Dr. Krishna Kant Singh
Professor of English
Veer Kunwar Singh University, Ara
In The Moor’s Last Sigh, Rushdie’s world is more effective than in his other novels. He assumes the whole nation as the world of one family and that is the reason the novel works on the allegorical level. On one level, the paternal family as a national allegory works through a series of metaphoric substation leadings from a traditional division of gender roles to a definition of the modern nation based on western models of cultural, political and economic progress. On the another level the images of the mother India-ringing from the Moor’s rebellious, artistic mother Aurora to Hindu goddess to Indira Gandhi to icons of popular culture - of her religious - political and aesthetic figures of unification across historical periods. Alexndra W. Schultheis writes:
In focusing on how the image of the family captures the soul of the modern nation, Rushdie illuminates the metaphor’s circulation through discourses of national identity, asking us to rethink our easy acceptance of its terms. As the predominant metaphor for modern India, it relies on the naturalization of gender roles to accommodate India’s mythic and religious traditions and its modernity.1
In The Moor’s Last Sigh, there is a discourse regarding the cultural crossing the nation from the beginning. Rushdie in this novel discusses the development of post-colonial Indian nationalism. He ordered to protest a sense of their identity in face of colonial power. Salman Rushdie writes in The Moor’s Last Sigh:
The material is the domain of the “outside,” of the economy and of statecraft, of science and technology, a domain where the West had proved its superiority and East has succumbed. […] The spiritual, on the other hand, is an “inner” domain bearing the “essential” marks of cultural identity. The greater one’s success in imitating Western skills in the material domain, therefore, the greater the need to preserve the distinctness of one’s spiritual culture.2
This model appears to create a double blind for post-colonial identity. Internal identity becomes essential and mythic while economic, political and social identities are evaluated according to the standard of modern, liberal and capitalist ideology. Radhakrishnan rightly observes:
Woman becomes the allegorical name for a specific historical failure: the failure to coordinate the political or the ontological with the epistemological within an undivided agency.3
Radhakrishanan and Chatterjee call for recognition of communal identities of outside of spectrum defined by the enlightment subject and his nation. Chatterjee’s histrio-graphic project focuses on examples of specifically Indian modernity to unravel and unelegant braiding of an idea of community with the concept of capital. In this novel, spiritual realm becomes the foundation for alternative modernities and community replaces family as the central image of identification.
The text of The Moor’s Last Sigh depends on the patriarchal family to reproduce Western’s modernity’s hisomonic terms and on the image of mother India for unifying social plurality. The theme of the patriarchal power addresses the dramas which Rushdie’s reveals in this novel. Its fine expression in the novel is the uncleared war between the Hindu fundamentalism of the Moor’s employer and the corrupt capitalism of his father. The Moor as a son, artist’s model and narrator mediates between these images of the nation and the readers. He is successful to the extent that he can define himself as a national spokesman in order to naturalise the nation as a family metaphor. Moor’s feeling seems to expose a large number of events in India’s neo-colonial period. Rushdie’s own political predicament rises to the surface as when Moor wonders:
had I slipped accidentally from one page, one book of life on to another - in my wretched, disoriented state, had my reading finger perhaps slipped from the sentence of my own story on to this other, outlandish, incomprehensible text that had been lying, by chance, just undernith?4
The world of The Moor’s Last Sigh is the combination of fantasy and myth. The Moor is our guide through a series of fall edence in which the romantic myth of the plural hybrid nation gives way to debauchery and crime. Born a decade after indigence Moor represents the city itself of his own fantastical growth:
I grew in all directions, willy-nilly. My father was a big man ,
but by the age often my shoulders had grown wider than his coats, I was a skyscraper freed of all legal restraints, a one- man population explosion, a megalopolis, a shirt-ripping, button-popping Hulk.5
