A first hand read of Naipul doesnt normally throws the kind of insight it is intended to, rather the first book read, may go unnoticed, but the subsequent books builds upon one, in a manner, that it becomes very hard indeed to disagree with him on his interpretations.As we read para after para, one is forced not to negate any of his thoughts, the mind is standstill and accepts all the ideology which he poses. But a later contemplation arises where we try to discard, argue or negate Naipul's theory. The same goes with among the belivers, which happened to be my first book, but now after reading India : A wounded civilization, i am forced to wonder, why does he builts a complex plot around every thought of his to compell the reader to belive the same !!! The history of Vijayanagar, RK Naryanan's novel to name a few are the plots to inject the idea of intellectual depletion in India for centuries, may sound authentic in the first place, but dilutes with time.
A novel is a social introspection, a naipul definition, is only 100 years old in India, brought by the Raj and Bengal was the first to quickly adopt and excel in the same. What do we then term the old literatures available with us for centuries !!. Is 'nt our epics a grandeur version of Novels, may be we had the much more matured version of novels centuries back, that the intellectual community never felt the reason for growing novel kind of literature. Prose, Poetry and Drama takes center stage in the Indian form of literature. A novel is an extension of the prose version, which was very common right from the golden olden days of Indian civilization. Why do we use mathematics symbol language in Science ? For a better way of representation. The summation sign in calculus gives a message equal to 100 words for a science student, if every time a summation is used, if the symbol has to be replaced with the equivalent words, even simple science theorms would run for thousand pages. May be that is the reason why the Indian intellectuals moved more towards poetry and drama, to convey subtle yet strong messages about their times and lives.
Isolation and comtemplation are the religious answer to worldly failures ? What is wrong if Religion has an answer ? What is wrong if souls defeated by the unruly world get some solace ?The hippies of the eighties and the techies of this millennium, what is common between them ? Running for goals and be frustrated after a marathon. Its not only those who fail turn over to religion, even successfull business men want to retire to religious solace. Why do we see a lot of retirement solutions aimed at people in mid thirties these days by the banks and insurance companies ? Have they failed miserably in their share of run for money and fame ? No they have had enough of money,fame and success, a spoon of honey tastes very good ,but after one has a bottle, he would never want any more honey in his life time. That is the same with wordly success and failures.
