States of Mind

The other night I went to a party and had a spirited discussion with a woman wearing two long earrings. The earrings hung down to her shoulders and barely moved though as we talked her expression changed like a weather system. The change was due to a sudden and unexpected turn into political territory. As we talked, a stubbornness set in me like jello, a refusal to let a comment just be despite my wobbling over whether to just change the subject. This was a party. But I couldn’t let the conversation go. I tried to persuade her that some of her remarks did a disservice to the ideals I thought we both supported. By the end the woman was visibly upset. Then, a beatific expression came over her. The sudden change startled me and I worried that I had offended her. No, she assured me gently, and drifted away.

I recently finished reading the first two books in the Raj Quartet (The Jewel in the Crown; The Day of the Scorpion). I started the Quartet, wanting an easy and engaging view into Indian history. It turns out the books are not so much about India but about British colonial power. The stories are guided by a predominately British cast of characters, whose concerns about class are transplanted to foreign soil. Yet every character, including those most confident in their national mission, cannot escape a pervasive sense of statelessness. Ahmed, the son of a respected Indian politician who is disgraced by the traitorous actions of his other, more beloved son, narrates:

“What was sad was the act that his father was not looking for a country for himself but for his sons, and they could never inhabit it because a country was a state of mind and a man could properly exist only in his own. In his father’s India, the India his father was, Ahmed himself was an exile; but an exile from where he didn’t know…”

Exile is the major isolating force for all characters, most notably Hari Kumar – whose tragic life story connects the first and second books. Kumar is of Indian descent and raised in London, forced to move to India after the sudden death of his father. Brutal consequences result from the psychic split in how Kumar sees himself versus how he is seen by Indian and British in India. Though perfectly described, Kumar's trials do not shed light on the Indian side of the British colonial story. In other words, the thing I found missing was discussion of Indian opinions for an independent state. The reader senses anti-British sentiment but the sentiment basically functions as setting for volatility and violence suffered by mostly British characters. We understand the violence from one vantage. And perhaps that is best. The Raj Quartet is an ambitious and epic work of fiction about colonial rule in its twilight years. It does not attempt to be a comprehensive historical record of that time. The poet Phillip Larkin once wrote, “Truly, though our element is time,/ We are not suited to the long perspectives/ Open at each instant of our lives.” More than gaining an understanding of Indian history during British colonial rule, the books narrate the personal stories of British characters facing the end of colonial reign – which is a kind of history lesson, though not the one I expected.

When I finished Scorpion, I thought of the woman at the dinner party because of how I had dug my heels in. Her expression had fallen as we talked, her voice rising, and the language she spoke was one I rejected. I thought about how we both fought for control over ground we each believed ourselves to better represent. And her look, that final, beatific look – unreadable and suggesting OK and that her mind was made up.