In this novel, Rushdie invokes and subverts the familiarity of the world image of mother India by revealing the layer of conflicting situations. On the levels of the plot Rushdie contrasts Indira Gandhi’s authoritarianism with the vision of pluralism in Arora’s paintings. Though incapability of Arora’s and Indira’s vision of the nation, Rushdie shows how aesthetic world remains tied to political context. Further confusing the imagery of the age while the public reject Arora’s exhibit, it embraces Uma’s abstract sculptures on the themes of religion and motherhood. The dictomy between the domestic, benevolent Parvati and violent all consuming Kali - female goddess competing to represent the nation-surfaces in the future of Uma and the prime minister. Despite the artistic success and ability to insinuate herself into position of power, however, Uma has to maintain a stable alternative even Parvati, her aesthetic depiction of religion and motherhood. It is only after she has contrived to destroy Moor’s relationship with his family and finally kills herself that Moor sees her as a warning agent facile multiplicity:
what had happened was, in a way, a defeat for the pluralist philosophy on which we had all been raised. For in the matter of Uma Sarasvati it had been the pluralist Uma, with her multiple selves, her highly inventive commitment to the infinite malleability of the real, her modernistically provisional sense of truth, who had turned out to be the bad egg.6
The Moor’s Last Sigh encompasses a vast world by depicting various modern trends in the context of economy, religion, history, myth etc. the central figure Arora tries her best to establish the link between various above mentioned trends from time to time. Alexander W. Schultheis rightly remarks:
As a member of an (elite) economic, religious, and ethnic minority, Aurora tries to incorporate her family history into a national aesthetic vision. Uma and Adam, two representatives of the next generation of Indians, define themselves through a seemingly a historical internationalization of language and images rather than their plural or hybrid forms. Uma’s familial and cultural contexts are wholly fabricated, and Adam’s are elided (his quasi-mythic parentage by Shiva and Parvati and his rearing by Saleem and the pickle factory women remain the concerns of Midnight’s Children).7
In this novel Rushdie creates a different world through various symbols of which he is a recognized master. He invokes the symbol of Mughal power Delhi’s Red Fort to represent what Nehru called in his independent address “the novel mansion of free India where all her children may dwell.” Nehru creates the symbol of history which has become rubbish in the hands of new generation. Rushdie himself creates this image but he circulates the image of the Red Fort in all attempt to accomplish aesthetically what Nehru tried politically. Rushdie presents religious nationalism and economic corruption which are the important features of the modern world especially the world of cosmopolitanism. The Moor’s downfall mirrors the changing fortunes of the world of Bombay itself, his underworld experiences have their political analog in the rise of Bombay Shiv Sena (army of Shiva Jee party). In the vacuum left by the organizational collapse by the congress party-began by Indira Gandhi pre-structuring of the central parties regional alliances after Nehru’s death in1964 and by the increasing disparity in Bombay between the political power of the rich and the poor, the Shiv Sena movement provides a source of community identification and political will.
If the world of The Moor’s Last Sigh is multidimensional, the world of The Ground Beneath Her Feet is the beautiful intermingling of fact and fantasy, reality and imagination and above all the combination of mundane and celestial. In The Ground Beneath Her Feet, Rushdie tries to invoke the love story of Vina Apsara and Ormus Cama through the delineation of symbolic world. It is the story which runs on different levels of mythical, cultural, religious and political visions. About the growing interest of the novel, Nigel Williamson remarks:
Vina Apsara, a famous and much loved singer with a wild and irresistible voice is caught up in a devastating earthquake and never seen again. This is her story and that of Ormus Kama, the lover who finds, looses, seeks again, finds her over and over throught his own extraordinary life in the music. Set in the inspiring vain fabulous world of rock and roll, this is the story of a love that stretches, across continents, across Vina and Ormus whole lives and even beyond death.8
The Ground Beneath Her Feet is a brilliant piece of fiction in which the world of love is created through the relationship between Vina Apsara and Ormus Cama. Vina Apsara represents the world of music. They are supposed to be the body and soul of each other. Music without singing is incomplete; similarly singing without music is also incomplete. The world created by Rushdie in this novel is the world of cosmopolitan cities which symbolizes multidimensional facets of India. The relation between Vina Apsara and Ormus Cama is more intense and beyond the limits of social norms. The fact of deflowering Vina Apsara by Ormus Cama was also a matter of public record. Vina Apsara was too passionate about her name and fame and her linking with Ormus Cama is the linking of two equal passionate human beings. Salman Rushdie beautifully explains their physical relation also:
