Features: Magazine | Literary Review | Life | Metro Plus | Open Page | Education Plus | Book Review | Business | SciTech | NXg | Friday Review | Cinema Plus | Young World | Property Plus | Quest |

Back to his roots

Photo: Shanker Chakravarty

Tracing India M.G. Vassanji

Author M.G. Vassanji’s “A Place Within – Rediscovering India” treads on the obvious, the familiar and the unknown, banks on history as a starting point and polishes his tale with a string of personal observations. A narrative that streaks into different genres — of travelogue, of history — it bears the mark of a zealous student, of one who has the mind to probe and a fascination for the past.

Research, texts, legend, hearsay, opinions, conclusions — all have their place. The little misses, like using the adjective “Keralan” for everything pertaining to Kerala, tell you it is the endeavour of a man for whom India lived in tales for a considerable time. For this third generation Indian born in Africa, educated in the U.S. and settled in Canada, the book is a homecoming. Hence, “Rediscovering India,” — over 10 visits stretched across 15 years.

Vassanji talks about “rediscovering India” sitting in the café of India International Centre, New Delhi. He recalls his grandfather’s journey off the Indian coast a couple of generations ago and his current complex identity. “There is the identity of Indian Africans, how the Africans see us. We are called Wahidi — coming from the Hind part,” says Vassanji.

The author is at ease with his multiple identities, “I don’t worry about it. It is everything that I am. It is more honest that way.” For someone who experienced India in flesh and blood when he was well into his forties, what Vassanji has imbibed is impressive. The book has been lurking within him for a while. “I had my notes and kept them aside a couple of times. The ideas were in my head but I didn’t know how to express them on paper,” he admits.. Non-fiction posed different challenges to the author of acclaimed novels such as “The Gunny Sack”, “The Book of Secrets” and “The Assassin’s Song” among others. “Fiction is about the poetic logic, logic of the conscience, while this is factual logic, about checking and re-checking,” explains Vassanji. “Once I knew the context, it was not difficult. It is India through my eyes, I have not pretended to be objective,” he says. “A Place Within” published by Penguin Viking, doesn’t attempt excruciatingly to be part of the Indian fabric. At times, Vassanji is at ease being an outsider, like during his journey on the Puri Express on his first visit to India. A second-AC trip is dealt with in detail from the berth arrangement to the luggage corners. The familiarity grows as the book evolves, as he criss-crosses the country — Delhi, Orissa, Kerala, Gujarat — his land of origin, and Himachal Pradesh. He interacts with strangers, writers and academics and searches for his roots. Vassanji digs into realms of history, and works to relate the past and the present. Episodes such as searching for and finding the largely ignored tomb of Raziya Sultana, “the only queen to occupy the Delhi throne” in the “gulleys” of Sitaram Bazaar, linger in the reader’s mind.

The author scrubs the surface to discover history and understand attitudes, especially relating to the communal violence that was the backdrop to his visits that began in 1993. “You cannot escape history, especially in India. To understand people’s attitude it is essential to go back and see where they come from,” he says. India in all its diversity granted Vassanji diverse experiences. The “bigotry” and hatred spurred by communalism at “such a gut level” disturbed him. The attitudes too were a surprise. If some were willing to share their past, in other places there was an unwillingness “to give away too much history.”

However, it is little facets that moved him. “Simple situations are a revelation. In Ahmedabad, near the shaking minarets, I met this old guy who was born in London and was a doctor there, who gave up everything to look after this place (a dargah). That’s where India humbles you. What is ordinary is not ordinary,” says Vassanji.

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail