TRANSNATIONAL
TRAJECTORY-CRISIS,
QUEST AND REALISATION
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CHAPTER IV
TRANSNATIONAL TRAJECTORY: CRISIS, QUEST
AND REALISATION
Transnationalism is the global phenomenon, arising out of
interconnectivity between people. The term was coined by Randolph Bourne in
the early twentieth century to describe relationships between cultures. It has
reorganized the global cultures at the people's level, at all related to political
groups. Transnationalism refers to the change in the migration concepts.
Traditionally, the concept of migration carried the dual sense of departure and
arrival. It is now bloomed into the movement between two or more places. The
migrants have developed strong ties to more than one country, transcending the
boundaries of social and geographical frontiers. Globalisation is the offshoot of
transnationalism, having the economic base. Internationalism is not to be
confounded with globalization, while the former refers to global co-operation
between nations and governments and the latter is a kind of global co-operation
between people. Transnationalism is akin to cosmopolitanism, as the former
explains the individual experience and the latter its philosophy.
Naipaul's Haifa Life and Magic Seeds are his last two novels. Though they
are separate, they contain a single narrative of migration and identity politics of
Willie Chandran and his sister, Sarojini. These two fictions present the critique of
diasporans with regard to their rootlessness and their half-lives. They are
influenced by globalization as an economic and cultural phenomenon. Balfour
states, "Willie Chandran and his sister, Sarojini, have been damaged by
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colonization, displaced by colonization, and marginalized by globalization" (2).
Naipaul's earlier novels depict the agonies of displacement, brutality and
emptiness. His earlier works are influenced by the decolonization and its effects.
Soon after the phase of decolonization, the moment of globalisation has come.
Willie Chandan in Haifa Life feels that neither family nor locality can give
him the protection against the racism and caste. Magic Seeds extends the psychic
journey outwards through the places, Africa, India, Europe. In these two fictions,
Naipaul demonstrates how the migration from the national borders to the global
institutions causes anxieties. Chandran feels the nervous tensions in India and
Britain and Sarojini feels it in Berlin. Willie Chandran says, "I must understand
that big countries grow or shrink according to the play of ...forces that are beyond
the control of any one man. I must try now to be only myself' (MS 176-177).
Chandran's inability to get attached to place or cause or family is the result of the
globalization. Globalization has wider access, but not equal access. In spite of
hybridized and fluid identities, as a result of declonisation and gloabalisation, the
people remain displaced and disrepute. The west remains rich, confident and
white and the others remain poor, uneducated and black. Though Chandran and
Sarojini try to resist, but are overcome by the global forces. Jan Mohammed says,
"Homelessness cannot be achieved without multiple border crossings or without a
constant, keen awareness of the politics of borders" (qtd. in Balfour 9).
Both Sarojini and Chandran are moved by external agencies. But they never
understood them. In the process of multiple border crossing, they have become
specular border intellectuals. Multiple border crossings happen only when the
migrant feels the impossibility of recreating home. Chandran leaves India for
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England in order to escape his father's failure and misery. He says, "I began (to
feel).... detached, or floating, with no links to anyone or anything.. .1 forgot my
situation. sometimes I forgot where I was" (HL 29). He moves from England to
Africa and marries a colonial Portuguese woman, Ana. Finally, he is
disenchanted and binds his marital ties with her. On the other hand, his sister
Sarojini goes with the German lover and realizes her mistakes later. She comes
back to India and settles down temporarily in her father's ashram. Having learnt
and felt the uneasiness in India, she too leaves India for Germany.
In The Location of Culture, Bhabha affirms the rich intellectual possibilities for
the migrants. But Naipaul rejects the intellectual possibilities and pinpoints the
disadvantages of the educated intellectuals like Chandran and Sarojini. Though
their countries offered them shelters, they are rejected on the grounds of race.
Though education and language have enabled them easy access to global mobility,
they are treated inferior, based in their race.
Chandran and Sarojini do not handle the technique of 'uncritical
gregariousness' in the host countries. As they are 'specular border intellectuals',
they do not have home because of multiple border crossing between countries.
They are placed on the border.
In the modern scenario, even the welfare states could not safeguard the
migrants like Chandran and Sarojini. Though they are intellectually brought up
by colonial power through the education given by missionaries, they are nowhere
in the globalised world. In the place of imperialism, the modern Empire holds the
global citizens in its control. Empire does not have any fixed geographical
borders. Like its predecessor, it needs the concept of 'the other', the marginals.
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Searching new identity is a pivotal aspect of exile. Sarojini tries to form new
home out of the remnants of her past. Both Chandran and Sarojini are aware of
the indifference in the metropolitan countries, Britain and Germany. Chandran
creates his persona for himself in order to exist in these countries. He carries
Indian memories wit himself. JanMohammed, says, "An exile in the weak sense,
that is, a subject who always belongs to his home culture in spite of, indeed
because of, acircumstantial and temporary alienation" ( qtd. in Balfour 5).
Haifa Life and Magic Seeds bring out the proposition that the migrants view
globalization as racist and imperial. Further, the possibilities for identity and
resistance within the global village and within the democracies have been
increasingly motivated. The diasporans do suffer from physical, intellectual and
emotional crisis and they are driven to seek identity in the fluid world.
The global migration brings about the topographical shifting, cultural
transaction, multiculturalism and fluid identity. The concept of root, home and
nostalgia mostly form the core of diasporic writings. The term 'root' is associated
with the original homeland from which the dispersed people come from. The idea
of 'home' is closely linked to 'the original root'. Rootedness is a geographical
concept and is vital to the notion of home. Memory becomes a part of 'root'. An
immigrant, geographically displaced, does not forget his emotional bond with his
original home. The memory of the immigrants synthesizes the past with the
present. They use the tool of memory to reduce the distance between the alien
country and the homeland. Through the recoleection, the past incidents of the
native land are reflected in the immigrant's mind only in the broken fragments due
to the long absence from the native land. Salman Rushdie's comment deserves
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attention: "We will not be capable of reclaiming precisely the thing that was
lost.., create fictions, not actual cities or villages, but invisible ones, imaginary
homelands, Indias of the mind"( Rushdie 112).
The immigrants are, when they find the hostile atmosphere in the alien land,
shocked, feel isolated and alienated. Alienation creates mental disturbance. It is
quite common to find the lack of adaptability, lack of acculturation and multiple
identities. The inability to feel one with the foreign environment make the
immigrants attached to the native land.
Both Haifa Life and Magic Seeds are the contemporary critiques of
globalization. They present the accounts of slavery, colonization, decolonization
and industrialization, having caused great impact on the characters who have
become rootless, half-lives and failures. The migrant is transformed into a border
intellectual, subaltern, hybrid and mirror.
Robert Balfour contends in his article "V.S.Naipaul's Half a Life, Magic Seeds
and globalization" that these two novels "evidence a departure from postcolonial
theoretical positions and shows how they have been overtaken by globalization as
an economic and cultural phenomenon" (3).
Anthony Giddens defines globalization as "the intensification of worldwide
social relations which link distant localities in such a way that local happenings
are shaped by events occurring many miles away and vice versa" (Ray Kiely 8).
Globalisation has brought in a sense of interconnectedness across and beyond
national borders. It has ruptured the very fabric of localized social relations.
Globalisation is not new, though it seems to be so. Even in the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries, the West had mooted the idea of colonization. Difference
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between the erstwhile colonization and the modern globalization is that the latter
is characterized by the amount and intensity of global flows.
The global flows with great speed and intensity make the global citizen at cross
roads. In these flows, there seems to be a lack of meaning or depth. For instance,
the distant events on our television screens do not offer us any meaning or death.
They are meaningless in a shallow world. "Hyper-mobility means a placeless
world, and therefore a meaningless world" (11). The effects of globalization are
not inspired by any centralized power, be it either state or the capitalist classes.
We are not, in this context, bothered about the lack of meaning. Baurillard says,
"We manufacture a profusion of meanings in which there is nothing to see." (qtd.
in Kiely 11).
In the wake of globalization, the idea of exile has undergone changes. Edward
Said and Bhabha's definitions of migrants have been radically found to be
insufficient. The early works of Naipaul such as The Middle Passage, A Flag on
the Island and In a Free State revolve around constructing national identity from
the past. But such attempts have been proved to be futile in the globalization
scenario. Both Haifa Life and Magic Seeds portray the multiple border crossings
of Willie and Sarojini. They have been trying to seek meanings in their displaced
lives at home and in various countries. But they are unable to find such identity
anywhere, in the changing phase of modern life.
Homi Bhabha's statement about the cosmopolitan outlook of Naipaul's heroes
is worth quoting here: "Naipaul's people are vernacular cosmopolitans of a kind,
moving in-between cultural traditions, and revealing hybrid forms of life and art
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do have a prior existence within the discreet world of any single culture of
language." (Bhaha p . xiii)
Haifa Life consists of three parts. Part One is entitled 'A Visit from Somerset
Maugham,' which has three subdivisions. Part Two is named 'The First Chapter"
with six subdivisions and Part Three is called 'A Second Translation' with nine
subdivisions. They depict the progression of events, corresponding to Willie's
migration in India, England and Africa. In the first half of the novel, Naipaul
narrates the story of Willie's father and also Willie's migration to England. In the
second half, he depicts the graphic account of Willie's life with Ana in Africa.
The novelist uses both the first person narration and omniscient narration. His
narrative shift is linked to the migrations of the protagonist. His journey is the
story of self-discovery in three continents. His transnational trajectories are
marked by his constant quest for identity.
The novel opens with Willie Chandran's logical and tricky question to his
uninterested father: "Why is my middle name Somerset? The boys at school have
just found out, and they are mocking me" (HL 1). His crisis begins with his name.
