Melisew Shibabaw Et Al., International Journal of Research in Engineering

Dr. Reena Singh, International Journal of Research in Engineering, IT and Social Sciences, ISSN 2250-0588, Impact Factor: 6.565, Volume 09 Issue 02, February 2019, Page 24- Revelation of Socio-Political and Historical Aspects of Cultures through the Writings of Vikram Seth

Dr. Reena Singh

(Assistant Professor, Amity English Study and Research, Amity University, Noida, UP, India)

Abstract: There is a sense of chaos, alienation, marginality, homelessness and restlessness expressed in Seth’s depiction of Western culture. In contrast there is a sense of cohesiveness and harmony experienced in his portrayal of life in India, China and Tibet symbolism of eastern culture. As a social realist, Seth mirrors different aspects of the society faithfully. His reflection of the society, its customs and conventions and contemporary events, with vivid details establishes him as a social realist. Since he had spent half of his life abroad, he had no direct access to the India of different decades. Seth had to do a lot of research, interview freedom fighters, spend a great deal of time in the libraries to collect material about the references. Lovers, joggers, dieters, religious zealots, drug freaks, yuppies, suburbanites, academics, critics-they're all there in his writings depicting that they all contribute to the wonderful absurdity of contemporary life. So through his writings there are myriad issues which are depicted focusing on various cultures. The writings expose world’s significant happenings that disturbed the harmony of the world. He depicted that culture might be different but the underline emotions of the people are similar. Keywords: Marginalized, Semi-isolation, Diaspora

In an earlier collection of verse, The Humble Administrator’s Garden, Seth expresses his response to different cultures he has experienced: Indian, Californian (he was working towards an economics Ph.D. at that time) and Chinese (he visited China in connection with his research). Seth was a student at Tonbridge School, U.K. Seth also did a first degree in politics, economics and philosophy at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, where the English cultural and chapel traditions are probably preserved in their most rigid way. Yet no mention is made of the formative years he spent at the Doon school in India, Tonbridge School or Oxford in his work. From this we can interpret that his years in England as represented in an English school and Oxford stultified Seth’s spirit. Interestingly in contrast the freedom of Stanford without a rigid social code, where meals are eaten off stacks of dishes and not in oppressive formal halls or high tables, nurtured his soul. This aspect of American culture as opposed to English culture is evident in poems such as “Abalone Soup” and “Cease Upon the Midnight”. The Humble Administrator's Garden maps out Seth’s experiences in India, China and America, and different sections in the volume are connected by the symbol in representation of a ‘tree.’ The tree symbol metaphorically captures the essence of Seth's art. There are many poems in the volume that imply the way Seth redefines the nature of art. The title poem of this volume depicts the real pleasure garden of Chinese art built from the practical experience of life in an implied contrast to the ideal imagined ones. The section “Neem” (Indian) emphasizes a sense of being in exile within a family and home context. Like many children of his generation Seth perhaps saw his schooling in a boarding school by parents who like others in their generation thought this an ideal education, as a forced exile which Tonbridge School and Oxford continued. In contrast Stanford and California were a voluntary exile; and at the end of the travel through Tibet he returns home. In “The They” he states “They have left me the quiet gift of fearing.”1 In “The Comfortable Classes at Work and Play” where the members of a family are described as a mother, a father, the eldest son, the second son, the daughter of the house and a cranky grandmother, each existing in a state of self-absorbed semi-isolation, we can again see Seth’s sense of hurt and neglect at the absence of a nurturing familial affection-typified in this typical family scene. “Homeless” once again voices his insecurity: I envy those Who have a house of their own, Who can say their feet Rest on what is theirs alone,2 “Live Oak” records Californian experiences and his attempts to come to terms with the nitty gritty of an American way of existence. In “Abalone Soup” he is again marginalised. Not possessing a wetsuit, he awaits his American friends on the shore while they go diving. Interestingly, at the end of the poem it is the Chinese neighbour, Mrs Chen’s abalone soup made from leftover scraps that is Seth’s cultural choice- the Chinese theme haunts California: http://indusedu.org Page 24

