this practice, as have their numerous magic realist successors in the 20th century.
Sparkling prose
I do not read Malayalam, hence I responded to this novel by Anand (real name Sachidanandan) through the sparkling prose of the English translation (done by Gita Krishnankutty). Perhaps Ajit Duara has read the novel in the original because he allows only a B-grade to the translator ("has done a reasonably good job"). Inevitably no translation would satisfy when one knows the original. But I remain grateful to the present translator for making this unusual book available to me in a language as vivid as this. I am curious to know what Tabish Khair would have made of the novel if he had to review it.
MEENAKSHI MUKHERJEE
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