Name is very important for a human being. Naming ceremony is considered to be
sacred in a man's life. A baby, who is named by his/her parents at the time of
birth, carries the destiny all along life. Willie is curious to know about the cause
for his strange and alien name, as his parents are Hindus. His query is similar to
the one posed by Gogol in Jhumpa Lahiri's fiction The Namesake, in which he
questions the meaning for his name. Gogol, who is born to the Indian immigrant
parents in the United States, is afflicted by the burden of his strange name. His
father, Ashoke tells him that he is named after the Russian writer. He says,"He
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has been told that he was named after a famous Russian author, born in a previous
century. That the author's name, and therefore his, is known throughout the world
and will live on forever." (Lahiri 66). The colonized during the colonial times had
resorted to mimic not only the life style of the colonizers, but names also. It
had/has been fashion of the erstwhile colonized people.
Willie's father tells him that he is named after Somerset Maugham, the great
English writer. He came to India to collect material in order to write novel about
spirituality in the 1930s. Willie's father had found shelter in the temple, as he had
feared the consequences of his involvement in the scam in the audit office of
maharaja's state and also his marriage with an untouchable girl. He was afraid of
both the official and social ostracism. Hence he had taken vow of silence, which
surprised and muted his opponents and his father too. His grandfather's story has
been incorporated by Naipaul in order to add an emphasis to his narration. His
grandfather, who was a Brahmin temple priest, had been starving for many
months due to the social oppression and political conquests of Muslim rulers and
British regime. He had moved to the city of maharaja and found shelter in the
temple. People had pitied him and consequently he got a job as a clerk in the
maharaja's palace. He foresaw the impending doom to himself and his family. So
he decided to break away from his community and move on. His movement has
been repeated by his grandson, Willie, who migrates to different places for his
quest for life.
Willie's father has a direct influence on him. As a son of maharaja's secretary,
he felt that the life of complacency was repulsive to him. He decided to contribute
some notable and noble action, which might be noticed by the world. He was
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baffled as to the course of his action. "I began to have some idea that this life we
were all living in the big town around the maharaja and his palace couldn't last,
that this security was also false.. .1 could do to protect myself against that
breakdown" (8). He burnt a copy of The Mayor of Casterbridge and it resulted in
nothing. Then he determined to sacrifice his life. In other words, he decided to
many an untouchable girl, following the clarion call of Mahatma Gandhi. "The
decision was nothing less than to make a sacrifice of myself. Not an empty
sacrifice, the act of a moment...but a more lasting kind of sacrifice, something the
mahatma would have approved of' (10). Despite his resolve, he was at a loss to
execute his plan. He chased the black girl, who was his classmate, and settled her
in the image-maker's factory. His act was cowardly and he had no courage to
divulge it anyone. The secret came to light after he got promotions in the office.
When he was exposed in a scam, he fled to the temple. Somerset Maugham was
brought by the school principal for a meeting with him. Both his secret marriage
and his involvement in the scam were simultaneous.
In order to escape the punishment, he took the vow of silence to silence his
opponents. "It suited my temperament, and it also seemed the least complicated
way out" (28). His secretive acts had oppressed him and he could not escape from
the pangs of his own guilt. He had been suffering from remorse all along his life.
His sense of shame has been inherited by his son, Willie.
Willie's birth has brought oppressive feelings in his father. He does not like the
black child, born to his Brahmin caste and an untouchable woman. "In fact, my
thoughts were all inward, and my heart was sinking" (33). With the growth of the
half-caste boy, his fears are also growing. He suffers from guilt. He thinks that
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he has caused taint on him. His caste consciousness at times makes him anxious.
However, his untouchable caste wife does not feel guilty and she feels elevated in
the marriage. She gives birth to the black girl baby, who is named Sarojini after
the national woman poet. Willie has shaped his own destiny, as he hates his
father. Regarding the future of Sarojini, Willie's father speculates that she is to be
married to some foreigner. He says that "all I can hope for Sarojini is an
international marriage" (36), because the chances for her in India are restricted.
At school, he experiences shame and insult, when he is questioned about his
father's profession. It distances him from his father. His mother has been a
source of inspiration for his life's journey. Her education at the mission school
has made him curious. He longs to go to Canada for religious conversation and a
lot of traveling. "And one day, when he was asked to write an English
'composition' about his holidays he pretended he was a Canadian, with parents
who were called 'Mom' and 'Pop' (39). He has collected the details of the foreign
life from the American comic books circulated in the mission school. His father
does not like him to be influenced by the mission. He blames the untouchable
caste wife for the son's Mom-and-Pop business. Meanwhile, Willie has been
distancing himself from him. He criticizes him as a fraud and a coward. Willie
has been concocting stories such as 'King Cophetua and the Beggar-Maid' and 'A
Life of Sacrifice' for the school composition notebook. He writes them not only
for others, but also for his illumination.
Willie's father reads them and feels wounded. "We've created a monster. He
really hates his mother and his mother's people, and she doesn't know" (43). He
does not like him to abroad. Instead, he wishes to send him to any part of India.
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But Willie persists to go to Canada to become a missionary. He fancies that he
would become a missionary in Canada. He suffers from the monotony of life at
home. He seeks to fly to the other world. He fancies that the foreign lands might
offer him hopes of renewal. He wants to get himself elevated. He is unaware of
the consequences of the dangers of foreign exile. His immature self makes him
fragile to the realities of the world. He turns his anger against his father and
writes a story entitled 'A Life of Sacrifice' in which he symbolizes his father as
the selfish Brahmin, sacrificing own his own children in the end for his benefits.
After reading the story, his father comments, "His mind is diseased. He hates me
and hates his mother, and now he's turned against himself' (47).
Willie's romantic ideas of missionaries in the west have been dissipated when
he happens to see the picture of priest standing with one foot on a statue of the
Buddha with an axe. The picture has mortified him and he feels ashamed of his
own decision to be a missionary. However, his dream of going to the west has
remained with him. The presence of the depressed Willie has made his father hate
him more. He thought,"You are somebody else, somebody I don't know, and I
worry for you because you are launched on journey I know nothing of' (49).
Finally, he has accepted to write to some of his acquaintances in England for his
son, who is secretly pleased.
Many letters have been streaming in from different corners of Europe. Some
of them have been discouraging and some are friendly. However, they are all
fruitless. At last, he has won a scholarship to study in a college of education in
London. He has been launched on a transnational trajectory from this launching
pad. He has been thrown into the wide world with a quest for find himself. He is
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of the view that he has lost his self at home. He feels alike an alien at his own
home. Hence, he moves on to seek his 'home' in the hostile world.
When he lands in London after a sea-journey, he is frustrated. His fanciful
ideas about the west have been eluding him. "He knew that London was a great
city. His idea of a great city was of a fairyland of splendour and dazzle, and when
he got to London and began walking about its streets he felt let down. He didn't
know what he was looking at" (52). The two prominent places of London,
namely, Buckingham Palace and Speaker's Corner are disappointing him. He has
had great ideas about these two places. They are not merely ordinary buildings of
tourist attraction, but they are the symbols of British colonial legacy. In Willie's
eyes, they stand exposed of its naked reality. The more he has seen the buildings,
the more his ire has welled up within him. However, the extreme despair paves
way for release of energy and makes one feel relieved. The similar experience has
happened to him too. "All at once, in the most magical way, he was lifted out of
himself" (53). He happens to see the great Indian diplomat, Krishna Menon,
walking from the hotel to the park. The sight of the great man has stirred a sense
of history. His historical interest has been aroused and he loves to have a grander
view of the world and its events. He goes to the college library and starts to read
about the history of the world. "Willie thought he was swimming in ignorance,
had lived without a knowledge of time" (55).
Willie opines that the ignorance seems to be inherited from his mother's
uncle, who used to preach about the knowledge to his backward community.
"And now, out of his new feeling of ignorance and shame his developing vision of
a world too big for him..." (55). He is puzzled about the eccentric behaviour of
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the newspaper proprietor who has a liking for asthmatics. The west, which
seemed real, has its own follies and weak personalities. The erstwhile colonizer
seems to be more fragile than the erstwhile colonized. When he looks at the
hollow men of the west, he compares his own father, whose way of life he
misjudged. "Willie thought, 'I misjudged my father. I used to think that the world
was easy for him as a Brahmin and that he became a fraud out of idleness. Now I
begin to understand how hard the world must have been for him" (58).
Willie's subsequent reflections in the great metropolitan city of the world have
placed him in a kind of daze with no idea of his own. He does not know in what
mission he is anchored to: "He was unanchored, with no idea of what lay ahead.
He still had no idea of the scale of things, no idea of historical time or even of
distance" (58). To him, the great imperial country looks like a 'sham' and the
kings and queens are like 'impostors' A little young man from India rearranges
his way of life in London. He has to learn the western etiquette of eating, greeting
and dressing as well. He comments on the wearing of academic gowns during the
graduation day ceremonies of the colleges. "The academic gown probably was
copied from the Islamic seminaries of a thousand years before, and that Islamic
style would have been copied from something earlier. So it was a piece of makebelieve" (59).
It is the way of the modern world to mimic the ways of the colonizer, who had
earlier copied from the colonized countries. So the mimicry is not of the property
of the colonizer or the colonized. It is like the double-edged knife. He suffers
from the stigma of the old rules of his homeland. They are inextricably bound
with his personality. He wishes to shed them at his will. But they continue to
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bind him even in the west. He is reminded of them in his new life. "He began to
see-and it was upsetting, at first-that the old rules were themselves a kind of
make-believe, self-imposed. And one day, towards the end of his second term, he
saw with great clarity that the old rules no longer bound him"(59-60). In other
words, he likes to shed his old self, bound to his father, mother and family and to
move on the world like a cosmopolitan. He moves from the periphery to the
centre, unaware of the consequences of the cruelness of the centre. He does not
realize that he is about to be thrown out. The centre attracts him only to eject him.
