Serious Men (Book Review)

My interest in the book began with the title itself and I dug through the book in a single reading looking for the master-stroke that will emerge in the denouement after realizing within the initial few pages that this is a book that paints one of many ever-present contradictions present in Indian society, which makes it oh-so exciting to read for me. India's poor and the caste-victims have increasingly received a sympathetic eye in fictional narratives, mostly at the hands of journalists-turned-writers, who can be assumed to have developed a sweet-tooth for compassion from their journalistic endeavours. So Manu Joseph had quite a task cut out for him to distinguish his story from the prevalent rhetoric.  The urge to rush through the book to seek the final climactic just desserts that will be handed out to everyone involved, in the manner of delivery of apt justice was perhaps fomented in the choice of contradiction adopted for the story. Contradictions that exist at opposite ends of a spectrum have an innate quality about themselves, in that, the very placement of such contradictions together are bound to create expectations bordering on comedic mishaps, misinterpretations, witty comebacks and general humour, which of course, in intellectualized circles, runs the danger of being branded as insensitive. But such is the requirement if the motive is to tickle the reader, a bit here and there, keep him engaged with a story-line that moves constantly and create in him an eagerness to read till the end with an anxiety that is carefully constructed by preceding pages. Place masculine black men against blonde white females, or place erudite savants against common buffoons, or place an eastern bride against a western groom and one immediately is lifted in a buoyant expectation of good ole tickles.

After placing the Dalit Mani as a personal assistant to the Brahmin Acharya, Manu Joseph tactfully avoided running his story aground into a crater of vengeance-seeking, which was sure to happen, if Mani had been fashioned into a simple red-eyed machine that sought his deserved (whether imagined or not) place in the society. That would have pandered to a gladiatorial lust of reversing injustices. Not to mention the fact that the earlier released White Tiger by Aravind Adiga would have made the above-said story look like a poorer cousin. Instead, Mani, despite his knowledge of casteism and the centuries of injustice his ancestors have had to suffer through, is not secretly baying for blood of every Brahmin in the institute in which Mani is working. Besides, Mani, suffers from the same frights that a common man may suffer from, which is, a life of dull routine and utter boredom, a sea of normalcy in which a person is afraid of getting himself drowned only to be erased forever as if he never existed. In that, Mani is liberated from the casteist structures exerting their invisible influence on thinking and the general mindset of society and the entire story is strengthened by Mani’s very wily and charming tactic to make his son, and consequently his wife, achieve 15 seconds of fame under the Sun.

However, the story-telling did seem a bit contrived and I believe Manu Joseph seems to have bettered that aspect in his latest novel, “The Illicit Happiness of Other People”. For Mani to succeed with his trickery, it became a clerical requirement to have a female, "Oparna", play her part in the story and her presence does not acquire anything larger than that. Moreover, Oparna’s role, aspirations, thoughts and portrayal did quite lean towards popular clichés of the day. I understand that every story need not require women to be shown as plot movers equal in importance to their male counter-parts and my ruse is certainly not circled around that issue. However, if the story’s final outcome hinges on a turn of event caused by something/someone, that something/someone has to have its own novelty and inventiveness, for the story to appear strong on its own merits, rather than from borrowing popular contradictions, clichés and pop philosophies of the day and binding them together with clever wit and fresh cynico-satirical humour, which of course were the strongest points of the book.

My personal favourite was this: “Old Men discussed with each other the future of the country they had ruined when they were younger”