Friday, 21 March 2008

Naipaul, not done with the pen yet

When one hears of Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul, popularly referred to as V. S. Naipaul, the thoughts of a man masked in controversy, criticism and racial chauvinism come to mind. He is as much controversial, sadly humorous, sharply satirical and conservative in his writings and discourses now as he was about five decades ago.


Having written a lot (and as per many critics, distastefully) about Africa and the third world, he still could not resist the temptation to make another pilgrimage to Africa (Uganda) and particularly visit the famed River Nile in Jinja. This, he did a day before honouring a visit to Makerere University, where he undertook a writing fellowship in 1966. Then, he rejected many honours, which kept boomeranging in different forms. Was it perhaps due to the gratification he beheld in the earlier scholarship he was awarded to study at Oxford university?

Nevertheless, in 1965, when the Farfield Foundation asked him to take up a fellowship, he obliged and went to Makerere University in Uganda. His reason for taking up the fellowship was too little out of the ordinary, not for the value he should have attached to it: he was having trouble writing a book. The fellowship gave him an opportunity to take a break from the depression he was having, have a look at Uganda and to write his book.

Later, he toured East Africa, the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Ivory Coast. He credits himself to have written a lot about these areas and the third world; writings he terms as the history of the vanquished.

During his early pilgrimage to Africa, he thought of writing a last book about the continent. But, as a writer, he felt the need to keep on writing.

"A writer does not have to write one book," he remarks.

But there’s always the mortal fear to which he attached his wish to write; "Where the next book (material) is coming from."


However, what he considers as bad and should be discouraged is lending oneself to the copy-cat syndrome. "If I could do that one too," a wish that most writers fantasise about inhibits creativity. The urge to wish to write as one’s favourite author is normal but should be avoided.

His sort of writing has drawn unprecedented criticism from different quarters of the globe. He doesn’t mind criticism, especially from such critics who dismiss him as unsympathetic and racist in his writing and utterances, the famed one of which he admitte
d not envisioning a monkey (sic) reading his books.

Like the proverbial ostrich that buried its head in the sand, he is indifferent to censure for one reason: he doesn’t write about the affairs of the heart but about the world. He finds it hard to deal with social writing, especially in line with manners, emotions, love. To him, "they don’t exist". Nonetheless, he insinuates that one doesn’t write about experiences alone, but also about situations and intuitions. He now considers writing a lot more.

His style of writing is considered unique and singular. The driving force for such unique style was neither a strategy nor a plan. It was instinctive and inherent. When he left university in 1954, he was desperate to get started. Humour was almost his character. He’d been worried but made jokes very easily. He could make jokes without worrying.

Later, as he continued writing, the humour required a lot of space. The offspring was Miguel Street, 1959. With its remarkable and unique characters, it presents the story of great ambitions that remain unfulfilled. It is penned in the first person narration.

In An Area of Darkness, a book that has similarly drawn considerable critique, he presents a stark condemnation of India, his land of lineage. He analyses it with considerable distaste and later with 'grudging affection'.

Despite the varied criticism, he fully accepts his books specifically because of the difficulties he faced in writing them, especially An Area of Darkness. The British have specifically lauded him for contributing to British literature, despite the cosmopolitan identity of his writings. This, he finds fulfilling and inspiring.

He is great he who has won the Nobel prize for Literature, but not V. S. Naipaul. He does not see himself as a hero. "If I do, I’d be extraordinarily foolish." In essence, the most important thing he would like to be remembered about is the wish to be known as a compassionate writer who wrote about the History of the oppressed.

Joshua Masinde

Saturday, 15 March 2008

The sledge hammer

End of the road?


Ever felt the vile emotional fix when your 'masterpiece' manuscript has been rejected? The pain that comes of it is often inexplicable. Muddled in emotional fury, incomprehensible to even the most serene feelings, you feel like the world has drowned on you and society has rejected you.

Rejection of a manuscript does not mean the work is condemned as worthless or a sham had it been let to go off the press. No. The emotional attachment is just too strong to make you think so.

Ever wished to confide your most pressing feelings to som
eone and (s)he refused to listen! That is how you feel when you receive that notification, 'We regret we are unable to consider publishing your manuscript... and some other bitter words thrown in here and there. More often, the manuscript is rejected without formal rejection slips or suggestion on how you could improve your work.