We are reminded of W.B.Yeats's classic lines in his poem The Second Coming:
"Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold;/ Mere anarchy is loosed upon the
world." To him, the new awakening appears to be a kind of new revolution.
Willie is reminded of his mother's firebrand uncle who had been agitating for
freedom in India. "Willie began to understand that he was free to present himself
as he wished. He could, as it were, write his own revolution. The possibilities
were dizzying. He could, within reason, to re-make himself and his past and his
ancestry"(60). To act like the colonizer, he indulges in subverting his family
history. He conjectures that his mother might be a half-Christian, as she had
studied in a missionary school. He proceeds to speak of her as a complete
Christian, belonging to an ancient Christian community and his father as a
Brahmin. "So, playing with words, he began to re-make himself. It excited him,
and began to give him a feeling of power" (61). His new-power makes him to
befriend the like-minded marginals, who are also half-made like him.
Percy Cato, the subaltern from Jamaica, too concocts a story about his father,
who worked in the making of Panama Canal. He tells Willie that he was a clerk.
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Percy acts like the colonizer in London, going to the bars and befriending the
fashion-loving, hollow women. He is similar to Willie, because he hides the true
story of his ancestry and simulates as the one that he is not. He loves clothes,
which appear to give him a sense of respect. On the contrary, Willie has a shirt to
be worn for two or three days. Dress and its colour, according to him, are to be
linked to the relationship with women.
Percy initiates him into sexuality with metropolitan women. Willie is excited
to know and to feel about it. Percy's girl friend, June, who is working in the
perfume counter in Debenhams, takes him to the new world of sexuality. He
describes the London girls at the perfume counter," The girls at that perfume
counter took fright at him, and he took fright at them, powdered, unreal, with
strange lashes, and looking plucked and shaved like shop chickens" (66). June,
the London girl, is mocking him for his poor knowledge and lack of experience in
love-making. He feels humiliated. She attributes his failure to the arranged
marriages. Her dictum, which she has learned from her father, is: "Satisfy the
woman first. Then think of yourself' (69). June's words have cast the lasting and
depressing influence on his psyche. He feels tormented by the sexual revelation,
which he continues to nourish it till the end of the novel. He thinks that he has
betrayed his friend, Percy, for having made love to his girl, June. He is "thinking
of Percy, he felt the beginning of remorse. It didn't last. He kicked it aside. He
found he was pleased with himself, after all"(70). He feels that he is a changed
man. His consequent meetings with Percy make him to be curious about the
physiology of sex. He goes to the college library and refers to the manuals on sex.
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His sexual deviation is partly due to the half-baked ideas of the half-caste
Jamaican, Percy.
In the later days, Willie is far more driven into the dark worlds of prostitution
houses of Portuguese African country by another half-breed, Alviro. The
knowledge of sex that he has derived in London has been strengthened by the
adventurous sex experiences in Africa. Both the centre and the periphery have
contributed to the knowledge and experiences of sex for the perpetual wanderer
across the globe. Though he realizes that India has contributed the wonderful
treatise on love, Kama Sutra, he suffers from the lack of experiences in India. He
blames the alien invaders for making the matters of sex secretive. "That
philosophical practical way of dealing with sex belongs to our past, and that world
was ravaged and destroyed by the Muslims. Now we live like incestuous little
animals in a hole" (118).
Naipaul depicts the hollowness of Notting Hill life. It is the affluent and
fashionable area, which is known for the attractive terraces of large Victorian
townhouses, shops, restaurants and bars. Percy takes Willie one day to the party
in Notting Hill. In the late 1950s, the place had been filled with the brimming
activity of the immigrants from various countries, which included the Carribean,
the white colonies of Africa and of Asia. "But few of the immigrants had proper
jobs or secure houses to go back to. Some of them were truly on the brink, and
that gave an edge to the gaiety" (72). There had been the English people who
waited the new arrivals of the immigrants. In one such party of Notting Hill,
Willie has chanced to meet a budding English writer who boasts that he has
written a chapter on the story of a visit to a psychiatrist. Willie feels that the story
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does not speak about the patient and the doctor. This wry comment makes the
immature English writer shout, "I don't know who you are or where you come
from or what talent you think you have. But a very famous person has said that I
have added a new dimension to writing"(73).
London has become not only the waste land of morality, but also of ideas and
creativity. It was once reputed to have housed the great literary personalities, such
as Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth, Dickens, Tennyson and so forth. In Willie's
eyes, the sterile creative writer has been boring. Roger comments on the drywitted writers in London, who do not creativity, but they pose to be writers.
"They've all written books.. .They don't actually want to write, but they want to
be writers. They want their name on the back of a book"(108). The bohemian
parties of Notting Hill have introduced Willie many characters from different
walks of life-intellectually bankrupt writer, unpromising land-dealer, BBC
programme producer and editor.
Of the English people that has met, Roger has fascinated him very much. They
have become friends. They have met once in a week. He is charmed by "Roger's
confidence and knowledge, and by the words he had used, 'capital', 'property'
(81). He has been his guide in writing. When Willie has given some his earlier
stories, such as 'A Life of Sacrifice', Roger uncovers the mystery in his unique
way. He is able to understand the cached meanings. "What is interesting to me as
a lawyer is that you don't want to write about real things. I've spent a fair amount
of time listening to devious characters, and I feel about these stories that the writer
has secrets. He is hiding"(83). He reads a story of Hemingway and visits the
theatres to watch the Cagney gangster movies. Being inspired by them, his
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creative skill, coupled with the movie stories, he is able to write the six stories. It
is understood that his creative genius has been dry and he imitates from the outer
world to claim it as his own.
The erstwhile colonial centre houses the subalterns, who had been
marginalized by the colonial powers. One such example is Marcus, the black man
who indulges in interracial sex. He is basically a diplomat and London is a
paradise to him. "He has two ambitions. The first is to have a grandchild who
will be pure white in appearance. He is half-way there. He has five mulatto
children, by five white women...He wants when he is old to walk down the
King's Road with his white grandchild. People will stare and the child will say,
loudly, 'What are they staring at, Grandfather?" (89-90). To the black males, the
interracial sex gives a sense of pride and respect. Their hybrid children will in
future live like the white people. Marcus-like blacks populate the metropolitan
centres with the great ambition of producing white grandchildren. Marcus's
second ambition is to open an account in the Queen's bank at Coutts. The blacks
are not allowed to open an account. His dreams are solid and well-grounded.
When compared with these black immigrants, Willie does not have any stable
aim. He simply wanders with no ambition. He is being waylaid by both the
whites and the blacks and is diverted to the futile ventures.
Willie is further shocked to come across two gentlemen, Richard and Peter,
who are the selfish and merciless materialists and womanizers. To them, baiting
rich women has been considered a pastime and money-extracting business.
Richard is born in the middle-class family and is in the publication business.
Peter is an academic and has written a book on food in history. The editor, who
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has been a guest in a Notting Hill party, observes all the party men and passes the
comment thus: "But now the world has titled, and it is only when I meet people
like yourselves that I get some idea where the world is going. So this occasion is
full of ironies. You have all led glittering lives" (98). In the midst of all selfish,
romance-loving, materialistic and futile people, the simple-minded editor, who
suffers from some inconsolable worry, says that life has its own dreams and cruel
tricks too. He speculates his death. He has written his own obituary and reads it to
all the party people. He is overwhelmed by grief and breaks down. Being moved
by the editor's emotional outburst, Willie likens him to his father and the familiar
background of his home town. He has written twenty-six stories. Roger
appreciates them, especially the later stories which are 'inward.' He takes the
anthology of stories to the publisher, Richard and signs a contract for fifty pounds.
Naipaul incorporates the Notting Hill race riots of 1958 in the novel in order to
add emphasis to the story of the displaced immigrant. The young men had been
marauding the Notting Hill area, looking for blacks. A West Indian black called
Kelso was killed and the gruesome incident had sent the shocking signals among
the immigrant blacks. Willie for the first time feels menace. "Willie felt at once
threatened and ashamed. He felt people were looking at him....After this he
stayed in the college and didn't go out. This kind of hiding wasn't new to him. It
was what they used to do at home, when there was serious religious or caste
trouble" (109). He has been beckoned by the radio producer to collect report
about the race riots. He understands that it is very dangerous to go out, as he
belongs to the immigrant community. The romantic life of London has become
disillusioned and unattractive to him.
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Willie's father has written a letter to him, informing him about the international
marriage of his sister, Sarojini. She is married to the German photographer, who
had been a reporter at Berlin at the end of the world war. Now he has been
making films about revolutions. Willie speculates that his sister's international
marriage has been proposed by his father when she was born. He is unable to
understand why his father is discriminate to him. "Willie thought, 'It's
something, I have learned since I came here. Everything goes on a bias. The
world should stop, but it goes on" (113).
Percy, the black immigrant, decides to leave London and go back to his
homeland, Jamaica. The black man feels that he has no security in the racialdiscriminatory London. The news of Percy's moving has been a blow to Willie.
He has been under the illusion that London would be a cover for his displacement.
But the race riots of Notting Hill has unmasked the angst of the immigrant lives.
"Willie felt left behind and exposed. The savour went out of his London life, and
he began to wonder, as he had done at the very beginning, where he was going"
(114). He stands in the cross-roads, blinking about his future. In this state of
limbo, his sister, Sarojini visits him and she has been acting as an illuminating
force. She tells him that he is squandering his time in the futile ventures of
studying to become a teacher and writing a book. She further states that his life is
like the life of their father, who has been living a life of silence.
He thought, 'What she says is right, though I don't like her for saying it. I
don't know where I am going. I am just letting the days go by. I don't
like the place that's waiting for me at home. For the past two and a half
years. I have lived like a free man. I don't like the idea of marrying
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someone like Sarojini, and that's what will happen if! go home. If I go
home I will have to fight the battles my mother's uncle fought. I don't
want to fight those battles. It will be a waste of my precious life. (117).
