Feb 1, 1999
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Grow Up Smarty Pants A writer who's clever--and sometimes too clever by half. By P Lal A SHORT HISTORY OF EVERYTHING There are wondrous books of fiction based on memories of childhood and teenage growing pains and pleasures. Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, of course; but also Thomas Wolfe's Look Homeward, Angel; the little-known Starbuck; The Lord of the Flies; Bibhuti Bhushan Banerjee's Apu; Kewlian Sio's nameless protagonist in his story "Let's Go Home".
This Ram is a pompous know-all. The brash, breezy, bawdy, Bhatia bright boy, who not only knows the short history of everything -- "everything!" -- but is a special sab jaanta-wala with quick-fix solutions for everything. Three marvels about this talent have bowled me over. One: the curious range of Bhatia's literary preferences. In an interview to The Asian Age he said his favourite authors were Graham Greene, Tobias Wolff and Jostein Gaarder; his favourite character, Henry in Nigel Williams' books; his favourite children's book, "all of Roald Dahl"; favourite school/college text: To Kill a Mocking Bird; most erotic book, The Diaries of Anais Nin; funniest book, The Catcher in the Rye; most overrated, Lord of the Flies; most underrated: Aunt Julia and the Script Writer by Mario Vargas Llosa; book character he would like to be romantically involved with, Emma Bovary; book he wanted never to end, The Lost Continent by Bill Bryson; book that changed his life, Daniel Martin by John Fowles; book he tried reading but couldn't get through, James Joyce's Ulysses. In the acknowledgments, he lists Theodore Zeldin's An Intimate History of Humanity, Diane Ackerman's A Natural History of the Senses, Woody Allen's Without Feathers and adds a model for his book was Russell Baker's Growing Up. Gentle reader of Indo-Anglian fiction, please have the goodness to note the exclusively western influences, ironic, oh-so-smart and offbeat. The only Indian author mentioned is Nirad C. Chaudhuri. No, not The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian, which is a classic of its kind, but The Continent of Circe, which is an over-long, over-argued running down of India, the country that turns pearls to swine. Here is a pucca Punjabi writing on India -- and reading only non-Indian ustads! Wah! Two: Bhatia's libido. You could title this novel A Short History of Schoolboy Sex. Page after page of silly, sniggering jokes that even 16-year-olds won't find amusing. "I suppose if you look really hard you can find sex in anything." Bhatia has a hard-on all the time so far as his protagonist Ram's interests are concerned. Read pages 35-50 for a crash course on How to Make Unfunny Sex Jokes. Bhatiaji, spare us what we already know. Satyajit Ray was asked why he focused on just a hair-pin on a pillow on the wedding bed in Apur Sansar and missed a sex romp; his reply: "Film's expensive. We know what goes on. I can't afford to waste footage." Three: insolent cockiness masquerading as freedom of speech. Consider the following gems: "the bloody Pope at St Peter's", "Hinduism couldn't care less whether you prayed to an empty cupboard, or a lump of clay, or Marilyn Monroe". About Indira Gandhi: "She was really pretty sly, that chick." Now what kind of Angrezi is this? Jolly good show, what? The plot? Oh yes,the plot. It's about a Punjabi boy growing up. The pimply years. The end is tragic. This is Gautam Bhatia's first novel. He is a Delhi-based architect. Fiction is stranger than truth. Advice: finish Joyce's Ulysses. |
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And now Gautam Bhatia's home-grown remembrance of schooldays past.
The boy's name is Ram and he is growing up in Punjabi India, circa 1950-70. He has a
sister, Sita, for whom he cherishes an affection that is clearly incestuous. Of course, it
isn't only Ram who's growing up -- it's India too, the just-independent toddler. So
there's a plethora of clever summings-up of the post-Partition years, with snide swipes at
the Mahatma, Nehru, Patel, Mrs G, Sanjay Gandhi, Hindus, Muslims, Bengalis. 
