This collection of three novellas by, arguably, the greatest living Indian writer was a revelation for me. I have never read Desai’s works before and was blown away by the gorgeous tapestry of colors, smells, textures and sights she evoke with her writing. In this collection, she draws on the same themes of art and culture clash to draw out different but overlapping messages about change and stagnation, without necessarily championing one over the other.
In the novella of the title, we are introduced to Ravi, a man who lives in the burnt-out ruins of his former home in the Himalayas, who shies away from human contact in favor of the glories and intrigues of nature. We learn that Ravi was the adopted son of a wealthy self-indulgent Indian couple with no interest in their child and heir. His attempts as an adult to disappear into his child-like contemplation of the natural world are briefly interrupted when a bored film crew from the city assigned to document man’s ravages of the region’s environment, erupts into his world upon discovering his fantastical stone garden of many years’ work. They want to interview “the artist” for their documentary, and we wince along with Ravi at this gross violation of his carefully-cultivated invisibility, even as we applaud the idea of giving his adoration of nature a broader audience. The ending is thought-provoking and a challenge to our modern sensibilities.
In the second novella, Translator Translated, we meet Prema Joshi, a withdrawn middle-aged English teacher who has fallen into a routine of teaching boring British novels to her bored and resentful students. When she encounters a former classmate who has become a respected publisher, Prema is handed the prospect of translating an unknown writer in her mother’s native tongue into English. Prema discovers a talent, a passion, a future she didn’t know she had, and knocks out the translation in record time, imbuing it with a richness of language that she felt was missing in the original. She meets the author, a shy unprepossessing woman from rural India who she convinces to embark on a novel which Prema the translator eagerly awaits, unsuspecting of the consequences to her own life. Desai gives us glimpses of ourselves in Prema’s character, all the unrealized passions, the mistakes, the regrets we experience in the course of our lives. Desai also inserts into her story some glimpses of the brawl prompted by Indian nationalists in the academic world over whether “colonial” English or the myriad languages of rural India should prevail in the nation’s literature.
The third novella entitled The Museum of Final Journeys, takes place during India’s colonial period and has a deliberately uncomfortable feel to it. The main character is a “very junior” British official stationed for his first year in a depressingly sterile and impoverished rural town where litigation seems to be the only activity and his job is to oversee that activity. As he yearns for a British club, library, and cocktails, he becomes increasingly imperious to the natives and servants around him. As Desai puts it, life proceeds “in a state of almost gelid slow motion.” The arrival of the old caretaker of a former palatial estate now falling into ruin provides a possible outlet for the boredom, and the official agrees to review the art museum the ruins now hold from bygone days and cultures. There is almost an hallucinatory quality to the tour that the author captures for us, as doors open seemingly ad infinitum revealing dusty and decaying treasures from the past and at least one unexpected surprise. Desai’s controversial ending to this disturbing story will linger in your mind for a long time.
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