… his exploration with the tip of his tongue of the edge of his nostrils, his slow sucking of her closed eyes, the head of his penis pressing into her navel, his finger moving along her perineum, her legs around his neck, her buttocks moving against his sex, her generous mouth, and above all her discovery of the extreme sensitivity, unusual in man.9
Here, the world of love created by Vina Apsara and Ormus Cama has been presented by Salman Rushdie with the help of mythological reference. Hindu mythological world has been depicted vividly in this novel. Rushdie shows us how Kama, the love-god met Shiva while daring to suit him with dart of love and was burnt into ashes. He endeavours to co-relate this Hindu mythology in his characters of the novel:
It is said that when Kama, the love god, committed the crime of trying to shoot mighty Shiva with a dart of love, the great god burned him to ashes with a thunderbolt. Kama’s wife, the goddess Rati, pleaded for his life, and softens Shiva’s heart. In an inversion of the Orpheus myth, it was the woman who interceded with diety and brought love-love itself; back from the dead... so also Ormus Cama, exiled from love by the parents who he had failed to transfix with love’s arrow, shrivelled by their lack of affection, is restored to the world of love by Vina.10
The world of love in The Ground Beneath Her Feet does not only have the mythological references from India but this novel also contains the mythological world of the west. The references of Pygmalion and Galatea also occur in this novel to signify the intense love between Vina Apsara and Ormus Cama:
Each is Pygmallion, both are Galatea. They are a single entity in two bodies: male and female constructed they themselves. You are my only family, he tells her. You are my only earth. These are heavy burdens, but she bears them willingly, asks for more, burdens him identically in return. They have both been damaged, are both repairers of damage. Later, entering that world of ruined selves, music’s world, they will already have learned that such damage is the normal condition of life, as is the closeness of the crumbling edge, as is the fissured ground. In that inferno, they will feel at home.11
In this novel, Salman Rushdie is also interested to reveal some of the bitter truths of Indian political world. He reminds us the political uncertainty existing at the time of the demise of the first prime minister of India Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru. He writes:
Jawahar Lal Nehru was dead. His successor, Indira Gandhi, was little more than a pawn in the hands of Congress King makers, Lal Bahadur Shastri, MorarJi Desai and Kamaraj. A fanatical gang of political bully boys, Mumbai’s Axis, was on the verge of seizing control of Bombay and Hindu nationalism was sweeping the country. There was a general feeling that things were going too fast, that the national railway train was roaring ahead without a driver and that the decision to drop international tariff bearers and deregulate the economy had been hastily taken.12
Salman Rushdie in this novel loves the metro life especially the economic capital of India Bombay too much. His eyes does not miss even minor social or political event of the city. The appalling affinity of the crown of the Churchgate station in the moving thrills him. The Indian funeral system dealt so openly and directly with the physicality of the corps is interesting for him. Bombay was named as Mumbai by the order of ruling M.A. party. Sri Piloo Doodhwala was its principal benefactor and power broker. Salman Rushdie satrises the world of Bal Thakrey that is why M.A. party is compared with Shiv Sena. Rushdie has pride that the world of Bombay is completely secular but now M.A. boys are striking the fire of discord and city is heading towards perturbations. Rushdie writes:
In those years when many parts of the country had begun to shake, Bombayites had prided themselves on being quake free. Good communal relations and good solid ground, we boasted. No fault lines under our town. But now Piloo Doodhwala’s MA boys were stoking the fire of discord, and the city had begun to shake.13
In this novel, Rushdie throws lights on the world of Indian politics and politicians which is full of corruption and malpractices. He ironically presents the goat-scam of Bihar in which several high profile politicians including ex-chief minister Sri Lalu Prasad Yadav and several top officials are involved. He also talks about Maruti Car-scam 1970s in which huge sum of public money was swindled from a project headed by Mr. Sanjay Gandhi, the son of Mrs. Indra Gandhi. He also highlights Bofors-Canon-scam of 1980s in which a large sum of public money went astray from an international arm deal shattering the political reputation of former Indian Prime Minister Mr. Rajiv Gandhi. He also highlights the Stock-scam of 1990s committed by Harshad Mehta in which a large sum of public money has been snatched. In this novel, Salman Rushdie presents social, political and religious worlds of contemporary India in parable manner.