He in the state of uncertainty decides to settle down, marrying a girl. But he does
not know to get a girl for marriage. He lauds the marginalized blacks, such as
Marcus and Percy Cato who are trained in the art of seduction and sex. He is
rather comparatively feeble in it. .He feels later that he is not trained in the art of
seduction. He opines that the problem is that there are arranged marriages in
India. The thought of sexuality drives him desperately to the house of ill-fame.
He has a sexual encounter with a middle-class prostitute, who commands him.
His failure of an act has put him in despair. "He was full of shame" (121). He
decides to move on. He wishes to follow the footsteps of his early guide, Percy,
who goes to Jamaica. But Willie does not like to go to India. "Willie could only
go back to India, and he didn't want that. All that he had now was an idea-and it
was like a belief in magic-that one day something would happen, an illumination
would come to him, and he would be taken by a set of events to the place he
should go" (122).
After the Notting Hill riots, his life has been thrown apart. He feels alienated.
He has not got any request from the BBC producer for a script. Even the
catalogue of Roger's publication company has not complimented his creative
writing skill. He thinks that his book "was not something I should have done,
anyway. It was artificial and false" (123). However, his destiny is otherwise
made. His published book has attracted the half-Portuguese, half-African woman,
Ana. The stories of his book have been a kind of resemblance of her life. She has
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expressed her desire to meet him. He has no idea of the Portuguese African
country. "It was possible that she belonged to a mixed community or stood in
some other kind of half-and-half position" (124). She tells him stories about her
own life. At the end of his scholarship, he feels abandoned and he has no place to
go. He has decided to go to the Portuguese African country with Ana. "I've been
a fool. I've been waiting to be guided to where I should go. Waiting for a sign.
And all this time the sign's been there. I must go with Ana to her country" (130).
He tells her his decision. She is at first bewildered and consents to him. Sarojini
in a letter warns him that he should be cautious about the strangers in Africa. His
transnational trajectory now takes him to Africa, of which he has no previous
knowledge.
Willie goes to Africa with his newly-wedded wife, Ana in a ship. He is
depressed about the African ambience. "I am not staying here. I am leaving. I
will spend a few nights here and then I will find some way of going away" (133).
His decisions are momentary and unplanned. He thinks on the spur of the
moment and he does not act at all. The distance between his thought and action
has been a problem in his life. He inherits his father's docility. He does not act
smartly. Willie's hasty decisions do not take him anywhere. Though he decides
to leave, he remains in Africa for eighteen years. "Willie thought, "I don't know
where I am. I don't think I can pick my way back. I don't ever want this view to
become familiar. I must not unpack. I must never behave as though I am
staying' (135).
At Africa, Willie lives with a sense of security. He feels at ease with Ana's
strength and authority. His life as the husband of Ana has put him in
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complacency. He has no heroic valour, like the legendary protagonists. His
liminal existence puts him in an unstable condition. His dependence on the
woman makes him shameless. He says with no sense of guilt, "I believed that she
was in some essential guided and protected, and as long as I was with her no harm
could come to me" (141).
On Sundays, both Willie and Ana would go to the parties arranged by their
neighbour. The guests are from multiple backgrounds, ranging from pure white
to a deep brown. Most of them are second-rank Portuguese, like Ana's family.
Willie finds himself well placed with the people of half-race. He enjoys his life as
a manager of overseers in Ana's family estate. The overseers are also of the
mixed races.
Ana's grandfather had come to Africa and established settlement during the
time of the first world war. "Ana's grandfather wished, in this period, to recover
the European personality he had shed. He sent his two half-African daughters to
Europe to be educated" (150). He, being the typical and pure European, suffered
the vanity of the colonizers. Though he had got the half-African daughters, he did
not wish to relegate his colonial past. His half life is contrasted with the other half
life of Marcus, the black man, who wishes to see his white grandchildren by
marrying white women. One of his daughters stayed in Portugal. The other one,
who was Ana's mother, came to Africa back and starts to live with her European
husband. He was dejected in the new climate of Africa and felt displaced. He
started to live alone. He was not an active man and he was hiding in the room. He
found himself unsuitable for the African life. Ana's childhood was full of
traumatic experiences of unhappy marriage of her father and mother. They had
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got themselves separated. Her mother took a lover and her father went to
Portugal. He died there broken-hearted. Ana has a special love for her father,
despite his passivity and drunkenness.
The race-mixing is not new either in Africa or in the imperial centres.
Irrespective of the caste that the half-made people belong to, they all suffer from
loss of race and culture. The intermingling of people has been a mode of colonial
and postcolonial times. There is no homogeneity in the races or their cultures. In
the fast growing globalised world, people have got themselves acclimatized to the
new climate and new cultures. They do not suffer from loss of culture, as their
previous generations had suffered during their migrations. Migrational politics
has been commonplace in the post-war diasporic poetics. Geographical distances
do not matter much to the modem day migrants. Willie Chandran, while moving
from London to Africa, do not feel that he is going to lose his culture. He is
worried only about the loss of English language in Africa.
Naipaul presents the lives of half-made people of Africa. Willie Chandran's
experience in such a state is pushing him further in his journey of quest. "I began
to understand ...that the world I had entered was only a half-and-half world, that
many of the people who were our friends considered themselves, deep down,
people of the second rank. They were not fully Portuguese, and that was where
their own ambition lay" (160-161). Both Willie and Ana used to go to the estate
house on Sunday for party. Their estate friends and neighbours would take part in
them. Everyone has a special 'character'. Among them, the Correias, the estate
people, are very much obsessed with money. Their idea of life lies only in money
and they have bank accounts in the metropolitan cities. They always have a sense
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of impending danger or the worst times. Ricardo always lives in melancholy, as
his daughter has eloped with the African. She has got good musical talents. The
Noronhas, the pure Portuguese, are unique, as the lady possesses the special gifts
of prediction. She is eccentric and nerve-broken. Her mysticism has puzzled her
audience.
On one such occasion, Willie is pained to notice the suffering of the mulatto,
who works under the harsh condition in Africa. He works as the tiler. His father
was an European and his mother was an African. Willie's thoughts have been
rampant. "But whenever I remembered the big sweating man with the abused light
eyes, carrying the shame of his birth on his face like a brand, I would think, 'Who
will rescue that man? Who will avenge him?" (166).
Meanwhile, the news of uprising in the African region has been reported. A lot
of mass killing of Portuguese in the country side has been heartrending news for
the colonizers as well as the immigrants. Willie has learned to use the gun as a
precaution. Jacinto Correia has maintained contact with some great man for his
business. His confidence in business has been high-vaulting. He boasts of his
business contacts. He even talks of helicopter deals. His spectators have been
dazed by his accounts. But after a crisis, his business dealings have failed him.
His family is in trouble. He attributes his failure to the work of the pure
Portuguese people, who are jealous of his new position. He blames his own halfracial background. "There was no trouble at all in throwing a man of the second
rank into the darkness, someone from the half-and-half world, educated and
respectable and striving" (174). He feels that the people of Portugal are
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responsible for his downfall. The Correias have left for Europe, as their fortunes
in Africa have ended.
After their departure, their estate manager, Alvaro has taken Willie to the dark
worlds of African prostitution. Descriptions about the eleven-year old African
girl's initiation into prostitution have been nauseating and repelling. His new
guide, Alviro used to take him in the Land Rover car to the interiors of the country
after a nightfall. He is much shocked to see the housemaid, the daughter of Julio,
there among the young girls. Though he is shameful on seeing her, he pretends
that he has not seen her at all. His nocturnal visitations have distanced him from
his wife, Ana. He begins to grow remorse in his heart. At the age of thirty-three,
he realizes, "We are all born with sexual impulses, but we are not born with
sexual skill, and there are no schools where we can be trained" (189).
The death of Jacinto Correia in Portugal has transformed the lives of Alviro
and Willie. Jacinto's wife Carla has sold the estate and Alviro has lost his job.
Alviro has been found guilty of corruption and forgeries and has been sacked.
The new estate manager, Luis has come to live in the estate with his wife, Graca.
Their lives are also dissatisfactory. He is a drunkard and his wife has been
fighting all odds in Africa. She has sent her two children to Europe for studies.
She has found many lovers for her livelihood. One among them is Willie, who
feels trapped by her seductive gaze. He has sexual relationships with her, at first
without the knowledge of his wife, Ana. Later the news has spread like wildfire.
His illicit relationship has been likened by himself to the story of his earlier life.
Willie's father had the typical experience with the sexually promiscuous man of
repute. He had come and asked for counsel, as he was living in disquiet
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following his shameless life. He told the ascetic that he was like King Dasaratha.
Willie's father shouted in anger,
How dare you compare yourself to gods? Dasaratha was man of honour.
His reign was of unparalleled righteousness. His later life was a life of
sacrifice. How dare you compare yourself and your squalid bazaar lusts
with such a man? If I were not a man of peace I would have you whipped
out of my ashram. (207)
Willie's shameless life with Graca is similar to the one during his father's
lifetime. Graca's life has been victimized by her family, her husband and her
lovers. She is destined to be a nun, as her family was poor. Both of her parents
were of mixed-race and second-rank Portuguese. She had been forced to be a nun.
But she chose to marry the drunkard. Due to his drinking habit, he had lost his
jobs in various places. He started his profession as a mechanic in the railways and
later he became an estate manager. Following his life of boredom, he has grown
restless. It has been further aggravated by Ana's provocation. One day, she takes
him to her half-brother, who is always angry. "Ana had prepared me for this kind
of aggression; it would have been hard for me otherwise" (215). He has a big
green-tinted bottle with a living snake. He is like the snake-charmer and he
torments it only to intimidate Willie.
