India was in his first travel book, The Great Railway Bazaar. That was in 1975. He had set out one day from Victoria Station, bent on boarding every eastbound train that chugged into sight, eventually returning from Japan on the Trans-Siberian Express. ?I sought trains; I found passengers,? he famously wrote. So, not surprisingly, the Bazaar is full of stories. The pages are filled with keen observation, marked by wit and humour, and terrific, energetic writing. Now, decades later, Paul Theroux, the prolific travel writer, who has written great fiction and non-fiction (including Sir Vidia?s Shadow a memoir of his friendship and fallout with Sir V S Naipaul) again revisits India, this time in fiction. The Elephanta Suite is really three novellas linked by a common thread ? India.
As Theroux is wont to do ? taking a clich? and standing it on its head ? he draws sketches of people and places and then edges the stereotype out. So, in the first novella, The Monkey Hill, Beth and Audie Blunden, an American couple on holiday in an Indian spa, called Agni, will first spout all the clich?s ? ?I should start a company here, Audie said, Or do what everyone else is doing, outsource here.? Or ?With each breath, I was sort of inhaling peacefulness through my nose, calming myself and getting lighter.? ? before slowly, terrifyingly descending to chaos from an idyllic existence. When they a bit philosophically proclaim ?India was as near to life and death as it was possible to be on earth. But it was not one or the other: here was death in life and life in death,? we have some foreboding of trouble.
But if the ugly Blundens? spiritual journey takes them to the wrong destination, the American lawyer Dwight Huntsinger, who is in India to tie up outsourcing deals for his American company, gets a glimpse of harsh reality, before deliverance. In The Gateway of India, even as he is booked in the Elephanta Suite of one of Mumbai?s top hotels, he finds another, a rather fulfilling life in the slums, among pretty girls, before giving it all up for a ?saintly? makeover. Theroux?s wit is intact ?Huntsinger dreams he is with a begging bowl, hoping for an apple.
In The Elephant God, an American backpacker Alice will encounter a marauder but find solace after befriending a captive elephant. What?s interesting about Theroux?s handling of India is that he first lays bare all the exotica, ash-smeared gurus, cows et al, and then systematically shatters the myths, well most of the time. The novellas are also a study in contrast between the two Indias, of the haves and have-nots, urban and rural.
And yet, Theroux also lets slip, albeit putting it in the mouth of one character, perhaps his own view of India ? that it is a land of repetition, a land of nothing new, despite all the talk about growth and development. We saw it in The Bazaar when most of the time Theroux?s eyes fall on the filth around. Here too, the Blundens can?t help blurt out their true feelings about India. ?The miracle to them [the Blundens] was that India was not a country but a creature, like a monstrous body crawling with smaller creatures, pestilential with people ? a big, horrific creature, sometimes angry and loud, sometimes passive and stinking, always hostile, even dangerous.?
Even as they feel safe at Agni, which ?seemed to be in the heart of India, yet India seemed far away,? they conclude that this is perhaps the best way to experience the country: ?? bury yourself deeply in it to avoid suffering it?. All the American characters seem to bury themselves deep in India, but can?t avoid suffering it. We also get to read about a handful of interesting India types, not least the executive who yearns to be a saint and the young achiever whose whole being changes when he acquires an American accent. As an American looking in, Theroux grapples with the complexities that is India, but thankfully, doesn?t serve up any answers.