Fury which was published in 2001, presents the typical world of Salman Rushdie in most sophisticated manner. In this novel, the struggle of Malik Solanka, a historian of ideas and doll-maker, has been presented in order to survive in this world. This novel has some autobiographical touch. Rushdie reflects his account of visit to India in 2001. The novel throws lights on the post-modern world of New York in which there is only turmoil and tension spread everywhere. Furycelebrates New York as the epitome of America, a greater deity than the classical guts. New York is the epitome of fury for Rushdie because he writes:
Everywhere you looked, thought Professor Malik Solanka, the fury was in the air. Everywhere you listened you heard the beating of the dark goddesses wings.14
In Fury, Professor Malik Solanka has been caught in the cobweb of self-made world of New York. There, he does not understand the nature of the people even in this developed world:
A city of half-truths and echoes that somehow dominates the earth. And its eyes, emerald green, staring into your heart.15
Rushdie’s portrayal of New York is equally oxymoronic. The world of New York is multi-coloured and people are still engaged in fighting for domination. The multi-coloured plural world of New York is not free from the other problems of under-developed or dark society. The city, on the one hand in terms of science and technology, is more developed but on the other hand in terms of human psychology, it is still undeveloped. Professor Malik Solanka thinks:
For a greater deity was all around him: America, in the highest hour of its hybrid, omnivorous power. America, to which he had come to erase himself. To be free of attachment and so also of anger, fear and pain. Eat me, Professor Malik Solanka silently prayed. Eat me, America, and give me peace.16
In this novel the world of New York also represents the new frontier of the post-modern era. It is the city which culture is constructed and fabricated by immigrants. The culture of New York is the culture of everyone. Like Rushdie himself, Solanka is an immigrant to New York but his case is something different. Solanka confesses:
How could Malik Solanka speak to his mirthful friend of the abnegation of the self: how to say, America is the great devourer, and so I have come to America to be devoured? How could he say, I am a knife in the dark; I endanger those I love?17
In Fury, Rushdie highlights the fantasy and false vanity of the immigrants living in the different world cutting themselves from their motherhood in order to get better livelihood. But the world of immigrants is not out of contest. Their struggle is two-fold. On the one hand they have to struggle to accommodate themselves in a new world, new culture, new civilization, new civic sense and on the other hand they are not able to dislocate themselves completely from their old native culture in any respect. They face problems everywhere in spite of the fact that the world is passing through the process of globalization. Salman Rushdie identifies the problem facing in the new millennium in one of his interviews for the promotion of Fury:
I think there is something to be written about what happens when you’ve got everything and nobody else has got anything. It changes the idea of frontier…. Suddenly, the frontier is a wall that’s meant to keep people out… And the idea that his extraordinary way of life should depend on that wall is, well, a real problem…18
In Fury, Rushdie beautifully stages the rapid break-down of the distinction between the world of Solanka and the contemporary political conflicts in Liliput-Belifisco. When Solanka flies to Liliput-Belifisco, Neela has already gone there to support rebellion, he is confronted by a giant carboad representation of himself. Solanka becomes comically confused:
It seemed to Solanka, the opposite was true: as time passed, he had come to resemble his creation more and more. The long silver hair, the eyes made mad by lass. A strange piece of mask theatre was being played out on this remote island stage, and Professor Malik Solanka had been unable to shake of the notion that the action intimately concerned him.19
In Fury, the world of Malik Solanka is the world of an immigrant who is always fighting in order to survive himself. The final part of the novel is quite interesting in revealing some of the bitter truths of his world and struggle. He confesses:
“Look at me!” shrieked Professor Malik Solanka, his leather coat-tails flapping like wings. “Look at me, Asmaan! I’m bouncing very well! I’m bouncing higher and higher!”20
Thus, Salman Rushidie’s presentation of his cosmic vision in his above discussed novels are full of charm and fascination. He is able to present how the globalization is now affecting the life of the people everywhere in the world.
Reference: -
- Alexandra W. Schultheis, "Postcolonial Lack and Aesthetic Promise in The Moor's Last Sigh," Rushdie the Novelist, p. 201.
- Salman Rushdie, The Moor's Last Sigh (New York: Pantheon, 1995), p. 6.
- Ibid., p. 85.
- Salman Rushdie, The Moor's Last Sigh, p. 136.
- Salman Rushdie, The Moor's Last Sigh, p. 188.
- Ibid., p. 272.
- Alexandra W. Schultheis, "Postcolonial Lack and Aesthetic Promise in The Moor's Last Sigh," Rushdie the Novelist, p. 213.
- Nigel Williamson, The Times.
- Salman Rushdie, The Ground Beneath Her Feet (London: Jonathan Cape, 1999), p. 176.
- Ibid., p. 161.
- Salman Rushdie, The Ground Beneath Her Feet, p. 162.
- Ibid., p. 210.
- Salman Rushdie, The Ground Beneath Her Feet, p. 238.
- Salman Rushdie, Fury (New York: Random, 2001), p. 123.
- Ibid., p. 44.
- Salman Rushdie, Fury, p. 44.
- Ibid., p. 69.
- Interview with Daneet Steffens, "He'll Take Manhattan," Globe and Mail (Canada) 8 September 2001 : D3.
- Salman Rushdie, Fury, p. 235.
- Salman Rushdie, Fury, p. 236.
