BOOK REVIEW- 2: Serious Men by Manu Joseph

 

BOOK REVIEW-2

   SERIOUS MEN by MANU JOSEPH

Serious Men is the debut novel by Manu Joseph published in 2010. The novel was published simultaneously in India, Britain, the US and Canada and has been translated into Dutch, German, French, Italian, Danish and Serbian. Manu Joseph, a journalist by profession has won Hindu Best Fiction award in 2010 for Serious Men for its ‘panache’. The novel has also won the PEN/ Open Book Award in 2011 and was also shortlisted for Man Asian Literary Prize in 2010.  Serious Men is an extremely satirical portrayal of contemporary Indian society. It is a social satire which scathingly attacks discrimination and prejudices prevailing in our country on the basis of caste, class and gender. A Film adaptation of Serious Men was premiered on Netflix on October 2020, directed by Sudhir Mishra starring Nawazuddin Siddiqui, playing Ayyan Mani’s role. Manu Joseph has also authored The Illicit Happiness of Other People, a semi-autobiographical novel published in 2012.

Manu Joseph’s Serious Men narrates the story of Ayyan Mani who is a clerk and personal assistant to a brilliant astronomer Arvind Acharya, director of The Institute of Theory and Research. Ayyan Mani who is a Dalit and son of a sweeper strangled in the slums of Mumbai had worked very hard and made his entry to a government job. Being an opportunist, determined to entertain his family by giving hopes of a colourful future to his wife Oja and son Aditya, Mani dares to weave a fiction around his boy which convinces everyone that his son Adi is a remarkable child prodigy, a genius. In his attempt to confirm this myth, Mani plots many strategies.

Contrast to Mani, his family and other eighty thousand people in the BDD chawl stand Brahmin scientists ruling the Institute. Arvind Acharya, the head of the Institute and an eminent world scientist was obsessed with his theory about microscopic aliens falling to earth. This man who vehemently opposed ‘Big Bang theory’ was capable even of bagging a Nobel Prize in the field. The Balloon Project was Acharya’s mission to prove his theory by bringing air forty-one kilometres above earth in samplers to test for living cells. In this mission, Acharya was assisted by Oparna Goshmaulik, an astrobiologist, one of the very few women in the all-male Institute. Eventually after months of working together, Oparna and Acharya get into a relationship and spend nights at the basement lab of the Institute when Acharya’s wife Lavanya left for Madras to attend a funeral for ten days. On her return, Acharya confesses the matter to his wife and ends the illicit affair. Sad and dejected, both Acharya and Oparna decides to move on and work for the successful completion of the project.

Ultimately samplers are brought to the lab, checked and presence of living cells is confirmed. Meanwhile, Mani manipulates new plans in making his son a national hero featuring him in newspapers, TV channels and showcasing him in the public. On the other side, news from Cardiff and Boston confirms no presence of living cells in the air which upsets Acharya. Oparna determined to avenge Acharya resigns declaring that she was forced by Acharya to contaminate the sample and manipulate the whole thing. Following a trial, Acharya get ousted from the Institute. As a result, Jana Nambodri, Acharya’s political rival becomes the chief and proceeds with his ‘Giant Ear’ project which search for extraterrestrial intelligence with radio signals.  Many of the frauds played by Mani is caught and warned by Jana who along with his fellows make insensitive remarks about Dalits.

Ayyan Mani helps Acharya to find a place in the basement to work and in return Mani gets JET questions from Acharya. As a result, eleven-year old Adi cracks JET and becomes popular in the whole country. Mani who has the habit of eavesdropping, has recorded many crucial conversations in the Institute. Finally, Mani manages to get Jana and his fellow astronomers ousted giving the recordings in the press conference on which Jana talks ill of Dalits and women. As a result, Acharya gets his place and Mani resumes with his game.

Serious Men is a serious examination of the lingering effects of the caste system in contemporary India. The Institute maintains a strict caste hierarchy where the Indian scientists primarily Brahmin, is contrasted with the Dalit staff who serve them. Ayyan Mani, an aspirational man who find himself stuck in the Mumbai slums is one among the non-scientific staff members at the Institute belonging to the lower caste.

When Acharya does not exhibit bias based on caste, Jana Nambodri and many others openly shows it. Jana condescendingly talks about the reservations for backward castes and the dangers that might happen when power goes to the hands of the lower castes. He authoritatively speaks of the racial intelligence and cerebral limitations of the Dalits, Africans, Eastern Europeans and women. Jal, another astronomer opines that Dalit people are meant to clean toilets and not fit for white-collar jobs. Not just that, many science lectures and other academic engagements held in the Institute were only meant to glorify the Brahminic past. Thereby the neutral position attributed to such institutes are thrown into air by Manu Joseph in this work.