After the meeting, Willie distances himself from Ana. Meanwhile, Graca has a
house of her own. Willie continues to have illicit love with her. Ana finds that
Juliio's daughter also is involved in the sexual scandals. After the housewarming
ceremony of Luis and Graca's house, Willie does not indulge in scandals.
Meanwhile there are fresh reports about the uprising of the guerillas in the
189
country. As a result, the immigrants and the colonizers from Portugal have started
to move out of the country. The situation has become bleak for the displaced
immigrants. They do not have sense of security anywhere in the world. Ana does
not have any inkling to leave the land, which was once her grandfather's country.
After the end of the crisis, Willie speculates over her bleak future. He has his
own doubts , "To be or not to be, that is a question?" In his Hamlettian sense of
sensibility, he is dangling. Finally, he decides to move on. He says, "I am fortyone. I am tired of living your life" (227). "I mean I've given you eighteen years.
I can't give you any more. I can't give your life any more. I want to live my own"
(136). He has had a fall on the staircase and is admitted in the hospital. After
recovery, he ruminates his own thoughts of further movement. Ana's momentous
reply makes the readers question the significance of lives of the half-racial people,
half-Africans, half-Portuguese, mulattos, Asians, including Indian immigrants and
of course, the Europeans. Ana said, "Perhaps it wasn't really my life either"
(227). Willie then moves to Berlin in order to take shelter in his sister's house.
Life in the postcolonial scenario has been menacing for the immigrants, who
are constantly displaced and dispossessed and do not have voice of their own.
Willie's life has been compared with that of Percy, another displaced immigrant,
who lives happily with the revolutionary leader, Che, involving himself in the
meaningful political revolution. When Willie goes to the restaurant in Berlin with
his sister, Sarojini, he happens to see the Tamil boys selling long-stalked roses.
"They were unsmiling, boys with a mission, raising funds for the great Tamil war
far away..." (138). His revelation of the rose-selling Tamil boys has made think of
his own inability to fight for any revolution at the age of forty-one. He, however,
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proclaims, 'I have been hiding from myself. I have risked nothing. And now the
best part of my life is over" (138). Willie has decided to go on a mission, which
takes him to India in order to involve himself in some revolution.
Willie's impulse to fight in the revolution for some social or political cause has
come in the wake of his sister's lectures on the importance of history and
revolutions. He has already learnt about the revolutions of his mother's firebrand
uncle, the African uprisings against the former colonizers, Percy Cato's links with
the revolutionary leader, Che and also the rose-selling Tamil boys, Sarojini's
German husband's film shooting of the documentaries on the lives of the
revolutionaries. He is the post-colonial Hamlet, who has a lot of dreams and
aspirations, but he lacks any constancy of purpose. He is led by the false ideals of
the modern day man.
Being displaced in the globalization scenario, Willie seeks the guidance from
the whites, like Roger and also from the marginals, like Percy Cato, from the halfPortuguese, like his wife Ana and mulatto, like the estate manager, Alviro.
Unfortunately, he is led more by the impulses than by logical sense of reason. His
half-caste birth has led him to the European metropolitan centre and also to the
Portuguese African country. He has no place to go. He is caught between the two
worlds, like Trishanku, the Hindu mythical character, who was perennially cursed
to be in a state of limbo. Naipaul's aim of presenting the life of the displaced and
dispossessed diasporan is to leave the story unfinished.
Willie's crisis remains unsolved. Though he has got only the momentary
consolations in the friendships with the white and black men and in the sexual
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relationships with white women, his quest remains unfulfilled. In search of
meaning in life, he moves to India as a part of transnational trajectory.
Edward Said quotes a twelfth century monk from Saxony in his essay "Culture
and Imperialism": "The person who finds his homeland sweet is still a tender
beginner, he to whom every soil is as his native one is already strong, but he is
perfect to whom the entire world is a foreign place" (qtd.in Mishra 101).
Willie travels through countries- India, England and Portuguese colony in
Africa and Germany and contemplates deeply, interrogating his own identity and
his roots. His sister Sarojini has been the motivating factor to goad him to go to
India and join the revolutionary group. She accuses him of leading causeless and
unmotivated life. He has been criticized for being a pretender of mingling with
new places and not keeping his ethnic identity. Sweta Kushal and Evangeline
Manickam state: "This novel (Magic Seeds ) marks a subtle change from
Naipaul's earlier writings as he deviates from the theme of search for belonging
and steps into a universe where it is no longer important" (101).
Willie dichotomises the world into two halves. The first one is the ordered and
civilized world-the West and the other one is the struggling world with its
conflicts:
There were the two worlds Sarojini spoke about. One world was ordered,
settled, its wars fought. In this world without war or real danger people
had been simplified. They looked at television and found their community,
they ate and drank approved things and they counted their money. In the
other world people were more frantic. They were desperate to enter the
simpler, ordered world. (MS 10)
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Willie thinks that the ordered way of the West would be the solution to all the
problems of the world. Naipaul attaches his commitment and loyalty to the
Western world order. As against this convenient, comfortable and luxurious
backdrop of the West, Willie looks at the disordered and disoriented villages,
pillaged by the rebels. The decline of feudalism paved way for disorder. "The
fields of the liberated areas Willie knew had fallen into ruin: the old landlords and
feudals had run away years before from the guerilla chaos, and no secure new
order had been established" (86).
Willie does not know what happens around him. He allows himself to be led
by some agency. When he is being taken by Raja in his scooter to inspect the
police area, he comprehends truth for the first time. He understands that truth is
not one-sided, but is relative and fractured.
"I never should have allowed myself to believe that there was only one side in
this battle. I don't know how we make mistakes like that. But we do" (87). Willie
also feels fracture in his self. He moves from the state of luxuries to the bare
minimum necessities. He feels very proud of constricting his needs and of
learning to live simply. He is gearing up to join the revolution.
Sarojini persuades him to read Gandh's autobiography "a remarkable
book.Very simple, very fast, very honest." (17). Gandhi was determined to live
simple way of life to introspect into his mind and subdue it in order to win in the
political and social revolution in India. But Willie's determination to live simple
life is ironic, as he unknowingly joins the armed war against the government. "I
suppose it is a kind of training, a kind of asceticism, but for what I am not sure. I
must look upon it as another chamber of experience" (51).
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Willie's decision to join the revolutionary group sterns from the fact that he
tries to mingle with the crowd everywhere. The migrant constantly lives in the
dilemma that he longs to stick to some place or the other. "It's the one thing I
have worked at all my life, not being at home everywhere but looking at home"
(74). His decision to join the revolutionaries comes from the backdrop of his
lineage. His father was the upper cast man. His mother belonged to the lower
caste. Willie's oscillation between the castes permits him to understand the cause
of the revolutionaries who fight against the high castes, authority and of course
government. His parents' mixed castes put him in the state of uneasiness and
fractured identity. He is not comfortable with the caste problems in India. "I
thought I had left all of this behind. But now it's all here, just as it was, leaping
out at me. I have been around the world, but still its here" (110). Sense of
dangling between his infirmity and the news about his father's illness in Sarojini's
letter makes him join with Bhoj Narayan and dedicate himself to the cause of the
revolution. Sweta Kushal and Evangeline Manickam state, "The revolution stems
out of hatred for the upper classes. Willie realizes the problems of such a
perspective but also tries self assessment to see if his reasons are the same as the
others-if he is continuing in this commitment because of his hatred for his past and
his father. (Mishra 110).
Even while living with the revolutionaries, Willie continues to live in the
passive way. He does not like to act or his own. He is not goaded by any agency
to act. "He settled into his new life, as he had settled into many other lives that
claimed him at various times." (MS 153). Rather, he is led by the events or by
men. He does not have a voice of his own. His passive state arises out of
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diasporic groundlessness. Sweta Kushal says, "Through Willie's passivity,
Naipaul showcases the lack of agency and diminished sense of self-esteem in a
migrant individual" (112). Willie's non-belongingness keeps him away from the
political prisoners in the prison. He requests the prison authorities to be shifted
from the comfortable political cells to ordinary criminal cells. He remains
indifferent to the ongoing Marxist discussions among the political prisoners in the
cell.
Willie says:
I have never slept in a room of my own. Never at home in India,
when I was a boy. Never in Africa. I lived in some body else's
house always and slept in somebody else's bed. In the forest of
course there were no rooms and then the jail was the jail. Will I
ever sleep in a room of my own? And he marveled that he had
never had a thought like that before. (185)
After his experiences in India, either in the camp or in the jail, he begins to realize
that he has discovered his mind. It occurs to him that he does not need to fight for
others. "Now I don't have to join anybody. Now I can only celebrate what I am,
or what I have become" (114). Finally, he has reached the stage in which he is
able to render advice to his Sarojini on the course of his life. On the contrary,
Sarojini has started her journey of self-discovery, traveling all the way from
Germany to India to follow the footsteps of her father, offering advice to the
visitors and patients in her father's ashram. She acts on the grounds of
pretensions. She is not able to cope with her ideals. She returns to Berlin after
her failure in India.
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Willie comes to the stage of accepting his present state. After knowing and
sensing the aches and agonies of dislocation, he ceases to belong or pretend to
mingle. He has reconciled himself with his "new discovery and the consequent
alien identity that it creates-alien from all situations and places."(Mishra 114-115).
He revels instead of crying in this new identity. He determines to "to celebrate'
what he is and what he has become" (115).
Arunoday Mukherjee states the theme of Magic Seeds thus: "The twenty first
century's post-colonial turmoil and international terrorism come to the fore in the
novel. The novelist portrays here a vulnerable character influenced by
multicultural cross-currents with the graceful economy of style" (37).
