Vidia Among the Savages

I’ve read two of Naipaul’s India narratives, the first and the last. Separated by 25 years, they both merit criticism and analysis. The first book, An Area of Darkness (1964) showcases the incompetent, shit-strewn India in which, 15 years after independence, the sub-continent wallowed. Naipaul is shocked by the filth, by the men who walk the streets only to curb themselves with a quick raise of the robe and squat. He comes across a handful of women taking a piss; they giggle at him, for in India, the shame is displaced onto the voyeur, not the actors.

Naipaul cannot fathom the chaos. He has read none of this insipid behavior in Indian novels, histories, or modern travel accounts. Indians pretend no one is shitting on the streets; they are deluded about this and much else. Naipaul visits his ancestral homeland and it holds nothing for him. He sees nothing of intelligence or striving in the masses. He retreats to Kashmir to find some comfort in the derelict Liward Inn, where he rents out rooms from the proprietor, Mr Butt, and his second, Aziz. Naipaul has affection for these two, and tells of their stories and interactions; still he can’t help but to want to strangle the boatmen who take him around the Indus. Aziz takes Naipaul on the pilgrimage to Amarnath, where again he encounters amazing incompetence, and a dumb foxy blond American girl.

The girl winds up at the hotel with Naipaul and takes up with a sitar player, a Muslim. They fight and get married. In the end she leaves the hotel to find an Ashram. She looks to Naipaul as another westerner in search enlightenment; he tells her off and she considers him beyond reach. The wretchedness is entertaining; Naipaul becoming Kipling.

25 years later Naipaul returns, this time a well established writer with a better sense of the travel narrative, which he mastered in Among the Believers: An Islamic Journey (1981). The better of the two books, both from an empathetic and narrative standpoint, India: A Million Mutinies Now (1990), showcases a country exploiting the best of its talent pool while still minding the manners of the mongrel enlightenment element. Naipaul argues, through his habit of reaching out to Indians within the economic system of the country and letting them narrate, the benefits of post-colonial India; they have law rather than a maharaja dispensing fake rule. They have knowledge seekers in sciences and art rather than mysticism. He finds time to slightly praise the latest form of the Indian cause, the Shiv Sena, a nationalist group that while dim witted in its mission at least strives for a better, noble India.

Naipaul returns to the Liward in this book, and is warmly welcomed once again by Mr Butt and Aziz, who is now a father. They talk of the months Vidia spent with them and the work and lives all have done and led since. The Liward has blossomed into a true hotel; Aziz wants for his son a better life than he has led. Naipaul in the foothills of the Himalayas can finally relax.