Ayyan Mani is a brilliant man aware of his capabilities and is determined to escape from his bad circumstances. He also being a very caste conscious person, harbours a deep resentment for the Brahmin culture and finds ways to exact revenge. Mani notices caste hierarchy even in the roads where cars are most powerful, and then comes the motorcyclists, pedestrians and cyclists. Similarly, even though his son studies in a reputed school, guards there who know the whereabouts of Mani does not salute him as they do it to other parents. Mani sometimes even play tricks on scientists, eavesdrops all their conversations, and even open, read and reseal confidential couriered letters. Finally, he uses the recording in order to expose Jana and his team of their caste-based prejudices. As a result, they are ousted from the Institute and he ignites the caste war that he always dreamt of.

 Another interesting strategy he employs to avenge the age-old discrimination of Brahmins is the element of “Thought for the Day”. Mani frequently manipulates anti-Brahminic quotes and writes it in the blackboard attributing it to some famous world personalities. One among them as manipulated to be said by Vallumpuri John is:

Reservations for the low castes in colleges is a very unfair system. To compensate, let us offer the Brahmins the right to be treated as animals for 3,000 years and at the end of it let’s give them a 15 per cent reservation.

The novel exposes how difficult it is for a Dalit clerk to survive even in such higher institutes usually tagged very rational. The protagonist Ayyan Mani well aware of the hierarchy and hegemony operated based on caste attempts to subvert it in very different ways.

Religion along with caste also has a place in the novel. Ayyan Mani fed up with casteist Hinduism embraces Buddhism and rejects Hindu gods calling them Brahmin products. Occasionally Mani has arguments with his wife on the issue who accuses Mani’s renunciation of faith as the reason for Adi’s deaf ear. Similar arguments take place between Adam and his wife Naseem in Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children.  Question of conversion comes through Sister Chastity, the principal at Adi’s school who tries to persuade Mani to accept Christianity trying to evoke the caste issues. This conversion strategy of Christianity which does not provide any betterment in the status of Dalits in the end is talked about in Karukku, the autobiographical novel by Bama.  Acharya’s rejection of Big Bang theory as unscientific is because that he feels it a product of Christianity or the Vatican and the Pope.

Oparna Goshmaulik is a character featured in the all-male world of the Institute. Unlike Oja and other women of the chawl, she is freer to wear anything of her wish and venture at night as part of her career. But inside the Institute too, which is said to reside highest minds, she had to endure misogynism and voyeurism. She falls into an illicit romance with aged Acharya which completely shatters the concept of age in love. She is called as the basement ‘item’ screwed up by Acharya in the novel. One of the most misogynistic statements from Jana Nambodiri goes like this, “Look at women. They will get nowhere in science, everybody knows that. Their brains are too small... But today you can’t say this anymore.”

Ayyan Mani is extremely misogynistic and voyeuristic in the novel. He is interested in breasts and arses and peeps at every woman possible. He comments, “These days, men live like men only in the homes of the poor”, teasing that the rich men had to share responsibilities with their wives.

On the other hand, Oja Mani is a discontented woman who spent her time watching weeping serials and colourful TV commercials. Acharya’s wife, Lavanya is posed as a dutiful wife. Oparna even though privileged, marriage as an inevitable responsibility falls on her too. Oja Mani represents that mediocre Indian woman who lives for the family. Issues of wife beating and alcoholism in the slums are mentioned and a more serious and a common issue of burning wives in North India is also brought into light.

In the novel, disheartening stereotype of a forgiving wife and working woman as a seductive mistress is constructed through the characters of Lavanya and Oparna. Through the affair of Oparna and Acharya, the novel manages to affirm another stereotype that a man and a woman, however career-oriented, cannot work together at night, but the space and time will result in their love making which would doom them both, to be clear, men for a short while and the woman forever. In short, Serious Men only talks about achievements of men in the novel.

Another serious issue discussed in the novel is that of the child Adi. The novel hints at the conditions of extra brilliant or differently-abled children in the Indian educational system. For the brilliant questions Adi asks in the class, even though made to ask by Mani, the school authorities summon his parents and asks them to make him behave properly in the class. Adi is complained of not being disciplined and questioning the authority of teachers in the class. He is also teased by other children insensitively for his hearing defect.

Serious Men also gives a clear picture of working of many institutes, especially science institutes in India. Power struggles and casteism prevailing in such institutes are discussed. Along with all the problems, the novel does not forget to mention ever changing nature of the science. Serious Men woven with elements of fiction as well as scientific facts also hints at India’s unsustainable development where rockets had to be transported in a cycle which reminds of the photograph of A.P.J. Abdul Kalam doing the same.