Haifa Life brings out the discontented and unfulfilled life of Willie Chandran
and his sister, Sarojini. At the end of his half-life with his Portuguese wife, Ana,
he goes to seek advice from Sarojini, who half-lived due to her divorce from her
German husband. She has suggested to him that he had better join with the Indian
revolutionaries who desperately endeavour to free the suppressed people from the
cruel clutches of the government and society. Her advice directing him to go to
the Indian revolutionaries seems to be outdated. They have deviated from the
normal living owing to lack of purpose and frustration. In their half-lives they are
trying to find meaning out of revolution. Though they are fighting inland, they are
also-displaced. They undergo displaced experiences like Willie, trying to find
unified identity. But their war is futile without any firm purpose. They are
motivated by things as inane as sexual frustration, or as significant as childhood
beatings or lifelong suffering due to the machinations of the upper classes. Willie
196
feels disappointed with the revolutionaries, as they are psychopaths, who are hated
by their own people.
According to Willie, any single ideology for the ills of the world would be
meaningless. He realizes that such misconception would make one aimless, like
his futile wanderings in the areas of the revolutionaries. The final words of the
novel are as follows: "It is wrong to have an ideal view of the world. That's
where the mischief starts." In Naipaul's view, there are magic seeds to cure every
problem of life. At the outset of A Bend in the River, he proclaims the naturalness
of the world- world is what it is, with all its faults and problems. Naipaul never
identifies himself with any —ism.
In the first chapter of the novel, Willie and his sister happen to see a Tamil
rose-seller in a restaurant in Berlin. The Tamil does not look at them in the eye.
Willie is troubled by the look of the Tamil. It makes him think that the Tamil roseseller exhibits his servile attitude. Willie, who is still under the dream of colonial
fantasies, looks at the Tamil with the eyes of the colonizers. Sarojini, his sister,
has learnt the ways of the world. She is able to discriminate between the
oppressor and the oppressed. As she has already been properly trained in India in
her father's ashram, she knows the ethics and legacy of the colonizer. She has
been under the tutelage of the so-called nationalistic ideals of her father, who had
sacrificed his life by marrying a low-caste woman, following the clarion-call of
Mahatma Gandhi. She learns to look at the world objectively, after she comes to
live in Berlin with her German husband. Both she and her husband do produce
the documentary movies on the lives of revolutionaries. She professes Willie on
the meaning of human life. She has been influenced by the revolutionary
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movements all over the world. She has an empathy with those who endeavour to
fight for their existence.
Sarojini criticizes Willie for being colonial-minded. She never hesitates to
castigate him for having the imperial ways of seeing people. In Willie's eyes, the
Tamil people in Berlin may have looked shy. "Willie said," Perhaps he was
ashamed, being a Tamil and selling roses to these people and being seen by us"
(6). But Sarojini objects to his thinking. In her view, the Tamil rose-seller is an
idealist with a cause. She says:
He didn't look ashamed. He had the look of a man with a cause, the look
of a man apart. (...) This man's selling roses here, but those roses are
being turned to guns somewhere else far away. It's how revolutions are
made. I've been to some of their camps. (...) There is no more
disciplined guerilla army in the world. They are quite ferocious, quite
ugly. (6).
Transnationalism differs from the traditional notions of diaspora. Though it is
distinct from the original concept of diaspora, it does not completely deviate from
it. Cheran says, "All diasporas are transnational; but all transnationalism is not
diaspora" (n.p). In other words, diaspora carries the meaning of painful experience
as it involves forced migrations. However, transnationalism is not of force, but is
voluntary. Besides, it carries the notion of 'being here and there at the same time.'
Gustavo Cano states,
Immigrants can be here (in the United States) and there (Mexico or Central
•America) at the same time through their family, their remittances, their
religion or through political organization and mobilization, for example.
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The process of transnationalism becomes evident through a set of
consecutive actions that take place 'here and there' by an immigrant
group in a host society (n.p).
In the light of transnational phenomenon, Sarojini is troubled by the sufferings
of the oppressed across the globe. She is pained to notice the harrowing
experiences of Tamils through the rose-seller. In Berlin, the Tamil man is selling
roses. When she beckons him to give her roses, he does not look at her eyes. "He
was self-possessed, the rose-seller, full of the idea of his own worth" (MS 3). She
is able to gauge his pangs of misery. She corrects Willie's misconceived
statement and states, "Do you know why that man is worth more than you? He
has found his war" (5). In her view, the rose-seller is the transnational citizen,
who sells roses for the revolution in his country. Hence it becomes apparent that
Sarojini is instilling a sense of transnational identity in Willie. He, therefore,
determines to indulge in joining the guerilla movement in India, following his
sister's lecture on the history of India in the zoo. She explains to him that Indians
lack the sense of history. The Britishers had written history textbooks in the
nineteenth-century for the Indians. It was the work of imperialists and was written
to make money. They classified Indians into servile races and martial races. To
rule the Indians, the Britishers wanted to keep Indians under their control. To rule
the Indians, they used the martial Indian race. They succeeded in ruling India
without much difficulty. She speaks of Tamil diaspora to Malaya and Ceylon
thus:
As for the Tamils in the South, they became dirt in the new British
dispensation. They were dark and unwarlike, good only for labour. They
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were shipped off as serfs to the plantations in Malaya and Ceylon and
elsewhere. Those Tamils selling roses in Berlin in order to buy guns have
thrown off a great weight of history and propaganda. They have made
themselves a truly martial people, and they have done so against the
odds. You must respect them, Willie. (7)
Sarojini's speech is significant in two aspects. First, she de-romanticizes
Willie's notions of colonial mimicry. Secondly, she pushes him off for the
transnational cause, helping the oppressed. She teaches Willie about Indian
history. In the next meeting, she tells him about the revolutionary movement of
Kandapalli Seetaramiah. Through the anecdote of the rose-seller, she initiates him
into the revolutionaries of Kandapalli in Andhra Pradesh. She has been carried
away by the oratorical skill of Kandapalli. As she takes the documentary moves
of the revolutionaries, she could not help resisting herself from the fervour of his
speech and ideals. "He was short and dark. A primary school teacher, without
qualifications. A man from Warangal. Nobody in a town would have noticed
him. Warrangal is one of the hottest places in India, and when he started talking
about the poor his eyes with tears and he trembled" (15).
As she is overawed by the sentimentality of Kandapalli, she proceeds to
persuade him by quoting from Mahatma Gandhiji's life. "Every morning when
you get up you must think not only of yourself, but of others." (15-16). She
correlates Willie's unrealized life to the earlier years of Mahatma in London.
Mahatma had no idea of fighting against imperialism, when he was in London.
He had his own frailties and foibles, as he admits them in his Autobiography. In
200
the similar vein, Willie, after having spent futile eighteen years in Africa, remains
purposeless in life. She goads him to involve himself in revolution. In her view,
both Mahatma Gandhiji and Kandapalli are one and the same, in their struggle
against the dominant classes. Sarojini does not distinguish between non-violent
and violent struggles. Willie regrets that he has remained ignorant of Gandhiji's
life, when he was in Africa. Naipaul seeks to take the soft view of Gandhiji and
India. In his non-fiction, India: A Wounded Civilisation, he criticizes Gandhiji for
being sentimental and religious views. Naiapaul changes his views on the people
and the world, especially India. He is merciless in commenting on the behaviour
of Indians. He is pained to see the desolation of India. However, in Magic Seeds,
he is mellowed about India. Samnath says in his blog : "His views on India - not
always the most favourable - seem to have mellowed. (n.p).
Sarojini praises Gandhiji for helping the Tamil indentured labourer in South
Africa. Gandhiji's fame soared high, when he freed the innocent Tamil indentured
labourer from the shackles of indenture agreement of his master. She says,
"Beaten up by the planter to whom he had been indentured. The transplanted
serfs of the empires, with no rights at all. You could have done anything with
them. The ancestor of our rose sellers here in Berlin. They've travelled far in a
hundred years. They can fight their own war now." (20). She opines that
Gandhiji got ready to fight for the cause of the oppressed. She proceeds to
acclaim the greatness of Gandhiji thus: "...as the mahatma all he had to do in
1915 was to let himself be carried to the crest. It wasn't like that. He made things
happen. He created the wave. He was a mixture of thought and intuition.
Thought above all. He was a revolutionary." (21).
201
Being persuaded by Sarojini, Willie proceeds to undertake the journey to India
in order to join the guerilla movement, headed by Kandapalli. Sarojini's German
lover, Wolf has got a letter from Joseph, who happens to be a university lecturer.
Though he does not openly take part in the movement, he has got connections
with the guerilla movement. At the Frankfurt airport, he is studying the passengers
for India Willie has a kind of nervousness when he lands in India, which he has
left twenty years ago. As a diasporic man, he criticizes the Indian sensibilities.
With a mission in his mind, he looks at India with a sense of detachment, "this
India began to assault him, began to remind him of things he thought he had
forgotten and put aside, things which his idea of his mission had obliterated; and
the distance he felt from his fellow passengers diminished." (26).
After twenty years, Willie Chandran is on a mission to India, as it is ordained
by his sister. The thought of India and Indians passengers fills him with the sense
of uneasiness. At the Frankfurt airport, the sight of Indian passengers feeds him
with the ideas of "the terrible India of Indian family life- the soft physiques, the
way of eating, the ways of speech, the idea of the father, the idea of the mother,
the crinkled much used plastic shop bags (sometimes with a long irrelevant
printed name-this India began to assault him"(26). He is afraid of India and
Indian way of life. He has no desire to see India. Even while he is on the
airplane, he wishes to go back to Berlin in order to go to the oyster shop and
champagne bar. The day-to-day life in India would be like practicing yoga. "For
Willie, in those first days of return to India, the mechanics of day-to-day life had
become a kind of yoga like that, a series of hurdles; every simple thing had to be
re-thought; learned afresh" (28).
