Reviews with energy

Published : Jan 05, 2002 00:00 IST

A Hundred Encounters by Sham Lal; Rupa & Co; Rs.395.

SHAM LAL is something of a literary sage. He combines modernity with tradition. He is at home with sahity, sangeet and kala. Add to this gyan (wisdom, knowledge) sheel (character) and guna (virtue). He has plenty of these.

At 89, clarity, control and literary structure have not deserted him. His long life has been enriched by instinctive intellectual energy. While he has upheld the habits of civilised discourse, he has not hesitated to denounce the not-so-engaging linguistic incoherence of pseudo-intellectuals. Book-reviewing has been turned into an art form. He is endowed with inner imagination.

Am I going overboard? If I am, I am erring the right way. His book represents exceptional talent. Serious subjects are dealt with seriously. The inner flap of the cover says:

The book discusses not only the pathologies of globalism and consumerism, but also of the network society which is creating a new class of pariah states. It also analyses the nature of the changes under way which are infecting contemporary thought with a new virus of nihilism which dismisses all notions of truth, justice and freedom as partial, provisional and highly unstable.

These reviews appeared in The Times of India over a period of 40 years. In 1994, he started writing for The Telegraph, because (if I am not mistaken) The Times of India in its wisdom dropped paying attention to literature.

The fall of communism is dealt with in a magisterial manner. A whole section is devoted to the subject. And Mao is not spared. The Chairman's private life was bizarre and his doctor Li Zhilui's book gets an extended review. Nikita Khrushchev's wild behaviour is exposed. Mao loathed the Soviet leader. On page 31, we get some idea of Khrushchev's crudity:

Khrushchev: If you think we are time servers, Comrade Chen Yi, then don't offer me your hand because I won't shake it.

Chen Yi: Me too. I am telling you that your anger doesn't scare me.

Khrushchev: Don't you try spitting down on us. You haven't got the spit.

Sham Lal's comment in this is, "As for Khrushchev's exchanges with Chen Yi, it should make all those, who debated for years the comparative merits of the two main contending parties for leadership of the world proletariat, blush".

The book is divided into eight sections. The final portion carries pieces on 42 world-famous poets, playwrights and novelists. Here Sham Lal is at his best.

What is most striking here is the contrast between the crests optimism spread by the surfeit of bright images projected day and night by worldwide networks of television channels and the ennui, anomie, despair and metaphysical anguish to which some of the most sensitive spirits of the age give expression in their works.

And who are these great spirits? Samuel Beckett, Franz Kafka. I have no enthusiasm for Beckett, but Kafka is another matter, straight from the top drawer. W.B. Yeats, T.S. Eliot, Louis MacNeice, John Osborne - whose play Look Back in Anger changed the contours and substance of British theatre.

I much enjoyed Sham Lal's review of Michael Holroyd's biography of George Bernard Shaw, which closes with Yeats' comment: "When a man is so outrageously in the wrong as Shaw, he is indispensable."

Some of my literary heroes get special treatment in the book. Albert Camus, Boris Pasternak, Octavio Paz. Camus highlighted both the intensity and the absurdity of life. He could not figure out how to reconcile the demands of justice with liberty or freedom. I wish Sham Lal had quoted from Camus' lecture, which he gave after receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957. For Pasternak, my admiration verges on veneration. I must have read Dr. Zhivago at least half a dozen times. He is amongst the greatest lyrical poets of the 20th century. He was not a practical man - got himself into a mess by first accepting the Nobel Prize in 1958 and then turning it down under pressure from Communist Party hacks in the Writers' Union. I was deeply moved when I visited his dacha in Pedridilkino in 1961. Jawharlal Nehru admired him and once sent a table-clock to Pasternak to show his solidarity with the hounded poet. I am not sure if I agree with Sham Lal, that, "His sole idea in writing Doctor Zhivago was to give back to the convulsive events of the Revolution... not in a literal sense but in the poetic sense of a personal meaning". To my mind it was to get even with the Revolution and its excesses. The film Dr. Zhivago was a popular hit the world over, but it did scant justice to the genius of Boris Pasternak.

Finally, Sham Lal on Octavio Paz is absolutely brilliant: "In Paz's death, the world, with large parts of it under the sway of moral cretins, has lost a sane voice sensitive to the ignominy of a modernity gone berserk."

How very true.
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