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Frankensteins at large
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G.B. Prabhath co-founder of IT giant Satyam Computers, talks about the alienation of technology in his novel Eimona. For him, it is a very thin line between being and not being there
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MODERN TIMES G.B. Prabhat: `Capitalism sets all our instincts free and we see everybody around us as a threat'
We all suffer from it in some form or the other, for sure. It's really a universal disease eating into our everyday existence. There's no escape from it. Anomie. Look up the dictionary in a hurry and check your symptoms. They are so prevalent now. Which is why anyone who reads G.B. Prabhat's Eimona is sure to identify with at least some fragments of characters in the book and fragments of their feelings.
Fragmented existences. Isn't that what life today is about? By the way, is anomie in reverse. And if you haven't looked up the dictionary yet, here it is: "alienation and purposelessness experienced by a person or a class as a result of a lack of standards, values, or ideals."
The irony
Ironically, this state of mind has been woven into a story of the contemporary world on the threshold of a nearby future by the co-founder of IT giant Satyam Computer Services Ltd. Eimona is the story of disconnect in a family of great-grandfather Subbu, grandson and stocks-and-shares driven-investment consultant Bharat, his aggressively ambitious winner of a wife Indu and their little daughter Maya, who is averse to be "connected" on the world wide web or chat online with her friends.
Isn't it incongruous then that being a part of the situation created by his own industry, he's getting critical — almost in doomsday fashion — of it? Prabhat chooses his words carefully: "It's crucial not to get mired in the world we are creating. I'm not particularly enchanted with the world I'm credited with creating. Sometimes you create things you don't intend to... like Frankenstein. Not all of us need to tom tom only our accomplishments. We need to criticise."
"It's about how we are handling technology and what we choose to do with it. There's nothing intrinsically good or bad about technology. But it's wrong to assume all technology will only result in benefits."
Eimona through its various characters and situations, brings out the malaise of our present society — layoffs, fear of layoffs, fear of the markets and stocks dipping, investing rapaciously, a desperate attempt to "have fun" somehow on the weekend, the schism in relationships where one walks in from work and the other gets ready to go, indulgences, biting off more than one can chew, mistrusting oneself and everyone around. "Everything in today's world boils down to anomie, if you've started feeling uncomfortable in the current situation of everyday existence. Is this the kingdom we aspired for? There is an extraordinary sense of self-centredness; we are completely narcissistic. We commune on the Internet with only one person — ourselves."
Prabhat says that in writing Eimona, his second book after Chains, he was inspired by a single line in American writer Kurt Vonnegut Jr's Bluebeard: "Loneliness is the pervasive American disease." It's only started hitting us now, he believes. He deliberately reversed the title of the book because he wanted it to represent an inversion of the condition he's talking about. "Here it's the disconnected and lonely who form the majority. And those who aren't, get alienated. I wanted a specific coinage for our current circumstances."
Eimona paints a bleak picture of a society driven by a gross materialism and liberated capitalism and a technology-dependent life. But most of young India is right now aspiring to be just that, fuelled further by a glorious exalting of what technology can do for a better life for us. "But the future is bleak and that is the truth. We either don't realise it exists or we want to run away from it. Ironically in a world of connectedness, there is more loneliness, greater fear and anxieties. No relationship has stabilities. Did your grandfather or mine worry about losing his job or his wife walking out on him?" Somebody should be warning us about a capitalist technology-driven world, says the author. "Capitalism sets all our instincts free and we see everybody around us as a threat."
While Eimona does sound contemporary, there are elements of a future in little smatterings — pre-nups, little kids taking exams online, being considered odd for refusing to chat online, a world without paper greeting cards, a robot dog that dials phone numbers...
While Prabhat doesn't go in the science fiction steely-skied mode, he says his book deals with a tantalising future that's "almost here". People, in fact, will mistake it for already being here. "I don't like sci-fi and wanted to create a sense of here and now; a sense of empathy for a cold threat hanging over our heads now. My inspiration has always been dystopian novels with a social context," Prabhat says explaining why he wasn't tempted to attempt science fiction.
The protagonist of Eimona is egged on by a tiny voice to flee the world he so doesn't understand, questions and loathes. But is fleeing and this sort of escapism the solution Prabhat sees? "I'm not making a generalisation. But perhaps nobody is fleeing. We are in fact stepping into quicksand and sinking willingly. I mean who wants give up that second car or apartment?"
`Preferential anathema'
He confidently says he isn't suffering from anomie and maintains his sense of connectedness and values. "I show preferential anathema and therefore manage a delicate sense of balance." But if anomie hit him, would he flee? "To stay is a forgone conclusion. To stay and maintain a respectable distance is important. I'm in a limbo — I belong and yet don't belong... I mean you can't belong if you want to make an observation!" He also doesn't profess solutions to this complex problem, saying he's only a writer, not a social activist. "I'm not into the reformation business."
Based in Chennai, Prabhat is now busy working on two other novels that will be out soon ("One thing I hate about my work is deadlines.") "I've decided to stay in Chennai forever and in Valmikinagar where I am now. I've become so inflexible... so much for globalisation!"
BHUMIKA K.
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