An area of Darkness

Two years ago, I was in university. I was in despair. My final project which should earn me the degree was not going well. I was in a mind numbing, spirit crushing job at McDonalds, and everything looked bleak from the McD kitchen.My routine involved working from five in the evening till one in the night, at a minimum wage. After that I would go home, which was an hour and half away by bus, with all its stops at traffic signals, at two in the morning. Then I would catch four hours sleep and head to the university. I was at the lowest point in my life. Literarily, there was no one who could satisfy me, and though I grew up from Dan Brown and John Grisham, to Salman Rushdie, my reading life was in shatters, and I had this childish fear that I would never find a book that awed me. Then one day in the university library, I found a book called "An area of Darkness". After reading the first chapter in the library itself, I called sick to work, and went home. I finished the book overnight. That night changed my life for ever. I discovered a great writer called V.S.Naipaul. I discovered India, and myself. That night changed the way I looked at the world. It was like some one replaced my eyes with a different pair.
After that A House for Mr.Biswas, A Bend in the river and the whole Naipaul collection followed.Now, having just finished his biography, I wanted to share some thoughts about India, and about Naipaul's view of India, and how it changed me.
Take this for example, from Naipaul's private letters, written before writing An area of darkness.
When I read these words, it is like Sir Naipaul is speaking to me directly.

"The point that one feels inescapable is the fact of India's poverty;and how deep is one's contempt for those Indians who, finding no difficulty in accepting one standard in India and another outside it, fail to realise this, and are failing to work day and night for the removal of this dreadful insult and humiliation...."

How true!! And to think that these words have been written in 1962 and are more or less are still true in 2009.
Much is made about Sir Naipaul's obsession with shit. Take this excerpt from the same letter.

"I wonder, wonder if the shitting habits of Indians are not the key to all their attitudes. I wonder if the country will not be spiritually and morally regenerated if people were only made to adopt the standards of other nations in this business of shitting;if only they could be made to see that they owe some responsiblity..."

Again, how true. I remember thinking from childhood, of how wrong the shitting business in India is. I amazed now at how much we Indians take shitting along railway tracks, and shitting on the side of roads for granted. How we Indians are never astonished by all these poor slum dwellers shitting wherever they can. I meet Indians every day who protest at the way it has been portrayed in The Slumdog Millionaire. But, how many of them can accept that the reality is much more worse than what is shown in the picture for atleast thirty percent of Indians.
A book written in '62 is much more powerful and much more informative about Indians than all the millions of books written about India and in India. Till then, I never read a book that spoke about things I know, about things I see everyday, and things I should be ashamed of in a language that I understand. It was not about victorian London, or about Ford County, but about Dharavi and about Kashmir. It was like Naipaul held up a mirror to India.
This as he was leaving the country,

"So goodbye to shit and sweepers; goodbye to people who tolerate everything; goodbye to all the refusal to act;goodbye to the absence of dignity; goodbye to the poverty; goodbye to caste and that curious pettiness which permeates that vast country; goodbye to people who, though consulting astrologers have no sense of their destiny as men"

You probably have to be an outsider, and a genius to see that if India has to change, the change has to come from within. It has to start with people. Indian children are taught, and most of the Indians genuinely believe that 'India is the greatest country in the world'. What a shame!! They will probably never realise that it is not, and it can never be precisely because of themselves. Who else but Sir Naipaul can see how low the country is from the garments that people wear.

"Probably it all has to change. Not only must caste go, but all those sloppy Indian garments; all those saris and lungis; all that squatting on the floor to eat, to write, to serve in a shop, to piss. Probably the physical act of standing upright(think of the sweeper prowling about like a dog below your cafe table) might regenerate the people."

Not a day goes by, when I don't think about this sentence. Kudos to the Master.