HINDI REVIEW
This door opens to only black and white images
Harbans Singh

Delhi Darwaza
by Gyanprakash Vivek. Vani Prakashan. Pages 224. Rs. 300.

Delhi Darwaza is Gyanprakash Vivek’s third novel. This one meanders through the underbelly of the national capital. The agony and the ecstasy of the human spirit is experienced through a series of stories and characters strung together, rather loosely. It is more in the nature of an experiment where the margins of story telling merge with that of a collage of events and incidents in the life of the metropolis. Those of us who are aware of Delhi’s reincarnation down the ages might feel a little let down as the Darwaza does not open to either history or what it does to men and women who live at the doorsteps of power. Far from it, the novel only unravels characters and situations which can be encountered in any over populated city of the country. Apart from an incongruous Mirza Ghalib, no other character from the history of this immortal city comes out of the Delhi Darwaza for the readers.

The novel also underlines the limitations of Gyanprakash Vivek as a novelist. His earlier novel Astitva could be said to be an attempt of the author to explore the world of characters he is not familiar with. But Delhi Darwaza conclusively proves that by attempting to write about a world he does not know, he only weakens the plot and casts doubts on the credibility of the characters.

While the episode where the municipal employee sweeping the road gives up the chase of the rag picker who stole her tiffin brings out the gold in the human spirit, too often the author contrives situations and characters to bring out the lack of it among the rich.

Probably, Gyanprakash continues his membership of the club which believes that wealth is filth and leads to decay and degeneration without fail. Delhi, like any other metropolis, is so many things for so many people but it remains the place of opportunities else people would not be drawn to it from all walks of life. It is disappointing to note that the author does not see any virtue among the rich. This was noticed in Astitva as well.

He even uses the stray incident of the torture of a maidservant to prove his point while failing to remember that a majority of the passengers in that early morning bus consist of women who have escaped poverty and worse, in this metropolis. His inability to come to terms with this class is most exposed when he uses the English language to lend more credence to characters and situations. The editors require to be more careful while editing. It does not help when the famous quote about Emperor Humayun gets mutilated at his hands. The same goes for the everyday conversation.

The author is at his best and fairly objective in the characterisation of the ordinary and the poor. Malicious characters abound in the form of bus drivers, conductors, the policemen and the unemployed rogues even when the human spirit shines in its magnanimity through many more. Some appear to be surreal, like the mendicants at the railway station, or the vulnerable women, united in their misery but not really prepared to capitulate to it.

The novel has a semblance of unity in the form of a nameless protagonist, who walks in and out of people’s lives. He acts, both as a camera as well as the commentator. The commentator, however, forgets that life does not consist only of two colours. There are a number of shades whose margins keep merging and all of us have a choice beyond calling them black or white. Delhi has opted for this choice since times immemorial. That is why it has built and rebuilt itself again and again from the ruins that dot the landscape.

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