Media is criticised for its blindness towards anything sensational. Adi is raised to the status of a national hero by the gullible media without any check on the reliability of the news. Ayyan Mani also makes fun of the TV ads which poses hair fall, dark skin and so on as the greatest problems in the world. In the opening of the novel, tyranny of fashion and standard body shape that rules the people of Mumbai is discussed by beautifully picturing people walking at the waterfront not to look aged and lovers in jeans that expose their buttocks. Usage of women as ‘ceremonial dolls’ in formal functions is also funnily spoken in the novel.

The novel is not an emotional portrayal of lives of Dalits in the country. But it is about the new shapes that these prejudices take and new ways of fighting it out. The novel gives no declaration of moral winners or losers in the end but shows the survival of the fittest. Unlike Arundhati Roy’s Velutha of The God of Small Things, here Ayyan Mani does not lose his life but emerges victorious. Manu Joseph do not attempt a compassionate and sympathetic view of the poor, rather portray them in a more realistic way. The author’s keen observations of human nature as well as idiosyncrasies with his sense of humour have made the novel an interesting one. Serious Men is a biting satire on Indian society which is always judgemental and hypocritical. The novel exposes the series of prejudices that still rule the Indian society in a satirical manner.

Joseph, Manu. Serious Men. Noida: Harper Collins, 2010.

BOOK REVIEW- 1: Intersections of Gender, Race and Class in Jokha al-Harthi’s Celestial Bodies; translated by Marilyn Booth

BOOK REVIEW- 1

 CELESTIAL BODIES by JOKHA AL-HARTHI, translated by MARILYN BOOTH

 

Intersections of Gender, Race and Class in Jokha al-Harthi’s Celestial Bodies

Omani novelist Jokha al-Harthi’s Celestial Bodies translated by Marilyn Booth won the Man Booker International Prize in 2019, the first time a work in Arabic language winning the Man Booker International Prize. The prize is given each year for the best work translated into English. What makes it more special is that the text is from Oman, considerably a lesser significant area of the Arab world. Celestial Bodies is “a book to win over the head and heart in equal measure”, commented Bettany Hughes, the chairwoman of the jury panel.

The novel set in an Omani village al-Awafi revolves around the lives of three sisters- Mayya, Asma and Khwala; their choices, love, loss, passion, marriage, family, agency, career, and so on. Almost every character in the novel falls into the family tree of either Hilal, the master or Senghor, the slave. The plot across three generations from 1880s to today with an array of voices blends history, culture, tradition and dynamics of Omani society. The narrative carefully depicts the trajectory of transition of Oman from its slave trade to oil trade, infusing major historical events.

The novel is divided into several chapters, mostly named after its characters. The plot employs multiple narrative voices, of which most of the chapters are narrated by Abdallah, Mayya’s husband. Marilyn Booth in the “Introduction” sets out the key themes of the novel which is placed in a ‘historical canvas’. The novel originally published in Arabic in the year 2010 was the second novel by Jokha al-Harthi titled Sayyidat al-Qamar. Marilyn Booth’s translation appeared in 2018. In translation, finding an equivalent for the title in Arabic which has several layers of meaning has been strenuous, states Marilyn Booth. She said that she could not find an apt English equivalent for the title when the term Sayyidat in Arabic meaning women also embeds authority, status as well as service.  She has retained very common Arabic phrases in translation to equip the readers with their way of speaking. Another digression from the source text is her elimination of quotation marks which she feels is a “distraction”.

Celestial Bodies intervenes into the Omani society and resists the discriminations based on gender, race, as well as class. The novel recounts the lives of a series of women: abandoned, married, divorced, murdered, mad, raped, desirous, enslaved and the dejected. Mayya is an ambitious woman and an excellent seamstress married to Abdallah. She defies the tradition and patriarchy in her own ways. For her, laughter is a weapon. Breaking the tradition, she gives birth in Muscat hospital and also manages to migrate to Muscat with her family rather than settling in the village. She named her daughter London, a place in the “Christian land”. Mayya expects London to be a symbol of freedom and change, but to the contrary, she is another woman subject who struggles to come in terms with the complexities of present-day Oman.

Asma, a voracious reader married artist Khalid out of a sense of responsibility. Khwala is a divorcee who runs a salon in Muscat. She waited for years and then married her childhood love Nisar who has migrated to Canada. He married her only to inherit his mother’s property, and he went back to his girlfriend in Canada. Later when he settled in Oman and started to live with the family almost after ten years of their marriage, Khwala revenges him back. Their mother Salima was a dejected child brought up at her uncle’s house after her father’s death.

Najiya, the Qamar in resonance with the Arabic title of the novel “Sayyidat Qamar” is a vibrant subplot at the heart of the novel. “Qamar” means moon which signifies love, passion and loss; moreover, lunar system is central to Islamic tradition. Najiya is a seductress who falls in love with Mayya’s father, Azzan who is the Shaykh of the clan. Azzan and the Qamar is madly in love and during their meetings, lines from poets like Rumi and al-Mutanabbi are craftly quoted.