202
Willie thinks that his life in the guerilla movements in the Indian forests would
be made lighter, by reading books. However, he reverses his idea that books
would plunge him into the necessary and futile pictures of the world. In other
words, books would create fantasies in him that he would lose sight of the
practical life.
Naipaul presents the ironic view of Indian hotels. The so-called modern hotel,
which is advertised as 'modern, all modern', is stripped of its modernity. The
hotel is a small, two-storied building in the 'squalid bazaar area. Willie's room
was 'stale and stuffy' (32). The hotel menu is simply the copy of some foreign
hotel. Naipaul satirises the hotel menu with its phrases denoting the supply of
dishes 'from our baker's basket', 'from the fishermen's net' and 'from the
butcher's lock' (32).
Willie meets Joseph, the college lecturer, in his apartment. He is an invalid.
However, he could move for about a hundred yards away. In the conversation
between Willie and Joseph, we get a glimpse of the comparative study between
India and Africa. Willie confesses that he looked at Africa through the eyes of the
colonisers. However, he has sympathy for Africans. Joseph shared his opinions
on Africa. Willie thinks that he has come to India for a mission, as he is
persuaded by Sarojini. Though he does not share her terrific sensibilities, he
obeyed her. His objective in India is to work for the mission and is not to be
carried by the words of the revolutionaries, "but I only half believed the terrible
things she was telling me. This must be the way they do it. The cause is good. I
believe in it" (37).
203
After his meeting with Joseph, Willie has gone to stay in New Anand Bhavan.
He learns to adapt to Indian situations. He has already been convinced by Sarojini
and Joseph about the anecdotes from Indian history, Willie's mind has got
reconciled with the Indian life. He learns to adopt a life of patience. Despite the
inherent restlessness, he felt repose in his mind. In India, he is mellowed in his
sensibility. "He was already in his own mind a kind of ascetic, almost a seeker.
He had never known anything life it-Africa in the bad days had been the opposite
of this, had been suffering alone-and it made him lighthearted"(43).
Willie, who got himself into the luxurious life of London and Berlin, learns to
sleep in the dirt for the first time in his life. On the way to forest, they have halted
in the villages and ate rice flakes. In the midst of his journey, he realizes that his
mission would be of no use to him. He thinks that he was mismatched. "There
has been some mistake. I have fallen among the wrong people I have come to the
wrong revolution. I don't like these faces. And yet I have to be with them.. .1 am
completely in the hands of these people" (49). Willie feels the horror of the
guerilla movement. He feels desolate and lonely. "That night Willie cried, tears
of rage, tears of fear, and in the dawn the cry of the peacock, filled him with grief
for the whole world" (49).
Willie's guerilla group consists of forty or fifty people. There are ten to twenty
camps in the 'liberated areas' Willie criticizes them that they lack courage. He is
reminded of the poor objective and shallow ideologies of the movement. He
opines that he was unable to assess them, as he is away from India for a long time.
204
He is aware of the dangers of the movement. The members of the group are not
properly trained in firing guns.
The hollowness of the movement lies in the meaningless ideals. Willie was
asked by the leader to join Bhoj Narayan. They were to spend a hundred and fifty
rupees for two weeks. Willie comments on the economic measures of the
movement. Spending two hundred and fifty rupees for fourteen days is something
unimaginable. "That's ten rupees a day. In Berlin you wouldn't be able to buy a
cup of coffee with that" (59).
Bhoj Narayan tells Willie that he has joined the guerilla movement, as he has
the sensibility of being a descendant of peasants. His ancestors were driven out of
their land village by a great famine in the end of the nineteenth century. The
inherent anger of peasant consciousness created revolting spirit in him. He
determines to kill all the feudals. "I wanted all the feudals to be killed. I wanted
them all to be hanged and stay hanging until the flesh fell off their skeletons" (60).
He is so cruel with the feudal that he wanted to see fear in their eyes at the time of
their death. . Bhoj Narayan is a mismatched intellectual. He is desirous of
joining the guerillas. A man from the engineering department of the town meets
him at the students' hotel and asked him to bring some of his friends to the
movement. But his friends are frightened. Making jokes in the movement is not
desirable. He says, 'You have always to say literally what you mean. If you are
used to the other way of talking, it's not always easy" (62).
Willie gets a letter from his sister. She warns him about the guerillas. She
wrote that the movement is split. She alerts him that the people around him are
205
action men. "That means they have killed, and are ready to kill again. They can
be boastful and wild" (59).
When they are awaiting the orders from the movement for further action, Bhoj
Narayan has suggested that they could find employment in the sugar factory.
They woould get twelve rupees a day. They were to work in the factory from ten
to three o'clock in the early morning. Willie feels exhausted and had physical
aches. This nightly labour in the sugar factory is gruesome.
In Magic Seeds, Naipaul presents the horrible lives of the workers. He carries
a sort of empathy with them. When Willie goes to a hotel, he is carried away by
the poor living condition of the poor waiter. He is lean and had thick oily hair.
His dress is dirty. His bulging side pockets have dirt, showing his hard work and
service. Willie writes a letter to Sarojini. I have lost my freedom for no good
reason that I can see. I am thinking of running away (66-67). He writes that he is
afraid of escaping from them.
The guerilla movement has suffered a few setbacks due to the police action.
Willie has got new connections in new landscapes as he acted as a courier. He
constantly moves to the villages either on foot or scooters or buses or trains. He
was not on the police list. His new job as a courier gave him sense of delight.
The stranger in the guerilla movement tells them that he used to read books of
Marx, Trotsky, Mao and Lenin. Despite his involvement in the insurgent
activities, he feels that life is boring. Both Willie and Keso distrust the validity of
his statements. Keso says that the stranger might be mad. Willie realises the
futility of joining the guerilla movement and of being in the desolate forest.
206
"Probably without knowing it we've all become a little mad or unbalanced. Keso
would have like to be a doctor. Now he lives this life and tries to tell himself it is
real. It's always easy to see the other man's strangeness" (133-134). He comes to
know about the arrest of Kandapalli. He is intimately moved by the man's arrest,
because he had a passion for humanity. Even the hardcore guerilla man, Einstein
is very much moved by the news. He wants to teach a lesson to the rulers by
kidnapping the state minister from Aziznagar. But his plan has failed due to the
lapse in the execution. The failure of his action plan demonstrates his
vainglorious method. Willie secretly enjoys the failure of kidnapping the
minister. He fears that the worst might have fallen on the group, in case he was
kidnapped. They have changed their plan of action. The roads and bridges on the
border villages are to be blown and there should be no telephones, no newspapers,
no films, no electricity.
Willie is shocked to hear from the revolutionary mad man "of the philosophy
of murder as his revolutionary gift to the poor"(143). Being oriented to kill the
richest men of the village, Willie goes to the village and stops the labourer in the
dark night. He asks him to kill the rich man. But the labourer refuses to do the
killing. On seeing the killing sight, Willie thinks, "I am among absolute maniacs"
(145). He further ruminates, "I have become a maniac myself. I must get away
while I still have time to return to myself I know I have that time" (146). He
realizes that the so-called false ideals of the revolutionaries in the forest have
nothing to do with the lives of the oppressed people Einstein comments on the
passivity of Willie. He does not involve in any serious action. He has just been
the passive spectator of the events around him. "From now on, just remember this:
207
you have done nothing. Things happened around you. Other people did things.
But you did nothing. That is what you must remember for the rest of your life"
(148). After six months, the guerillas have decided to surrender before the police.
Willie has surrendered. At the time of arrest, he feels, "After my years in the
bush...I feel this as a blessing" (151). He thinks that he could easily come out of
the prison, after his arrest. He does not realize that he is indirectly involved in the
deaths.
Willie's matured vision of life has been derived in his prison life. In his
view, the world is wide and the so-called prisoners are not the sinners. Naipaul
entitles the chapter Not the Sinners symbolically. He comments on the way of life
of the prisoners, who had committed crimes to kill people. They are the prisoners
of their cells. He has learned to settle down in his new life in the prison. He says
that he is "settled into his new life, as he had settled into the many other lives that
had claimed him at various times" (153). He likens his new life in the jail is like
practising yoga. "A yoga consciously practised until the conditions of each new
difficult mode of life became familiar, became life itself' (154). His release has
been difficult, as he is involved in the killing of three police men by
Ramachandra, his squadron leader. He blames India for his wretched condition.
He has been falsely influenced by the revolutionary ideals of the guerilla
movement. His erstwhile thoughts of heroism have been proved to be spurious.
"But he had been undone by the India of his return. He could see no pattern, no
thread. He had returned with an idea of action, of truly placing himself in the
world. But he has become a floater, and the world had become more
phantasmagoric than it had ever been" (155-156).
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Willie has been sentenced to ten years imprisonment. He is reminded of
Gandhiji, when he happens to see the slogan on the front gate of prison: "HATE
SIN NOT THE SINNER. Meanwhile, his sister has written a letter to him,
expressing her regret for his present wretched condition. His experiences in the
prison are revealing. He feels that he comes across the political dialogues on the
texts of Mao and Lenin in the 'political wing' of the jail. He finds their incessant
talk unbearable. The jail superintendent tells him,"In a jail everybody is at war"
(165). He confesses his weak sensibility, so that he is not able to accept the nature
of events. "Perhaps if I were a stronger man I could do it all and not be affected.
But I am not strong in that way" (166).
Meanwhile, he gets a letter from his sister about the death of their father. She
writes that she is going to turn the ashram into a quiet place and meditation.
Willie writes a reply, "I am grateful to you for making me face myself and what I
come from. I consider that a gift of life. I am surrounded here by a kind of
distress I don't know how to deal with, but the ashram is not the way. Nor was
that foolish war which I went to fight" (167). He opines that the war that he had
fought was not his or his sister's war or the war of the oppressed. He understands
the intricate workings of the human soul within the frail human bodies. He
realises that the historical forces of the world always keep the ordinary people in
their grip.