That Mrs Chen-Jim’s Chinese neighbour who, Though reticent, one evening chanced to see Him pounding abs in the yard and as he threw The scraps away, exclaimed, ‘Give those to me!’, One Night appearing with two tureens at the door- May grant her avid addicts an encore.3 “In Other Voices,” (in All You Who Sleep Tonight) Seth attempts to retrieve some of the suppressed voices from history, who suffered and perished in Auschwitz, Lithuania and other places in order to articulate their voices into poetic speech. He also revisits World War II through the eye of a Doctor. The pain of the violence and horror that the West and the whole world have witnessed finds parallels and equivalence in Ghalib’s own testimony two years after the Mutiny in India in the poem “Ghalib, Two Years after the Mutiny”. The poet retrieves these unknown voices from history to trace the buried texts of the victims of inhuman cruelties. The tattooed line “for Hitler’s Troops”4 on the arm of a rape victim implies that the memory of the concentration camps, and its sorrow and pain, cannot be erased; one can only find comfort in a just God who shall avenge(“Lithuania”): The fall of the transgressors from whose face Is blotted any human semblance-wolves; Beasts of the forest and voracious wolves Who hasten to spill innocent blood and kill The pious and the upright, read those words But think of Moses’ words, the man of God; ‘Sing aloud , O you nations, of his people; For he avenges the blood of his servants, and Renders revenge upon His adversaries .5 Without rememorizing what happened to the Jews, 20th century history may be empty. However, the other side of the horrendous human tragedy is the reflection of a German officer, who too was uneasy about what went on in the camp he was in charge of. Very often, we tend to view all German officers and soldiers associated with the concentration camp as devil’s children. But there were exceptions. One such exception is a conscientious officer in poem “Work and Freedom” who is forced to accept his fatal duty and was, finally, happy to be free from his damned job: My wife said, “Think of us not only the service.” How could she know what lay so heavily on me? ....At first thought of Uprooting myself from Auschwitz made me unhappy, So involved had I grown in its task and troubles But in the end I was glad to gain my freedom.6 As a parallel to the horrors of the concentration camp, the dropping of atom bombs in Nagasaki and Hiroshima did trouble the poet, who does wonder about the limits of human barbarity. “A Doctor’s Journal Entry for August 6, 1945” depicts the picture of the dead and dying, and the survivors who do not understand what has happened to them. Only one thing was clear, that the brutality of man upon man defies comprehension and logic, and buries speech into silence in shock and sorrow. Ghalib’s pain and sorrow may be of a different order. But the tone of that pain is similar to the Doctor's or the victim of Auschwitz, for it is perpetrated by men on fellow human beings. The poem “Ghalib, Two Years after the Mutiny”, Ghalib’s letter is a record of that pain which comes when the means of livelihood are snatched away by the powerful and the mighty expressing, “My brother died insane, his children and his wife, /Stranded in Jaipur, eke their pittance of a life./The children of high lords go begging in the street.”7 From here when we move to the verse Novella The Golden Gate we find that the characters grow in the context of their specific time and place, and the poet gives them details for the creation of local verisimilitude. Yet the characters and their world are permeated with a tinge of the universal and that makes it a story of human experiences, common to people all over the world. The use of verse to describe scenes from the various places in San Francisco lends these places beauty and elegance. The Golden Gate sets a fast pace with the opening lines: To make a start more swift than weighty, Hail Muse. Dear Reader, once upon A time, say, circa” 1980, There lived a man. His name was John. Successful in his field though only http://indusedu.org Page 25