Zarifa is one of the strongest characters in the novel who is a slave. She took care of Abdallah when he was a child. Meanwhile, with time she has managed to assert an amount of power in her master’s house. There are several other minor women characters like London’s friend Hanan who was raped; Hafiza the concubine who had three daughters, later forcefully made to take birth control pills; the madwoman Masouda and her daughter; Zarifa’s daughter in law Shanna and so on.

History of slave trade rampant in Oman in the previous centuries is portrayed through the story of Senghor who was caught casting a net even after slavery was lawfully banned. When Hilal made money out of arms trade, his son Sulayman made his fortune out of slave trade and dates trade. Freedom for slave men was achievable as they could run away from the master’s home, as Zarifa’s husband and son did. But freedom for slave women remains almost impossible; racial as well as patriarchal axes of domination controlled their lives.

Zarifa throes all day and is also the victim of sexual abuse by Shaykh Sulaiman and Shaykh Said’s sons. Shaykh Said forcefully married Ankabuta to Nasib, a slave. Another is Masouda who had to work her entire life for the master. Sexual abuse of slaves by the men of the house is a common occurrence. Whereas any such deviation from the part of the women of the house resulted in their death. Abdallah’s mother Fatima was poisoned to death soon after her delivery for her affair with a slave man named Saleem. Vestiges of slavery is witnessed in Shaykh Sulaiman who is reluctant to accept that the times have changed. At his deathbed, seeing his slave Sanjar’s daughter Rasha as the nurse at the hospital, he behaves hysterically.

Discriminatory notions based on class prevalent in the Omani society are explicated through different events. The community is divided into different classes- Shaykhs, merchants, slaves, and peasants and so on. People of al- Awafi were reluctant to change their class system and mindset; despite the fact that Zayid has become a successful officer, they addressed him as the beggar Maneen’s son. Ahmad, a peasant’s son and a doctor by profession loves and plans to marry London only to shatter the classism in their community.

The novel is not an epitome of western stereotype of “an Arab Muslim patriarch “, rather it showcases several women “bodies” who defy and deny patriarchal entities in their own ways. Jokha al-Harthi busts the myth of impurity attributed to the menstrual and postpartum bleeding quoting Prophet Muhammed who says his wife Aysha that it is normal.

Celestial Bodies documents the clash between the traditional and the modern. The novel problematises the transition through the generation gaps, especially between Salima and Mayya, later Mayya and London; similarly, first between Abdallah and his father, then between him and his son Salim.

Salima scorns her daughter Mayya for going to hospital in Muscat to “Indian and Christian doctors” for delivery. Salima and the elders disapprove of naming the child with an unusual name ‘London’. On the other hand, when Shanna named her daughter Rasha, others disapproved for the reason that a slave child should not be named like the master’s children. Here Shanna has made an intriguing attack on patriarchal slavery.

Abdallah felt dejected and had a strained relationship with his son Salim. He could not get over his abusive and overpowering father, who didn’t allow him to graduate and called him a “boy” even after he was father to three children. He reminisced his relationship with his abusive father when he was disturbed thinking of London or had a fight with Salim.

Obsession of the younger generation with English and cities is well evident in the novel. Abdallah sees it an embarrassment unable to speak English well. When the first-generation people like Salima and Shaykh Sulaiman scorned the English ways and city life, Mayya and Abdallah and others of the second-generation felt fascinated with it. But London and Salim of the third-generation blend well with English language and the city ways of Muscat.

Death is a recurring theme in the novel and deaths of several types surface in the novel. Infant deaths and deaths during childbirth is a common happening in the old Oman. Infant Hamad died of fever as Shaykh Said denied permission to take the child to hospital as it was against the tradition. Marwaan the Pure, a pious young boy kills himself after realising that he cannot do away with his kleptomaniac self. Najiya the Qamar and Maneen, a beggar is murdered. Abdallah’s mother Fatima is poisoned to death. Zarifa dies unattended after getting her both legs amputated due to diabetes.

The novel recounts various myths and rituals deeply embedded in Omani culture. Customs related to birth, death and marriage are detailed in length. Another is the common practice in rural Omani society where the inexplicable and mysterious is related to superstitious beliefs. Rituals to please jinn not to harm the new-born and its mother are a common custom. Apart from the blind superstitious practices of exorcism, even murders in the past were justified as done by supernatural beings.

The novel does not offer any resolutions. Instead it critiques and re-evaluates the past and present alike. History of Oman is interwoven with the lives of each character. Neither of them is liberated but evolve in their own ways. Celestial Bodies touches upon serious issues and converses with the reader. The novel which begins in a room and ends in a beach of a vibrant city is an attempt to document the socio-cultural political and economic history of Sultanate of Oman. It is the tale of a community and its country coming of age, evolving from its slave past through the colonial era to an extremely complex present.