The Great Indian Novel - A long and ranting review

Anyone who knows me will also know about my book buying policy - I read and then if I like it, I buy. But getting a job(offer) seems to have turned my head a little. So, on 20th March 2010, I decided to live dangerously and buy two books I had not read. I have to confess, I cheated just a wee bit and ran wikis on both. I walked into Odyssey and bought 'Love In The Time Of Cholera' and 'The Great Indian Novel' each costing Rs.299. This was the time when Shashi Tharoor was gaining a lot of media coverage, which I gather, was largely due to our politicians' inability to process the concept of one of them possessing a 'vocabulary' and due to Mr.Tharoor's regrettable tendency to air his own opinions, which is just not acceptable in Indian politics. But these are the observations of a person who gave up on 'who said what' among politicians five years ago; so treat them accordingly. My interest in the novel was a result of recommendations from friends whose opinions I generally concur with. The wiki told me that it was a spoof of the Mahabharatha based on the Indian freedom struggle. The quoted bits were funny and I found the concept intriguing. Hence, lulled into a false sense of security, I took the plunge.

I started reading in the first week of April and I finished yesterday. It so happens that I was reading 'Freedom at Midnight' at the same time and drawing parallels was easy. Wikipedia was accurate in saying that the book is basically the Indian freedom struggle mapped onto the Mahabharatha. What it failed to mention was that it is an insipid work that does justice to neither. The book begins well with Ved Vyas and Ganapathi sitting down to write the story of our nation and one forgives the mis-characterizations because the concept is still new. But as the Dandi march becomes the great Mango march, Bose becomes Pandu, Nehru becomes Drithrashtra, Gandhi is caricatured excessively and bits of verse start appearing with distressing regularity, the reader, or at least this leader started losing patience. It is as though Mr.Tharoor sat down to write the novel with the idea that readers' interest is guaranteed to be captured by - humour, conflict, sex etc and therefore proceeded to endow his work with copious amounts of all the above. I have no objection to any of these elements, but there is a limit after which all this goes from engaging to boring to painful.

The way I see it, the author has had to employ a minimum of original creative effort. The stories are both ready-made. The characters are sketched in great detail in the epic and the real people are equally well known. An Indian with a basic knowledge of history, who has read Amar Chitra Kathas or been exposed to hindu grand parents or if younger, television; will have no difficulty in identifying the characters. Though some of the comparisons are apt, most of them seem to have been chosen for convenience. Drona(Jayaprakash Narayan) and Duryodhani (Indira Gandhi) are portrayed very close to their Mahabharatha selves, but Karna(Jinnah) and Bhishma(Gandhi) are only pale likenesses and Yudhishtira(Morarji Desai ) and most of the others sorely disappoint. Knowing that the Indian readers will not easily forgive these mis-characterizations or the liberties taken with the story itself,  the author has tactfully inserted a disclaimer at the beginning. But, regretfully, Mr.Tharoor, that is just not enough.

One major irritant that prevails through the entire length of the book is the humour. There is so much of it (as the author presumes it to be) and so often, one gets heartily tired of it within the first 50 pages. Long pages have been devoted to Pandu(Bose)'s INA activities but seemingly with the (sole) purpose of leading up to his induction into the mile high club and subsequent comic(?) death. I thought I had seen the worst in forced humour when I got through the fifth part of Hitch-hikers Guide to the Galaxy, but no, I judged too early. Everyone must have had that Indian railway experience - the one where the compartment is full and there is this guy who keeps telling witty anecdotes in an extremely loud voice. In the beginning you laugh voluntarily because you have nothing better to do in the jam packed compartment and any entertainment is good entertainment. But twenty minutes later, your response is not as spontaneous as it used to be and the wit, who by the way, is sitting right next to you, starts nudging you painfully in the ribs at the punchline... Picture it - joke, "Har,har"*nudge*"jolly funny eh?" And he takes your grimace of pain for a smile and launches into the next one... If this book were a man, he would be that man.

The other (in no way minor) irritant is the poetry which keeps cropping up every few pages. This poetry or verse seems to be written in keeping with exactly one (other than compulsory wittiness) rule - it should rhyme. After being treated to-

"When the shell hit she would have sworn she felt 

A life-seeking tug at her swollen breast;

A split-second, perhaps, and then came a pelt 

Of death-dealing shrapnel that tore open her chest"    

"One has a wish to curl up and whine

Just at the glimpse of another short line

In great despair we pull out our hair

At the sight of these paras on the pages fair

I'm sorry, I know to bear this is tough

But that was equally horrible stuff."

Now a few good things. The author's major task has been to sort out the events into a credible time-line for both the stories which he has done passably well. The reflections on India in the post emergency period are very insightful. The concept is original. This is (all of) what I found good in the book. The book cover and front page are devoted to comments by eminent persons who found the book brilliant to the point of calling it ''the best work of Indian fiction'. This makes me wonder if Chetan Bhagat had time traveled and handed each of these persons copies of his books to read before they read this one. 

My rating : I did not like the book.

A little secret : I am not a book-burning sort of person, quite the other kind actually. So, I covered the book with glass paper and put it at the bottom of my pile of books by Asian authors with Musharaff's 'In the Line of Fire' above it.