When Black Holes gobble up bright stars

The Kite Runner  by Khaled Hosseini  Bloomsbury first published in 2001

Shalimar the Clown  by Salman Rushdie published by Vintage2006

Two Lives  by Vikram Seth first published in India by Penguin Books India 2005

Are there any connections between these randomly picked books at a second hand book shop? Some underlying  unity of theme,  of events or even purpose?  Admittedly, these books belonging to varying genre -  the first one a work of  fiction, the second a novel and the third,  a part biography, family history and autobiography combined -  cannot possibly dwell on a single theme or motivated by the same or similar events.  But beyond the differences, there are ample evidences of  contemporary events, as they experienced by these author, weaving with their imagination  to produce these works.

If ‘A thousand Splendid Suns’ dealt with life in Afghanistan of the late 1990s   when the civil war was well on its way and the Taliban in full control of that country, ‘The Kite Runner’ is partly a chronicle of the liberal and leisurely lives lived by the people of that country during the 70s, that was before the overthrow of King Zahir Shah and the  power struggle which  broke out within the Communist Party resulting in Soviet intervention.   There are splendid descriptions of joy rides to parks, tourist places, of parties, festivals and of course, kite flying.  Amir, the narrator was the son of a rich businessman, who lived a secure, protected life. The father holds the religious men in great disdain.  Once he told his son, “Piss on the beards of all those self-righteous monkeys.  They do nothing but thumb their rosaries and recite a book written in a tongue they don’t even understand.  God help us all if Afghanistan ever falls into their hands.”  The country did fall into their hands, to his horror and even ours!

The   companion of Amir was Hassan, the Hazara boy and servant, who alongwith his father, lives with them in the family compound.   The principle theme of the entire story is condensed in this little piece of wisdom delivered by his father, “There is only one sin.  And that is theft.  When you steal you deprive another of his property.  When you kill a man, you deprive a wife, her husband or a son, his father.  When you tell a lie, you steal someone’s right to the truth.”  Alas, Amir finds out at last that his father was a sinner too, when he was told by his father’s best friend, Rahim Khan that Hassan, was fathered by his father!

As pointed out above, there are splendid descriptions of nature.  Take this one, “I stood in the silver tarnish of a half moon and glanced up a sky riddled with stars.  Crickets chirped in the shuttered darkness and a wind wafted through the trees.”  Or this musing, “The desert weed lives on, but the flower of spring blooms and wilts.  Such grace, such dignity and such a tragedy.” And take this comic take, “Take two Afghans who’ve never met, put them in a room for ten minutes, and they’ll figure out how they are related.” Not limited to Afghanistan alone, Indeed it is a sub-continental disease!

The fiction is gripping with the escape of son and father from Afghanistan, their exile in America, the slow and tedious rebuilding of their lives, of romance and marriage.  Ultimately, Amir revisits his country of birth to see it gobbled up by a black-hole named Taliban.  He did get one priceless possession back from the place, which is the son of his childhood friend, Hassan, to enliven his childless marriage. 

Rushdie’s style  of  narrative is familiar to his readers and this novel has all the trademark Rushdie in it.  The intermixing of time and space, of contemporary events with the hoary past, of ancient and mythical stories and  of individual lives lived with the lives of nations and territories.  The bewitching story of Boonyi and Abdullah (Shalimar), their affairs and marriage, the betrayal of Boonyi  and the pursuit of revenge by Abdullah.    Alongside we meet all kinds of characters, the Kauls, the Abdullahs, Kachhwaha, a major in the army, Max Ophuls, the American Ambassador, the militants, pak-trained terrorists and so on.  Shalimar gets his revenge by killing Max Ophuls in New York (a kind of solitary 9/11).  The wooing of Boonyi by the American ambassador is suggestive of American designs on Kashmir itself! 

The very first speech that Max delivers, at the presentation of his credentials, is pompous, matching perhaps, the American personality.  He says, “We know all about being part of an ancient civilization and we have suffered our share of slaughter and bloodletting as well.  Our great leaders and our mothers and children, too, have been taken from us.  The loss of one man’s dream, one family’s home, one people’s rights, one woman’s life, is the loss of all our freedoms; of every life, every home, every hope.  Each tragedy belongs to itself and at the same time to everyone else.  What diminishes any of us diminishes us all.”  Unmistakably   similar to that Amir’s father tells him in ‘The Kite Runner’ and equally unmistakably, very hollow!

Salman Rushdie’s  penetration of the psyche of a militant-preacher is tellingly evident in this peroration by the young Bulbul Fakh (no spelling mistake this!), “The infidel believes in the immutability of the soul.  But we believe that all living things can be transformed in the service of the truth.  The infidel says that a man’s character will decide his fate; we say that a man’s fate will forge his character anew.   The infidel holds that the picture of the world he draws is a picture we must all recognise.  We say that his picture means nothing to us, for we live in a different world.  The infidel speaks of universal truth.  We know that the universe is an illusion and that truth lies beyond the illusion, where the infidel cannot see.  The infidel believes the world is his.  But we shall drive him from his  redoubts  and cast him into darkness and live in Paradise and rejoice as  he plunges into the fire.”  Could a utopian, millenarian ideology be put more cogently than this?  The novel is a fantastic read for insights like this.

Two lives by Vikram Seth starts and ends as an autobiography interspersed with family history strewn in between.  Shanti Uncle and Aunty Henny are the two lives described.  Shanti was Vikram’s grandfather really (Shanti was Leila’s Uncle, Leila being Vikram’s mother).  Some of the most interesting features of this story (stories really) are, ironically enough not so much the lives of Shanti and Henny as much the life which Vikram leads in London and Chicago!  Which,  does not mean that their stories are unimportant.  Vikram presents Shanti and Henny as persons of great dignity and more importantly, possessing great character. 

Shanti goes to Germany to study dentistry.  By the time he searches for employment there, Nazism takes over the country.  He migrates to England, enlists as a dentist with the royal army, fights in Africa and Europe.   He loses his right hand to a stray shell  in the battle to capture Mount Cassino in Italy.   He had already proposed to Henny and losing his limb casts doubts in his mind.  Henny stands by him till her death.  The pages which narrate struggle of Shanti when Henny was sick and dying are the most difficult to read and extraordinarily moving.

Henny’s sister and mother die in Nazi concentration camps.  The stories of how her friends and colleagues change  colour to suit the new requirements of nazi Germany are also revealing.   Such betrayal happens in all climes and situations.  A very interesting narrative of events of the mid 20^th Century told through the lives of an Indian and a German, who also happened to be a Jew.