|
|
Rushdie can be
ruthless and hard-hitting, as in his piece ‘Not About Islam?’
which calls a spade a spade. He can be maddeningly provocative,
as in the Introduction to his Vintage Anthology of Indian
Writing in English (collected here as ‘Damme, This Is the
Oriental Scene for You!’ with a half-sheepish footnote and a
slight toning down of his earlier abrasive remarks on regional
literatures). He can be passionate in his indignation against
racial injustice, and expansive in his appreciation of rock
music. But at all times his good humour, his sense of mischief,
plays peek-a-boo with his most profound beliefs. He thumbs his
nose unselfconsciously at stuffed shirts, no matter how high a
pedestal they occupy. He refers en passant to Shashi
Deshpande’s ‘curdled judgments’; he dismisses with a shrug
the divine aspirations of ‘dharma bums’; he does not
like the way J.M. Coetzee writes (not surprising this, for
Rushdie and Coetzee are two writers as different from each other
as the strong and gusty autumnal wind is from the brilliant but
freezing December sun!).
Rushdie is a
superb raconteur. He does not get freighted down with his
sweeping range of knowledge nor does he resort to obfuscating
jargon (behind which a lot of contemporary theorists love to
take refuge). Punctuating his torrent of ideas with interesting
anecdotes and asides, he can hammer home his point. On page
after page we encounter the unexpected bends and rugged textures
of his terrain as he shows us the different trees that he can
climb. Sometimes he tosses us ripe mangoes, sometimes we get the
pits!
The over-riding
metaphor of the two Yale lectures in particular, and the entire
volume in general, is the frontier and its host of connotations.
This ‘fixed and shifting’ line is the backdrop against which
he chooses to view human existence. What is the ‘frontier
consciousness’ that we must cope with? How are borders made
and what do these artificial, man-made dividing lines symbolise
today? — such questions are raised and the author gives us
tentative answers. The idea of freedom is involved in his
metaphor, so is the figure of the frontier-less migrant who
emerges as the archetypal figure of the present times.
What an Indian
reader would perhaps look for, and sadly miss, in the present
volume is some Indian inspiration. True, there is a free
sprinkling of names and events from India, but in these pieces
composed over the last decade, the soul seems to be alien. While
Rushdie waxes eloquent on U2, Shaggy, film festivals, electoral
scenes and other events that make popular news in the western
world, he seems to have moved far from the Midnight era
and lost touch with the mass culture of India, the popular
icons, the songs and singers, the prolific Mumbai film industry et.
al. Quite understandable, given his circumstances, but
saddening all the same.
Moreover,
through all the discussion on stepping across different lines,
one would look – and look in vain – for some reference to
the Lakshman Rekha, which is probably the first idea that would
strike a reader from the Indian subcontinent. And in all those
pages on the frontier one would expect at least one mention of sarhad
— the highly evocative and irreplaceable word (from the author’s
own mother-tongue!) for the dividing line between two nations,
invoking the sarhad-i-suba and all the myths and legends
of the frontier province. But, no. Apparently Rushdie has moved
far from his roots, too deep into American culture. In the last
13 years he has crossed many frontiers and each
frontier-crossing, as he tells us, changes us: we become the
frontiers we cross. So the consciousness that we encounter in
this volume is one that belongs to the world: it is not an
Indian spirit but a spiritus mundi that pervades his
works.
As an author he
takes his job seriously. For him, inspired by the poet Faiz, a
writer has a dual role – part private and part public, part
dream and part responsibility. "The fault, dear Brutus,
is not in our stars, / But in ourselves that we are
underlings," he quotes Shakespeare (No, Mr Rushdie, it
was not Casca but the lean and hungry Cassius who uttered these
words). We are what we choose to be: we may choose to remain
underlings and "find ourselves dishonorable graves" or
we may step out of the "underling" slot, face the
risks involved, attempt to change the world – and be
irrevocably changed in the process. The choice is ours.
"When the
imagination is given sight by passion," says Rushdie,
"it sees darkness as well as light. To feel so ferociously
is to feel contempt as well as pride, hatred as well as love.
These proud contempts, this hating love…." All this and
much more are offered here in Step Across This Line.
|
"SO
this is the water’s edge… this is where the land begins.
Creatures from the watery kingdom climbing on to the dry terrain
step across a frontier, willing to face the enormous risks
involved." Thus begin the Tanner Lectures on Human Values that
Salman Rushdie delivered at Yale earlier this year. Entitled ‘Step
Across This Line,’ this eponymous section of Rushdie’s latest
book lays bare a mind that is on the one hand poetic and reflective,
and on the other incisive, witty and analytical.
