The personal and the political
Sudeep sen reflects on an affluence of Ideas in a new work
23 November 2007, 18:00 PM
The Solitude of Emperors
David Davidar
Orion, Penguin India
The demolition of the Babri Masjid on December 6, 1992 in Ayodhya, the 1984 Sikh massacre, the riots in Bombay, the carnage in Gujarat, and even earlier, the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi are the essential tipping off points for David Davidar's new novel. With wry humour, the author notes that even "333 million gods" could not save India.
Davidar's second novel, The Solitude of Emperors, is a sweeping, layered novel about the way politics intervenes surreptitiously in daily living, about how it can affect one's life and its trajectory without a person necessarily willing it to be so. It explores the tension between the private and the public, between idealism and fundamentalism, between inclusiveness and divisiveness in society.
Poetry is a crucial element in the novel. Dom Moraes is an important meta-shadow in the book in more ways than one. Then there is Auden, Pessoa, Cavafy even wonderfully riotous descriptions of the senior Bombay poets like Adil Jussawalla, Arun Kolatkar, Nissim Ezekiel and Imtiaz Dharker. In fact, Dom Moraes' poem 'Sindbad' acts as an important anchor, though it is curious as to why he chose to quote only the last two stanzas of that short poem, especially since the first three stanzas hold the important key to the context of the poem itself.
Structurally, the novel employs a neat architectural device. Rustom Sorabjee's manuscript, The Solitude of Emperors: Why Ashoka, Akbar and Gandhi Matter to Us Today, has been inserted in the main narrative in large chunks, using the old-fashioned typewriter courier face, lending a sense of nostalgia and indirect didacticism. The author first presents his own thesis through Sorabjee's text in 'The Need for Emperors' then presents the Hindu/Buddhist persona in 'Samraat Ashoka: Emperor of Renunciation' then the Islamic/Muslim character of 'Shahenshah Akbar: Emperor of Faith' followed by 'Mahatma Gandhi: Emperor of Truth' and finally framed at the end by 'The Solitude of Emperors'. This is clearly a very conscious device of telling the reader about history and its associated philosophies.
"This is a novel about the misuse and misinterpretation of religion so I have taken extra care not to offend any religious community or faith", writes Davidar in the 'acknowledments' at the end. This may suggest a sort of twee sense of political correctness, despite the major characters in the book like Vijay and Noah who are portrayed as rebels-at-heart with their delightfully refreshing sense of frankness.
Vijay, a secular idealist, is cleverly imbued with a name that means 'victory', victory against evil of all kinds. He appears as an autobiographical figure that mirrors both the authorial voice and the main character's own persona. Escaping the claustrophobia of the small town worlds of his parents to immerse himself in the vibrancy of Bombay of the early 90s, Vijay hurtles into a world of high drama and quiet introspection.
Davidar used to work for Himmat (meaning 'courage' that links subtly to "Vijay", 'victory'), which serves as the inspiration behind The Indian Secularist. There are scenes of "the nights of writing poetry and drinking and fucking the beautiful young women we all shared, the models and wannabe actresses pulled into that vortex of passion, song and metred verse …"; drinking in Dom Moraes' old flat Sergeant House in Colaba and rolling onto Harbour Bar in Taj (Hotel) with a rather touching mention of the waiter growing "kinder" by the night.
Ultimately Davidar's novel rejoices at the way autobiography feeds the imagination; imagination provoking thought; and thought, reflection, passion and religion inciting political and religious fervour and ferment. The Solitude of Emperors is a highly contemporary novel about modern India and about the younger post-independent confident Indians making sense of the vast and fast changes the land is currently undergoing, a land that embraces the medieval and modern at the same time, a country that is pluralistic and essential at any given moment.
David Davidar's The Solitude of Emperors a worthy inheritor of his 2002 debut novel, The House of Blue Mangoes is daring, politically engaging, and passionate; and it straddles the wonderfully plasmaic, elastically interesting space between fiction and creative non-fiction.
SUDEEP SEN is the author of Postmarked India: New & Selected Poems (HarperCollins) and editor of Atlas.
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