A Case of Exploding Mangoes (Book Review)

A book of exploding prose

In the past few decades, South Asian writers have really started coming into their own, thus bringing to the international literary community perceptive glimpses of life in the sub-continent and around; a world culturally richer and more diverse than any other region in the world. This lifts the veil of obscurity in front of western eyes that often, although not of their own doing, are not able to look beyond the stereotypes, clichés, or insights of a superficial value. But, does that imply that this breed of writers are under an obligation to carry the burden of bringing to the table, unique, deep, intricate, subtle, unknown insights into the life of the average sub-continental caught in the labyrinthine structures and institutions dictating his life? Perhaps that’s a kind of a voyeurism; an elitist one that seeks to encumber writers on South Asian life with prisms of ideologies that are essentially ingrained in western thinking. Indeed, it becomes troublesome when lack of adequate social commentary invites criticism, sometimes for a story that perhaps was intended as a stand-alone satire in itself; an isolated system enclosed within itself without harbouring any ambitions of spilling onto any larger picture. The best evidence for this, in Mohammed Hanif’s A Case of Exploding Mangoes (ACEM), is the character of junior Shigri; a lean thinker who is focused on avenging his father’s purported suicide and is blissfully insulated from ideological copulation with thought-worlds. He is a man with a mission in a dark satiric setting. 

ACEM, despite being around an army General assuming power via a coup, despite being around Pakistan’s involvement in Afghanistan - in fending off the Russian advance, despite being around Zia’s Islamisation drive, is simply about parodying the eccentricities and mindless pre-occupations of those who land in positions of power by a design of fate, than by stridently fighting to become worthy and deserving. Zia’s Code Red security cover - prolonged as long as would be considered a frivolous ego-trip, his sartorial preference – selectively abolishing, from his wardrobe, all western dresses (except his military uniforms of course), his admiration for those rulers who ruled longer than him, his morbid fear of leaving anything less than a grand legacy, all taken together deconstruct Zia from the vantage point of a man directing the future of Pakistan into a passably sophisticated simpleton.

Hanif’s novel works in such close proximity with the top crop in the Pakistan-America nexus, with the occasional hint of Afghanistan and the Saudis, that at no point might one feel as being in the company of power-brokers. Real life characters and their veneers of power have been stripped down so comically and their personal motivations trivialized and ridiculed so flippantly, that Hanif could even be understood as saying, ‘Hey, No big deal! It’s all a silly shit.’ Zia’s anal probing, while he lay with his head placed between the Pakistani and the Army flag is at once shocking, absurd and comical and reveals a deep contempt for Zia’s military rule, or perhaps Zia himself. A very obvious character, ‘OBL’ turns up at the ambassador’s residence, seeking his own ‘paparazzi moment’ from a photo-journalist, as a successful construction business person who has benefited from the Russo-Afghan war, than as a religious ideologue motivated by injustice and unfairness meted out to his community. 

However, it will be a mistake to relegate ACEM to the category of a vacuous satire bereft of critical insights or as shirking from explaining the intricacies of the Pakistani climate under Zia’s rule because the chief objective of the story is to shatter the hallowedness of Zia, whatever is remaining i.e., and therefore revolves centrally around him. Zia is progressively exposed to more and more absurd circumstances, including him being forced into a ‘cock-position’ as a punishment by a common constable on the roads of Islamabad after Zia, in a fit of democratic epiphany, had decided to elicit a first-hand experience of popular sentiment of the average Pakistani. All of this is done in a stark naked prose shorn of obscurantist language or allusions. If the doctor’s hand has to go up Zia’s butt – it goes just like that with the help of a very lean no-frills language that only enhances the shocking absurdities, and shrinks Zia to a comic treatment of Hanif’s contemptuous prose. When Uncle Starchy had to put a snake in the Pakistani flag, I was astounded at the multiple implications that could be imagined and marveled at what is now the best ever instance of a metaphorical damnation, for me in my reading history.

It’s a pakka page-turner until the very end when the double-entendre in the title unravels itself. This read like a nice lean piece of juicy meat which had occasional spicy bursts of sweet mercy. Fire! Fire! Tenderness & Crispiness dipped in humour sauce.

Image from here.