What a damn backward step!

Different publishers espouse specific genres which they would be more willing to assess and luckily for the up-coming author, consider it for publication, subject to the given corrections, which you will have to live up to.

Once the manuscript has been rejected, the author, just like the proverbial hunchback animal struggling to ascend a sharp hill, feels they have been consigned to the bondage of rejection. The bitter-sweet words that follow the rejection lines, 'good luck,' 'wish you the best in your publishing endeavours,' 'try other publishers' seem like an addition of a lethal insult to a wound. It's one of the never-ending miseries that cripple the poor chap, trying to struggle out of obscurity by having their masterpiece(s) published. Woe unto them, even celebrated witers like Chinua Achebe and V. S Naipaul and some of their ilk, had to wait a little longer, before their books could be published.

Joshua Masinde

Sunday, 9 March 2008

Never as usual

'It won't be business as usual...' In the face of political turmoil and civil instability, business is never as usual. Life's normalcy, often comes to a stanstill. Fear grips everyone from every point. Disorder is always the foot soldiers, training its hostility and defiance on poor chaps, caught on the run. The intensity of terror escalates like in no other period when peace reigned supreme.
Business is never as usual. Life is never the same. A whole new world of turmoil sets in like a blazing fire rolling into a bale of cotton.
Patriotic citizens face the ill fortune of being refugees in their own land. It is a sad history, which the vanquished never live to relive, in a better way.

And like William Butler Yeats put in his nostalgic poem
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the
world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of
innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are
full of passionate intensity.
There could least be other ways to describe this.
And in this, there could be a celebration of the history of the vanquished.

Joshua Masinde

Thursday, 6 March 2008

Recollections of a turbulent mind (part II)

It came a time when a friend thought it wise to resign from social reality. He concluded he'd be better off without the company of the numerous sadists who surrounded him. Any time they met to discuss issues, everyone of them expressed their prejudices aggressively, expecting to be given an ear. But, none was listening. Reason? They'd let their differences guide their way of reasoning.
Now that everyone was opposed to his stereotypes, which everyone else was churning out, he felt disillusioned. A sledgehammer of silence fell upon the poor chap. Silence was a weapon to keep his cool and his temper.
But, an individual belongs to society. That individual, who consigns themselves to an existential state, would be better off inexistent. But that we are human beings, so are we prejudiced. Settling the scores on a rational basis, unguided by uncontrolled emotions and sharp stereotypes, is cheaper than enacting a tragic scene.
The wise bury the hatchet. They dread to bear the straw that broke the camel's back.

Saturday, 1 March 2008

Recollections of a turbulent mind (part I)

I looked toward the East and, hell! There was no sunrise. The beautiful country was up in flames. Things had fallen apart. The centre was flames. Everybody felt the horrible pinch of the dirty game....

In a globalised world, human tragedy does not exist in isolation. No country, state or nation can claim to be in sole control of violence, bloodletting or genocide. As a member of the global community, intervention measures, many a time, serve as a convenient remedy to tragic events or situations that could otherwise turn tragic....


Human tragedy!? in a civilised world? It's something I never thought could happen just like that! It happens only in a nightmare.
...but there comes a time when the volcano of human emotions and fury erupts. Here's when reality is worse than fiction.

...such was the time... a time when the excesses of power inflamed the passions of the men on the streets, whose craving for change was long overdue.

Given long-standing frustration and disillusionment, there's always a way to vent it. The patient type would bury their heads in the sand and hope for better things...deo volente. The impatient change lovers will always find a way out at the most convenient time.
Such was the picture...


......indiscriminate bloodletting reigned supreme...
......there was weeping and great lamentation.....
......the earth became the theatre of the wretched....

Nevertheless, human tragedy is not perennial. There comes a time when the citizens would come to their senses, lay down their tools of destruction and violence and pull the curtains of peace to their consciences. They'd preach reconciliation and the need to co-exist once again as kindreds.....
........."And they will have to beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning shears. Nation will not lift up sword against Nation, neither will they learn war anymore."

Joshua Masinde.

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