Esmond In India

As a stylist, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala is amazing. Born in Germany to Polish parents, she fled with her family to England at the age of 12. Switching her language to English, like Joseph Conrad before her, she not only published her first novel at 28, but achieved that peculiarly English mastery of social comedy associated with such writers as Jane Austen and EM Forster. And writing for the most part about a country doubly not her own. For at the age of 24, she married an Indian architect, and moved with him to Delhi. Most of her novels, including the Booker Prize winner HEAT AND DUST, are set in her second adopted country. India was also the link to her long series of screenplays for Merchant Ivory Productions, beginning with Indian subjects such as SHAKESPEARE WALLAH, but although she adapted Forster's A ROOM WITH A VIEW and HOWARDS END for them, she never tackled the one book that might have been a natural, A PASSAGE TO INDIA. Much of Forster's wry comedy infuses ESMOND IN INDIA, her third novel (1958). But whereas he focused on the British in India, with occasional bemused glances at the Indians, Jhabvala does the exact opposite, writing from an Indian perspective and treating the remaining British rather as specimens in a zoo. But then she is writing in mid-century, a few years after Independence, when the English are a slightly embarrassing relic (see Paul Scott's STAYING ON for another view). The Esmond of the title, an Englishman who ekes out a living as a superior cultural tour guide, serves more as catalyst than protagonist. For the real story concerns the families of two men who had labored together in the cause of Indian nationhood, but have since gone their separate ways. Ram Nath, who suffered many years in prison for his views, has now renounced most material things. Har Dayal, his friend and admirer, has prospered in the new India, holding meetings attended by minor cabinet ministers and bestowing his presence on social gatherings. But it is the various women in their families, whether tyrannical wives or vapid daughters, who hold center stage, and there Jhabvala's comedy takes wing. Consider the delicacy of this passage about Har Dayal's 19-year-old love-struck daughter: "She wanted so much to tell her father. She was used to telling him all her finer emotions, sometimes even before she had quite felt them." How precisely judged that comparative form, "finer"! How perfectly placed that "quite"! But perfection of style and quickness of observation does not automatically make a successful novelist. There may be a serious and important view of India hidden beneath the comedy, but the book gets so lost in its amusing detail that it moves forward by inches towards a non-existent conclusion. And while Esmond and the matriarchs are rightly presented in an unsympathetic light, I do not understand why the author ridicules even the more admirable characters as well. Loss of pace and lack of sympathy are unfortunate flaws for a comedy, even o

Reading this book which takes place in India "was like being not in a different part of this world but in another world altogether, in another reality" to quote Olivia, the main character of another Jhabvala novel (which I have not read). May it be the context, the characters or the language, we are very much in India indeed! Beyond the Indian context, Ms. Jhavala builds coherent, perfectly real characters, through which she explores human nature. Essential questions are asked through mariage, the first love of a young woman, and the ethical/career implications of other characters' choices. In retrospect, it becomes evident that the characters have been carefully crafted to reach specific and realistic situations in life, raising specific questions intended by the author. These talents are the sign of an exceptional novelist, from Balzac to Barbara Kingsolver. They require creativity, but also a keen, disciplined sense of observation of a wide reality from cooking details to personal dramas, which assemble to define a culture. A bit like Balzac, Jhabvala is capable of creating a book which is almost self-sufficient in recording a culture and a time. Her talents combine to explore human nature under the light of the sophisticated culture of a very old continent, yielding both a fresh perspective for the western reader and a delectable novel, which I found difficult to interupt. By the end of the novel, I had the impression of a perfectly finished painting. I understand the first reviewer's sensation of incompletion, but don't attribute it to the same reasons: it is so well-woven that you can't help feeling like you just got kicked out of a dear friend's life as you turn the last page.

This book was lush in detail about all aspects of Indian life, class system, and culture. The details of the foods (in all classes of society) were especially valuable in contributing to the feel of the story. The details seemed to wrap themselves in and out of the plot line which was simple in itself. The vastness of culture and class distinction, in relation to the British presence in particular, was really the story being told. My only disappointment was that, as with other Prawer Jhabvala novels, it just seems to end, rather than sum up the conflicts nicely. Probably the whole point - it just keeps going on that way, in both the novel and real life. The characters are very sharply presented and reading this book was a warm, fluid experience - very rich indeed