Kailash Biswas, the narrator-hero with his unremarkable name, is also known as Kalashnikov; and wouldn’t ya know it, when he gets to New York on a prestigious placement in academia, it’s shortened to AK-47 or even 47 or sometimes simply AK.
Which, surprise, surprise, just happens to be the author’s own initials. Since our man has followed the same trajectory as that of his maker, from small-town Bihar to New York in the heady Reagan Era of the 80s, it’s difficult to not see him as a projection of Amitava Kumar’s own image, a Woody Allen persona with curry stains.
Let it be said quite clearly that while the real AK has to be lauded as a writer and journalist of unimpeachable credentials who teaches English at Vassar College, and who, amongst other honours, has received the Page Turner Award, the fictitious narrator of The Lovers is a bit of a twit.
He could be said to represent the clash of civilisations as he wrestles with questions of being and belonging, also known as an outsider’s dilemma, the ecstasy of never arriving, the angst of alienation etcetera, etcetera.
Portable homelands
Any reservations about our hero’s tendency to lay siege upon and annex a number of exceptionally willing and intellectually stimulating young women should not be seen as a failure on Kumar’s part. On the contrary, it adds to his portrait of the typical small-town Indian male eager to leap where opportunity calls. It’s a part of a post-colonial reflex, a sort of “do unto them as they did to us” manifesto of the repressed libido.
In one of the numerous asides, for instance, he tells us: “I was the poet of my ownsexual liberation” (italics his). It’s curious, however, to note that all the women Kailash attracts are not your typical barmaid or persons of colour, but feisty well-bred women, mostly blonde, with excellent hair and other attributes such as good parentage.
Can we compare him to another writer of another age seeking liberation, the zesty Erica Jong, whose bestselling Fear of Flying celebrates what she describes as “The Zipless Fuck”? She parlayed her star turns in bed as that of an Indiana Jones collecting the scalps of her admirers while thinking of Proust and Pushkin.
Amongst the various characters we meet in Lovers there is a Pushkin Krishnagrahi. Is he for real? I haven’t googled him. He is just one of the many characters from ‘real’ life that appear in this work of fiction.
These connections, conjured with a lightness of touch that a Kundera might admire, is what creates a sense of enchantment that is quite as convincing as the seductions taking place at the page-turner level.
There may also be a trace of nostalgia for the time frame that Kumar references. People still talk across continents on cable lines that don’t account for differences in time zones. Kailash’s mentor Ehsan Ali, with a wandering wall-eye, is a life-affirming figure. Based on the real-life model of Eqbal Ahmad, a political activist and anti-war fighter of both Bihari and Pakistani antecedents, he is almost the real hero in the book.
Walk-on parts
Ahmad’s often quoted remark, “We are living in modern times throughout the world and yet are dominated by medieval minds” is vividly encapsulated by a phrase that Edward Said apparently used in an obituary of people travelling across boundaries with their “portable homelands”.
Apart from Ahmad and Said, there are some extraordinary individuals with a walk-on part in the portmanteau of goodies, some like Kissinger or Osho are clichéd figures; Osho, who once lectured using the “F” word in all its droll variations, allows for comic relief.
More interesting is Kumar’s resurrection of Virendranath Chattopadhyaya (and M.N. Roy in a cameo role that none of his admirers will approve); the fiery revolutionary ideologue was shot as part of Stalin’s Great Purge in 1937.
He is mentioned because of his shabby treatment of his sometime wife, the early feminist and China sympathiser, Agnes Smedley (1892-1950). What is of interest to us today is that amongst Chatto’s circle were V.D. Savarkar, Madanlal Dhingra, Shyamaji Krishnavarma and Har Dayal, who has a speak-on role in the book.
In our current homeland of exemplary illusions some of these have emerged as icons. We may or may not peer into Kumar’s latter-day “Made in America” portable homeland but the sheer exuberance of his writing makes him irresistible.
The author is a Chennai-based writer and critic.
