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Happy twosome

Let's straddle languages and cultures with pride, says English-Marathi writer Kiran Nagarkar

PHOTO: V. SREENIVASA MURTHY

LOST LEGACY Kiran Nagarkar: `Sensationalism just bores the pants off me'

Kiran Nagarkar's first ever short story was about a man who is regarded "a little too much" (as the original Marathi phrase can best be translated) by everyone in town. The only way to handle this terrible misfit, they decide, would be to finish him off. But the queer chap is trouble even there. They bury him, drown him, hang him... and yet, he always gets away through escape tricks that would put a Houdini to shame.

The townsmen finally take him to God. The benevolent Almighty — who looks like the Air India Maharaja, except that his feet don't touch the ground — convinces everyone that it takes every kind to make the world and that they should let the chap be. And then, in a final act of benevolence, he decides to keep the chap with him to serve as his footrest for eternity. He is, after all, completely fed up with this business of dangling his feet in the air all the time.

"When someone pointed out that I go back to God and religion in all my works, I suddenly realised that my very first story too was about that!" says Nagarkar. His third and latest English novel, God's Little Soldier, is the epic saga of Zia who is first an Islamist and then a Christian extremist.

Nagarkar knows that talking about religion, irrespective of the standpoint one takes, is always fraught with risks. Back in Bombay, he has got into trouble with the Sangh Parivar over one of his plays. "But taking risks is the only way I can be with myself," says Nagarkar. "But see what we have reduced our notion of risk to these days. We believe the height of it is to talk about an extramarital affair. Give me a break, even Sita was accused of that! Sensationalism just bores the pants off me."

Yet another thing that bores Nagarkar is the ease with which middle-class India casts people in stereotypes. So Zia is a complete departure from the stereotypical "terrorist' who comes from a poor family and is indoctrinated as he learns the Quran in a madrasa. He comes from a liberal, educated middle-class household and remains an extremist across faiths. Everything about Zia, in fact, is extreme. He is a mathematical genius, a stock market whizkid and is obsessive even in the way he seeks his mother's undivided attention.

But isn't Nagarkar, in his zeal to break a stereotype, in the danger of essentialising an extremist and making him out to be a "character type" completely free of his social context? "No, no," insists Nagarkar. "I am saying there is no one kind of extremist. Zia is one possibility." In stark contrast to the cocksure and single-minded Zia is his asthmatic brother Amanat who is "liberated by doubt" (and perhaps sickness too).

This kind of doubt, Nagarkar would say, is an essential but scarce commodity in our midst these days. "Tell me, when was the last time you heard an Indian say `I don't know' or `I made a mistake'? We believe we are infallible like the Pope!" The primary frame of Nagarkar's own mind is to feel unsure ("Though I am not always modest!") and a bit of a misfit in all situations.

Less trodden route

He owes much of this to his upbringing and his less trodden route to the territory of Indian English writing. Born in a Chitpavan Brahmin family in pre-Independence India, he had his education first in Marathi and then in English. His grandfather was a Brahmo and had crossed the seas to attend the World Congress of Religions, which had made him a virtual outcast.

"We lived in a Hindu colony, were poor and were westernised. This was a strange combination. We felt constantly out of place. This was difficult and yet seminal in shaping me." So, while most writers felt compelled to seek their roots, Nagarkar was contented remaining somewhat rootless between cultures as he had always been.

In fact, he is quite happy living between two languages as well. Having made his writing debut in Marathi, he made a shift to English much to the consternation of Marathi critics. Nagarkar is the last of the "endangered species" of bilingual writers, and the manner in which the entire country is turning monolingual abhors him. "You love English. Fine. But why can't you love Marathi and Kannada too? Why doesn't anyone get it into their heads that learning two languages is not contrary to one another? We still touch the feet of elders, but no longer touch the feet of our own languages."

Nagarkar recalls how the city of Pune taught him to respect his own language. "I went feeling superior about my own westernised ways and people there said to hell with you. Actually they didn't even say that. They just ignored me!" It was the loneliest period of his life. The brighter side of it, though, was that books became his best companions. "I guess you are creative when you are most lonely."

But has he now turned his back to writing in Marathi? "I am not saying I won't write in Marathi any more. But I do want readers. My Saat Sakkam Trechalis, which is regarded a landmark novel, has sold 12,000 copies in 25 years. It's been over three years since Cuckold was translated into Marathi and there are no publishers!"

Cuckold, despite being a Sahitya Academy Award winner, didn't sell as much as it should have sold in English either. So this round, his friends and well-wishers told him to "stop indulging himself" and do something about promoting the book. That's how he has been on a whirlwind book launch trip across the country.

The glitzy event in Delhi had Aamir Khan releasing the book and declaring that he has two Kirans in his life, the other one, of course, being his new wife.

All this is much "against his grain", but as a concession Nagarkar has even acquired himself a temporary cell phone, an instrument he is "terrified of". "I just hope I won't have one of those strange things stuck to my ear forever by the end of it," he laughs, referring to the hands-free set. "I sometimes feel we will have the Darwinian theory coming true before our very eyes. We will evolve to have the thing growing naturally out of our ears like a bone!"

BAGESHREE S.

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