Twenty-six, respected, lonely, One evening as he walked across Golden Gate Park, the ill-judged toss8 It is placed in a fast moving modern American city. These characters and their drama remains significant moving around the natural truth of life-death and birth, love and marriage, friends and parents. These main concerns here are treated in a general way, rather than in a specifically Indian or American way. For this kind of lifestyle is becoming common to all metro cities, even in India. Death makes these progressive individuals wonder: Are we dead, too, defiled by sorrow, Remorse, or anguish? We who live Clutch at our porous myths to borrow Belief to ease us, to forgive Those who by dying have bereft us Of themselves, of ourselves, and left us prey to this spirit-baffling pain. 9 In The Golden Gate, the narrator, wondering about the meaning of life, asks, “What, after all, is earth's creation?” His answer to his own question is that “A virus in the morgue of space.” 10 What is so comforting about Seth’s work (and what's wrong with comfort?) is that while it acknowledges the darkness of contemporary life, and indeed is deeply melancholy at times, it refuses to succumb to absolute despair. In The Golden Gate, the anti-nuclear speeches are important and moving. But the gloomy predictions of nuclear holocaust voiced by some of the speakers in the novel are just one aspect of a society that Seth observes with a mixture of compassion, amusement and gentle satire. The novel’s characters search for love and companionship. Young Goodman John, almost a representative figure, has achieved financial security, good status, but roams about lonely and unhappy. He wonders whether anyone would miss him in case he met death suddenly. He tries to contact a few friends, an ex- lover, Janet Hayakawa calls back, listens sympathetically to his problem. She thinks of putting an ad in the newspaper. John’s initial anger at Janet’s action gives way to curiosity and amusement as he goes through the responses, and meets the respondent. He meets an intelligent young lawyer Elisabeth Dorati and they become friends. They meet in the park, restaurants and finally at a musical concert: Ten minutes of Veronika Voss And John Says, “‘Liz, I’m at a loss. What’s this about?” “Beats me!” “Your attic Or my flat?” “Either!Mine?” “Let’s go””11 Phil Weiss and Ed become friends and move into a homosexual relationship. Ed feels guilty as the Bible condemns such relations. Phil argues with him but ultimately feels bitter about it, and gives up the attempt. Liz learns of her mother’s illness and the short span at her disposal. Her mother’s last wish is to see one of her children marry and have a child. Liz marries Phil and gradually the two have charge of three children. The parents of Liz Dorati, in their eagerness to see their sons and daughters married and raising their own families, are more like the-over indulgent, over protective Indian parents, albeit the typical American parents do not wish to interfere with the emotional affairs of their children once they grow up but surely wish to see them in stable relationship tied with nuptial knot as Mrs. Dorati, Liz mother. The story reflects a concern with the fleeting nature of youth, passion and life, and how one must snatch some significant relationship of love and understanding to make it an anchor of one’s life. A romantic attitude again, balanced by a light ironic and amused detachment from the character. This is revealed through the estrangement between Phil Weiss and his wife Claire. They who claimed to be inseparable at one point of time are actually strangers now: Post-marriage incompatibility Of taste and style and Interest, Now hammering on love's fragility, Exposed its contract to the test .12 In the novel An Equal Music Michael contemplates on contemporary existential dilemma: In dark outside, and we are exhausted as much with one another’s temperaments as with the music. But ours is an odd quadripartite marriage with six relationships, any of which at one given time, could be cordial, neutral or strained. The audiences who listen to us cannot imagine how earnest, how petulant, how accommodating, how wilful is our quest for something beyond ourselves that we imagine with our separate spirits but are compelled to embody together.13 Michael’s life has very little room for anything else other than music. He seems to share his fascination for music with Seth, his creator. Michael teaches music to Virginia, who confesses her love to him but in reality, http://indusedu.org Page 26

