If I am asked who my favorite modern Indian writer in English is, I would unhesitatingly say that it is Amitav Ghosh. Ghosh’s The Circle of Reason and The Shadow Lines made a deep impact on me during my undergraduate years.
A product of St. Stephen’s College, Delhi, as I was, Ghosh’s themes fascinated me. It didn’t hurt that he was “almost always” at hand for his fans to go across and query him about his work. After all, the D-School lawns were just a ten-minute walk away from the residence where I lived for five idyllic years. Amitav Ghosh taught Sociology in D-School before he migrated to the United States.
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Ghosh used to come to our college cafeteria as well. Those were the days of khadi kurta-pajamas, cheap cigarettes, scrambled eggs and toast, tutorials, unrequited love, and an unbearable weight on one’s shoulders by way of a deceitful sense of existentialism. Life, I learned, for the first time had to be endured. The 1980s were the best years of my life, and the worst.
We, Ghosh’s never-ending bevy of fans, would half-moon around him as he clinically dissected his characters for us. His interpretation was simply infectious, and the manner in which he explored his themes was mesmerizing. In 1988, I had all but made up my mind to be a fiction writer. Amitav Ghosh was the quintessential role model for me.
But I soon came upon another writer who had as much of an impact on me as Ghosh. Well, not quite as much, but there was an adhesion of a peculiar sort. It was Vikram Seth.
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Seth’s travelogue From Heaven Lake drew me to him like a moth to a flame. The narrative was so gripping that, at times, I felt as if I was the traveler who journeyed most unconventionally from Xinjiang to Delhi via Tibet. Soon I was vacillating between Ghosh and Seth, weighing one’s illusionary world against another that was replete with vivid description.
I recall purchasing The Golden Gate for my father when I came home for the holidays and watched him glued to the “novel in verse” in his rickety chair. The Golden Gate “left me little time for life’s digressions.” It was a masterpiece, all right, but one that I couldn’t quite come to terms with. But my father, who had translated Shakespeare’s sonnets into Assamese, took to Seth’s rhyme, rhythm, and meter like a duck to water.
I soon found myself unearthing Seth. His Mappings and Three Chinese Poets endeared me to poetry, and I was so intoxicated by his translation of Wang Wei, Li Bai, and Du Fu, that I would be heard reciting Li Bai’s “Drinking Alone with the Moon” in the shadowy corridors of Stephenia long after even the most hardened bohemian among us had retreated for the night.
Incidentally, it was exhilarating to learn (from Seth’s introduction to the Three Chinese Poets) that one of the innovations of the “intriguing” Empress Wu of the Tang Dynasty was the “inclusion of poetry composition as a compulsory subject in the imperial civil services examination.” I now know that it wasn’t logic or deception alone (as the entire world swears) that brought the Middle Kingdom to don the arrogance it occasionally showcases. But poetry, I learned, was a solitary affair. As Li Bai wrote and Vikram Seth translated:
A pot of wine among the flowers.
I drink alone, no friend with me.
I raise my cup to invite the moon.
He and my shadow and I make three.
Life has its little quirks. My tryst with fiction remained dormant. Oh, I was brimming with ideas, but apart from a long-short, I have penned literally nothing. I have six watered-down anthologies of poetry, but my passion for fiction remains pent up inside an exterior that has been overwhelmed by Sagaing Division, Sindoor, and Siliguri Corridor. But the craving hasn’t quite died. Ah, one day…
Some months ago, a friend who resides in Imphal told me that Vikram Seth was his guest, and that he would soon be visiting Guwahati, and that I should make it a point to meet him as Vikram Seth wanted to meet me. Excited, I immediately called Seth and introduced myself. A date, a time, and a venue were fixed.
It was the most pleasant of meetings in a homestay by the mighty Brahmaputra. We discussed the security situation in the Northeast. I was, of course, full of questions about his novels, especially From Heaven Lake and Three Chinese Poets, but he, having been informed by my friend about my unworthy calling of being a student of national security, wanted to know about the manner in which the North East was being compromised by insurgency and radical Islamism. He listened to me very intently, punctuating my ramble with a question here or an exclamation there. Indeed, the only work of his that I got to discuss was his recent English translation of the Hanuman Chalisa. I have yet to procure a copy, but I am told that it is a very thoughtfully translated work.
Seth and I discussed Hanuman as well. I asked him as to what he thought of the fact that Anjani Putra was a loyal and trusted companion of Sugreeva, the simian who became the king of Kishkindha after Rama killed Bali, Sugreeva’s brother. Did he know about Sugreeva well enough? But it was quite clear that Seth didn’t want to be drawn into the innards of the matter. His reluctance to discuss Hanuman’s close proximity with Sugreeva will remain a mystery for me. I, who can recite the Hanuman Chalisa by heart, had several questions that pertain to the metaphysics of Tulsidas’s creation. Seth mysteriously parried all of them and kept changing the subject every time I attempted to broach it.
Some years ago, I learned about the word acrostic. As a matter of fact, I came across the word while reading about Vikram Seth.
Therefore,
Valiant traveler from the Heaven Lake
Indian, yet from California to China take
Kaleidoscopic & Equal Music of Golden Gate
Reigning in for yet another Suitable Mate
Able was he ere he saw the Sangai Weep
Memories of the Red River he’ll forever Keep
In any event, it was time for me to leave. I had finally met the man who had written A Suitable Boy and An Equal Music. I presented him with copies of my poetry compilations which he reluctantly accepted, and a replica of the Holy Kamakhya Temple which my trusted Man Friday, Brajen Kalita of Ghograpar, had exquisitely carved out of wood. I wish I had more time with the maestro, but Vikram Seth had other engagements. But for all that, I came back smug that I had met the man who had written Beastly Tales from Here and There on an impulse, and on a hot, sleepy day.
Jaideep Saikia is India’s foremost strategist and author of six compilations of poetry.