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Literary Review
The tiger's moustache is still wet
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The travel writer, competing with other media, often resorts to entertaining us with fiction under the mask of fact. A look at the prevailing scene by MANOJ DAS.
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"Snake Charmer": Pen and pencil drawing by Rev. W. Urwick.
"THIS is indeed India! The land of dreams and romance, of fabulous wealth and fabulous poverty, of splendour and rags, of palaces and hovels, of genii and giants ... of tigers and elephants, the cobra and the jungle, the country of a hundred nations and hundred tongues, a thousand religions and two million gods, cradle of the human race, birthplace of human speech, mother of history, grandmother of legend, great-grandmother of tradition ... the one land that all men desire to see and having seen once, by even a glimpse, would not give that glimpse for shows of all the rest of the globe combined,' wrote Mark Twain in his More Tramps Abroad (1897).
Indians themselves had been indefatigable travellers — once upon a time. Forget about legends, but Aristoxenus leaves the record of an Indian traveller confronting Socrates in the latter's academy in Athens. "What's the scope of your philosophy?" he demanded. "An enquiry into the phenomenon that is man," replied the great Greek savant.
The audacious traveller laughed. To an intrigued Socrates, this is how he explained his laughter: "How can you know man without knowing the source, God?"
The early travellers to India were men of goodwill. Wrote Hiuen Tsiang of the common people of India in the A.D. Seventh Century, "Although they are naturally light-minded, yet they are upright and honourable. In money matters they are without craft, and in administering justice they are considerate. They are not deceitful or treacherous in their conduct and are faithful to their oaths and promises. In their rules of government there is remarkable rectitude, whilst in their behaviour there is much gentleness and sweetness."
But the first age of seekers travelling to India (it was to revive centuries later) ended. For Indians travel abroad became a taboo by the time Westerners occupied the country. It was the prerogative of the foreigner to tell about the mysterious subcontinent to the world. If some waxed exuberant, some others were cynical, like the proverbial seven blind men feeling an elephant and their description of the creature ranging from a wall to a pillar. Thus, for Jemima Kindersley, an area of India was "as awkward a place as can be conceived" (Letters from Teneriffe, 1777) while for Wilfred Blunt Madurai was "Babylon in all its glory" (Ideas about India, 1885); for George Curzon the "rose-red city" of Jaipur was only a "pretentious plaster fraud" (Persia and the Persian Question, 1892) while for Lillian Leland Darjeeling was "an exceedingly pretty place, unlike anything I have seen before" (Travelling Alone: A Woman's Journey, 1890).
Most of the 18th and 19th Century travel accounts of India were unflattering because only few of the writers came looking for the spirit of India or were curious about its history or heritage. Some wrote to avenge their discomfort in a country into which circumstances had flung them and some to while away their time. The likes of Mark Twain were rare and we never received creative travel writers like Alexander Kinglake (author of Eothen) or R.L. Stevenson who said, "For my part I travel not go to anywhere but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move." (Travels with a Donkey, 1879).
Today it is a paradox that while there are excellent TV channels to offer you as you loll in your easy chair the flavour of the remote regions of the earth, of cities and sites ancient and new, commercial tourism induces you to go places. Of course, "the traveller", as Daniel Boorstin puts it, "was active; he went strenuously in search of people, of adventure, of experience. The tourist is passive; he expects interesting things to happen to him. He goes `sight-seeing'!" (The Image).
The other paradox is, while millions travel today and see places themselves, like any other branch of literature, travel writing too has proliferated. The writer of this genre, who is motivated far more by the market than by his regard for truth, uses his ingenuity to amuse us: in other words to entertain through fiction with a mask of fact. He has, after all, to compete with the TV, tourism and travel guides.
The author of this article woke up to this sad and annoying reality when a friend drew his attention to a book by one Geoffrey Moorhouse entitled Om: An Indian Pilgrimage. Serious phrases like Om or Pilgrimage have been open to exploitation since decades, but it becomes a pity when some writers abuse truth and scatter misinformation, breathing out a lot of hot air.
Moorhouse visits Pondicherry and seems to have gate-crashed into an evening talk by me bearing the title "The Hour of the Unexpected", on the campus of Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education. His experience: "By the time he began in the floodlit garden of the school, addressing us from a table and chair set up beneath a tree, scores of people sat around him in the lotus position, on tarpaulins that had been considerately spread beforehand (sic) so that we should not get our bottoms damp. Yet more had entered so that when the microphone was switched on and the professor's mellifluous voice began to caress the night, it was standing room only on every side. For forty minutes I followed him attentively, but with a growing sense of desperation: for by then he had scarcely finished reviewing the Bandung Conference of 1955 ... Everyone but me appeared to be riveted by these disclosures; at least I noticed no one else fidgeting."
My audience included a large number of Westerners. If no one else fidgeted, it was because they heard much more than Bandung Conference. In a talk lasting 45 minutes, the Bandung Conference (not of 1955 but of 1956 which I attended) claimed only about four minutes.
Amazed — in fact it disarmed me of my impression of well-hyped works — I asked the author, through his publisher, to explain such a grotesque exaggeration. And this is the explanation I received: "I do have something of a reputation for integrity, not only in my country but also in yours."
Well, his "reputation" must be 40 minutes long to account for the gap.
There was nothing surprising in the cynical carelessness with which he doles out erroneous information that a Neem tree shadows the samadhi of Sri Aurobindo and that a lady sits nearby selling flowers, but the wisdom he must exhibit is staggering indeed. Why must Sri Aurobindo have a samadhi? Did he "secretly hanker all his life for masses of people to humble himself before him in this way?"
I am afraid these travellers decide the way they are going to construct their account before embarking on their journey. Statements that shock also sell. For example, Calcutta, for Moorhouse "is a definition of obscenity".
I could quote from a number of travel writers of this genre to show how the Indian English — parody or real — is a banquet for them. Here is a specimen: "Yesterday Sikh temple going with family. First going god, Puja doing. Afterwards whisky and German beer drinking ... " (City of Djinns: William Dalrymple).
And a joke I had heard half a century ago, an illiterate mistaking a Ph.D. for a medical doctor, reincarnates in Christina Noble's At Home in the Himalayas when a rustic requests a University teacher to do a "sperm counting".
Well, India continues to be irresistible for writers and readers often for reasons they are not conscious of. But since the country is more exposed than ever before for anybody to experience, the writer has to often invent the funny and the exotic.
Here is a story that goes back to the days of the East India Company. Two petty English officials back in their country were narrating their adventures to a charmed audience: "I was bathing in the Ganges off Calcutta when a huge Royal Bengal tiger appeared on the bank, eyeing me greedily. I gave out such a holler while splashing water onto its face that it bolted away in panic."
Quietly observed his colleague, in no mood to be outdone, "True, true. As the beast stopped, petrified at my sight, I patted it on its moustache and found it quite wet."
Many a travel writer on India still expects his reader to believe that his tiger's moustache is still wet.
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