Sarojini is a changed woman in India. She is in her white sari, when she comes
to meet her brother in the jail. She has brought some books for him. He has tried
to write stories, but he could not do it. Jail life has given him more repose and
209
complacence. His experience has been satisfactory and his intellectual pleasure
has been elevated by his patient stay in the jail. His publication of short stories
has helped him to be freed by a special amnesty, due to the efforts of his white
friend, Roger. Willie moves to London, his former place in his college days. He
feels that he is relieved of all burdens of the past. He thinks of India thus, "I have
been there. I have given part of my life and I have nothing to show for it. I
cannot go there again. I must let that part of me die. I must lose that vanity. I
must understand that big countries grow or shrink according to the play of internal
forces that are beyond the control of any one man. I must try now to be only
myself' (176-177). He criticises the so-called internationalism. Roger feels that
there are no surprises in his life. On the contrary, Willie says "My life has been a
series of surprises. Unlike you, I had no control over things. I thought I
had....But what looked like decisions were not decisions really. For me it was a
form of drift, because I didn't see what else there was for me to do' (179).
Roger confesses that his life has been failure, because his sexual energy is low
and his wife, Perdita, has an affair his own friend who had a grand London house.
The private lives of London living people are meaningless. They cheat
themselves. Perdita has been gullible enough to be fooled by her lover, who has
sent her a poem of W.E.Henley, a Victorian poet and a friend of Kipling. Roger's
impotent nature has been utilised by his victimisers. His life has had no surprises
and allows himself being led by the historical forces. Willie ruminates over his
past life: "I have never slept in a room of my own. Never at home in India, when
I was a boy. Never here in London. Never in Africa. I lived in somebody else's
house always, and slept in somebody else's bed. In the forest of course there were
210
no rooms, and then the jail was the jail. Will I ever sleep in a room of my own?"
(185). Willie's self-examination reminds us of Mr.Biswas' s dream of living in a
house of his own.. It is significant that Mr.Biswas was ambitious to live in a large
house, accommodating his own family. On the contrary, Willie has the ideal of
confining himself in a single room. Though the world in the modern days has
widened, the people's minds have become more fragile. They live in the constant
fear of the impending danger.
-
Willie re-enters the past, as he reads his book, published twenty five years ago.
His old self has awakened itself in the presence of Perdita. "There came to Willie
an idea of the man he had become, an idea of what Africa and then the guerilla life
of the forest and then the prison and then simple age had made of him. He felt
immensely strong; he had never felt like this before" (188). The sudden surge of
thoughts has made him erotic and he turns towards Perdita. His illicit sexual
relationship with his friend's wife does not make him guilty. Roger too does not
mind it, because he has his own affair with some woman. He looks at the
crowded streets of London and comments on it, "There has been a great churning
in the world. This is not the London I lived in thirty years ago...The world is now
being shaken by forces much bigger than I could have imagined.. .Now I can only
celebrate what I am, or what I have become" (196). However, his new sensation
of London life has bored him and feels monotonous. His new way of life does not
give him any more surprises. He expresses his desire to Roger that he likes to
move on. His stay in Roger's house does not give him any sense of agility.
211
When Roger asks him what job that he likes to do, Willie retorts: "I've Dever
done a job. My father never did a job. My sister has never done a proper job. We
spent all our time thinking about the bad hand that had been dealt to us and not
really preparing ourselves for anything. I suppose that's part of our situation"
(199). He confesses that he has along lived a life of passivity. Further he states
that he has not tried to acquire any skill or profession in Africa. Willie blames his
father for his present wretched condition, for his unemployment and for his life of
indolence. Roger too says that work is drudgery and hence the Greek
philosophers had slaves to work for them. Willie thought, "There is work and
work. Work as a vocation, one man's quest or self-fulfilment, can be noble. But
what I am seeing is awful" (200).
Roger admits his own weakness of temperament. He tells Willie one day about
his banker. Both Roger and Willie go to meet him by a train. Roger told him, "I
am a coward. But I know myself Nothing I do can really be a surprise to me"
(202). To impress his wife, Perdita, that he has become involved with the banker,
Roger has cheated himself. "I wished to show her that I knew a man with a house
ten times bigger than her lover's big house" (202). The bathroom of the banker
has been covered by the pages from an old illustrated magazine, The Graphic.
The pages were from the period of 1860s and the 1870s. Roger tells him that his
bathroom too has been decorated with that paper of the old magazine. The banker
claims the proximity with the maharaja of Maldchnagar. Peter bores them with his
monotonous conversation about his meeting with the maharaja. The more he has
talked, the more he has made them exhausted.
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At the same time, Willie could see through the vanity of his futile talk. "It's all
vanity. I can only be easy with people who have some idea of what I am. Or
probably it's just the house. It makes too many demands on people. I am sure it
alters them. It has certainly altered the banker. It altered me. It prevented me
from seeing things clearly when I arrived" (210). He thinks that the Indian life has
taught Willie to change his mind. He contrasts it with the vanity of London life.
His life in the forest and in the jail has changed him. He cannot once again go
through the same kind of experience without changing himself.
Peter, the banker, presents Roger a tall blue semi-transparent porcelain vase to
be gifted to Perdita. Roger is unable to resist his offer, because of his business
contacts. Peter is a kind of egoistic man, who insults his business associates in vile
language. Roger is dependent on him and so he has to bear with the insults. Peter
is trying to tease Willie, who remains unresponsive.
Willie has got a job in the editor's office. His work in the magazine has been
very smooth. The office is owned by Peter, the business magnet. Willie has been
sent to Barnet to take up the company's architecture courses. Peter's wife has
been unfaithful, like Perdita to Roger. She comes in a big car and drops a letter in
the letter box. She makes it known to everyone that she is betraying her husband,
Peter. Her lover is a small-scale property dealer, who is not educated. Perdita's
involvement with Peter is due to the fact that he is the richest man in London. She
deceives her own husband, though she had married him out of his showy lifestyle.
"I was attracted by this great show. I was young. I knew little of the world. He
was a phantom. The best side of him is in his business, his law" (221). At
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London, his old memories twenty five years ago have kindled sense of nostalgia in
him. He is very much moved by the adulterous lives of the Londoners. Willie is
one among them. Peters' affair with Perdita, Peter's wife has an affair with a
small-scale property dealer, Roger's affair with Marian have been the signs of
moral deterioration of London. He reflects on his helpless state, "I can't do
anything with it now. A man of fifty cannot remake his life" (230). Further he
states, "When I was in the prime of my life, I hardly knew where I was. And that
time in the forest was as dark and confusing as it was at the time. I was so
condemning of other people on the course. How vain and foolish. I am no
different from them" (230-231). His self-criticism helps him to grow internally.
Willie has got the chance to be with the immigrant-recruits from various
countries. They have been undertaking training with Willie in the architecture
magazine office. The former colonised people had been denied the knowledge in
the imperial centres. But they now occupy the metropolitan centres. "They had
been sent by their countries or companies to get at knowledge that was simply
there, seemingly divinely provided, knowledge that had for a long time been
unfairly denied them for racial or political reasons, but was now ...theirs to claim
as their own" (235).
Sarojini writes a letter to Willie that she has closed down the ashram, as she
has been pestered by the people with requests for prayers or for charms. Willie
anticipates it much earlier and advises her not to be sentimental about anything.
He writes; "Dear Sarojini. You must be careful not to swing from one extreme to
the other. There is no one thing that is an answer to the ills of the world and ills of
214
men. It has always been your failing.." (237). She goes to Berlin and joins her
German husband.
Marcus, the black man, has succeeded in his ambition of having white
grandchildren. Marcus's half-English son has produced two grandchildren, one is
pure white and the other is not so white. Roger narrates the story of his
involvement with the other woman. His father had been a kind of failure, like
Willie's father and Mr.Biswas. Roger wanted to have someone to look after his
aged father. A woman, named Jo, came to look after his father and continued to
work for more than eight years. She had taken advantage of her long standing
position and she treated his house as her home. Her friend, Marian had attracted
his attention. Both of these two women were very brilliant in their works. Roger
was allured by the seductive physique of Marian, who was an expert swimmer.
But she had committed the mistake of marrying some unfit man and had children.
Her life has become wretched. Jo helps Roger to have sexual relations with
Marian. He presents her a beautiful piece of jewellery, which costs a few hundred
pounds.
Like Willie, Roger confesses that he has low sexual energy. He quotes the
names of English writers such as Ruskin and Henry James. The pornographic
magazines have made him shameful. He shrinks with the thought of impotence.
It is due to this fact that his wife Peridta has betrayed him. His weekend stay with
Marian in the country has given him refreshment, which lasts for the whole week.
Roger has bought a council estate house for Marian. Roger refers to the strange
case of the Victorian writer, Munby, who had a special love for the servant
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women with dirt in their bodies. Marian's childhood life had been painful. Her
story was the story of beatings, sexual abuse and repeated hopeless running away.
After years of suffering and living with Roger, Marian has gone to live with
someone. Roger says, "I never wanted to die full of hate and rage, like my father.
I wanted to go like Van Gogh, as I have told you. Smoking my pipe, or doing the
equivalent of that. Contemplating my art, or my life, since I have no art, and
feeling hatred for no one" (282).
Roger's story has moved Willie. He wants to write a letter to his sister. "I
have no business to rebuke her ...for going off to the guerillas. The decision in
the end was mine. I was responsible for all my actions" (283). Towards the end of
the story, Naipaul depicts the marriage of Marcus's half-English son, Lydhurst
with the white lady, the mother of white child. Willie seems to suggest that those
with sentimentality about the nation, race and culture do suffer and have no place
in the world. So he utters his casual remark: "It is wrong to have an ideal view of
the world. That's where the mischief starts. That's where everything starts
unravelling. But I can't write to Sarojini about that" (294).