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License Dr. Reena Singh, International Journal of Research in Engineering, IT and Social Sciences, ISSN 2250-0588, Impact Factor: 6.565, Volume 09 Issue 02, February 2019, Page 24- does not leave any impression on his consciousness as Julia does. On the other hand, Michael-Julia relationship has intense emotional density. But they get separated due to unavoidable circumstances. The novel can also be analyzed on the postmodern dimensions of self that Seth tries to give to Michael. His life is full of complexities centred around his relationship with his parents, his love life and career. The story reveals the struggles in all these spheres of his life. In the West, the parents wish for the welfare of their children is always there, in the background. In India parents are able to impose their will on the children to some extent like Mrs. Mehra, Lata’s Mother (A Suitable Boy) and in the West the parent’s wishes are kept buried in their heart. The tales Vikram Seth tells could be considered ‘typically Indian’ or ‘representatively Asian’ in the light of its author-narrator’s obvious attachment to kinship structures, be it the close or the extended family (a factor underscored syntactically by Seth’s referring throughout, in the Indian way, to “Shanti Uncle” rather than “Uncle Shanti”). In Two Lives, indeed, Seth admits that he wrote the whole of A Suitable Boy living in his parents' home, with his immediate needs taken care of by his family: “But my parents did not prevent their son from returning to live under their roof, to, in effect, sponge off them. They were happy to see me ...” .14 Seth confirms this kinship-structure orientation in an interview in The Observer in September 2005, in which he declares: “My family has been the biggest thing in my life.”15 One may also refer to the joint interview which appeared in Outlook in October 2005 with Seth and his mother Leila, where Vikram says of today’s India: “It is certainly true that in some respects the bonds of the extended family are loosening. But I don't think that Indian families are going to become as distant from their parents, for instance, as people are in the West,” while Leila, more personally, confesses: “I am so blessed that I get to live on a daily basis with my grandchildren.”16 Certain Indian values, then, remain crucial for the author of Two Lives. The Two Lives was published by Seth in 2005 where he depicts the quest of existential question in contrast to diasporic theme where the protagonist Shanti and Henny though are from different intercultural spaces and value which may be called tricultural (British-Indian-German). The story depicts the autobiographical element in which Vikram Seth who acts as a narrator contrasts his life with his uncle depicting that both were Indian though diasporic in reality and in ideas. They both move to Britain for their existence. The female protagonist aunt Henny is depicted to be a German-Jewish by birth not only took British citizenship for survival but even learnt English as language. She is connected with India through marriage. Shanti Seth by profession is dentist who could not qualify in the reputed Institute Roorkee College of Engineering now named as IIT Roorkee. But twice, Shanti qualified dentistry in Germany and England, and took up practicing in Britain. The narrator Vikram Seth took his school education in ‘Doon’ public school(high class boarding)in India, and then, while he stayed with Shanti and Henny, studying in Toonbridge in a real English culture school and then to university at Oxford and then to US. Henny is not well educated moves to Britain works in Labour Market. Vikram Seth being the storyteller questions: “Where did Shanti and Henny belong? Which country did they belong to? Not Germany any more, not India.”40 The wedding of Shanti and Henny is symbolism of western marriage institution through love. This couple is in contrast to the Lata female protagonist of A Suitable Boy, who cannot think of love match as totally condemned by the society therefore going for Indian arranged marriage indeed nothing of intricate compromise shared between Shanti and Henny. Vikram is told by uncle Shanti, “The very next day I proposed to Henny and bought her an engagement ring”.17 Nevertheless, whether be its Shanti or Henny though they reside in England which may be synonym of progressive nation but it seems they both are alien to the place and appears to stranger to each other as we witness in the story a kind of coldness which do not allow them to bear a progeny which symbolizes their love. Thus we witness in Seth’s writing that though he exposes and portrays societies very significantly in subtle manner, his depiction of varied notions is critical but simultaneously is serene, cultured, concerned and balanced. His depiction of various cultures with a realistic streak, make his writing interesting to read and gave us an insight about multifarious layers of culture showing that the cultures might be different but their struggle, challenge and the question of identity is similar. His writing depicts his diligent research and sensitive traveler which gives credibility to his writing.

REFERENCES [1] Homeless, Op. cit, p. 43. [2] Vikram Seth, “Abalone Soup’, The Humble Administrator’s Garden, (New Delhi: Penguin India, Viking, 2005), p. 76. [3] Vikram Seth, “Lithunia: Question And Answer”, All You Who Sleep Tonight’ (New Delhi: Penguin India, Viking, 2005), p.21. [4] Ibid, p. 22-23. [5] Vikram Seth, “Work And Freedom”, All You Who Sleep Tonight’ (New Delhi: Penguin India, Viking, 2005), p.26. [6] Vikram Seth, “A Doctor’s Journal Entry for August 6, 1945”, All You Who Sleep Tonight’ (New Delhi: Penguin India, Viking, 2005), p.34. [7] Vikram Seth, The Golden Gate, (London: Faber and Faber in association with Penguin, 2002), p. 1.1 [8] Ibid, p. 13.10. [9] Ibid, p. 7.3. [10] Ibid, p. 2.54 [11] Ibid, p. 3.26. http://indusedu.org Page 27

[12] Vikram Seth, An Equal Music, (New Delhi: Penguin India, Viking, 1995), p.14. [13] Vikram Seth, Two Lives, (New Delhi: Penguin India, Viking, 2005), p. 68-69. [14] Tim Adams, “Interview with Vikram Seth: Togertherness, Once removed”, Observer, http//www.guardian.co.uk./books/2005/sept 11/ fiction/biography. [15] Sheila Reddy, “Interview with Vikram Seth/ Leila Seth: You Can Talk Good Ideas Out Of Existence”, Outlook, India, Oct 24th, 2005. [16] Two Lives, p. 400. [17] Ibid, p. 370.

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