Rebuilding bridges

Lead review

Prema Nandakumar finds ‘The Nowhere Man’ to be an apt reprint in times of racial disharmony that currently seems to be plaguing parts of Britain.

Published exactly 40 years ago, The Nowhere Man came a year after Anita Desai’s Bye-bye Blackbird (1971). Both dealt with the uncertainties faced by the coloured in Britain.

Appearing almost together, they invited comparison, and one voted for Kamala. She had managed to depict perfectly the average Indian immigrant in Britain as the eternal exile.

Srinivas is never too sure of himself and domestic decision-making is always in his wife’s hands. Vasantha is the typical Indian housewife building a nest for future generations in an alien land. She dreams of how her two sons would fill the two-storeyed house with their families in the course of time. T

he house even has a name, Chandraprasad, though Srinivas considers all this but self-imprisonment, within four walls covered by a roof.

To understand this detachment, we have to go back in time, when the brutal assault of British police on Indians in the freedom movement had effected a permanent change in his approach to people and possessions.

He was not even 20 years old when he faced mind-altering police excesses: “It was also the last time he would allow himself to be bound to, or feel for, possessions; for bits of wood, glass, beads, baubles, metals — even land — all those compositions of matter that would, ironically, outlast the human frame, but in turn be eclipsed by the indestructible spirit that informed it.”

This is how Kamala cast a spell on us in those days. There was such close weaving of events and emotions, sociological forces and individual emotions, that we recognised the novelist’s tight grip over the narrative. One read cautiously, lest any nuance was missed on the way. However, there is no intellectual frigidity in the telling. Like every mother with sons, Vasantha has dreams, but the dreams turn out different.

The two boys grow up, completely anglicised in behaviour and thought. War kills the younger son, the elder lives his own life, “a pale brown Englishman with a pale pink wife.” The generation gap does the rest for complete alienation. Vasantha now dreams of getting back to India which has become free. This too is not to be.

“It has been a happy marriage,” she says hoarsely, breathing through her ruined lungs. When Srinivas scatters her ashes in the Thames and there is a low-toned scene with a young policeman, we recognise how the body is no more than expendable garbage.

With this exordium done, Kamala moves on to a brilliant portrayal of the Everyman in Srinivas. Helplessness and loneliness make even Srinivas brave enough to accept Mrs Pickering who has been estranged from her husband. “A need, and a fulfillment, it turned out to be. On both sides. Simply achieved.”

But then, life is not patterned on such clear-cut terms. “Both sides” are different. He is an Indian brahmin, fastidious about his eating habits and personal hygiene, while she enjoys cooking and eating lamb’s heart. With the soft purr of her chosen words, Kamala gets us right into the picture, neighbours and all.

Meanwhile, there is the larger world outside this scrupulously clean house of Srinivas. The very first meeting of our hero and Mrs Pickering, a casual exchange of information, has been ominous. Kamala precariously balances wry humour with the brewing tragedy.

The four youths who have fun at the tragic expense of the ageing couple are forerunners of the racism that has held England in thrall since the Second World War. Immigrants must remain foreigners forever!

As Srinivas grows lonelier in heart, memory leaps back to the years of his growing up in India. The amazing phenomenon of a handful of Britishers controlling the vast nation. The even more staggering spectacle of rich and successful Indians giving up all they had and joining the movement for Indian independence.

Then too, there were angry young men around, but they did not target the weak and the helpless. On the contrary, they offered themselves to the burning cauldron like Vasudev. And now?

Yet, the novel does not allow us to wallow in depression. As long as there are Mrs Fletchers and Dr Radcliffes, the human being in creation will overcome the animal within.

The non-violent Srinivas who accepts crucifixion by man as well as by nature is certainly the novelist’s triumph. Kamala has also slipped in Christian metaphors giving The Nowhere Man the mystique of a sacred offering.

We have even a Mary Magdalene in Mrs Pickering “whose mind was crammed with images, of the fallen, weak and helpless. And of their sons, and sons’ sons, who would not be content as Srinivas had been, but could be trusted to raise Cain — if Cain had not in fact already been raised.”

A very apt reprint in times of racial disharmony that appears to be plaguing parts of Britain these days. Kamala’s message might help chase this Cain away from our doorstep.