SECRET SON by LAILA LALAMI

   I am writing this review of this novel, Secret Son by Laila Lalami(published by Viking, a Penguin Group,2010),from Kerala, a southern state in India. This is June, rainy season in this part of India. Drought  is something which we have heard of. Seasons do their role almost very punctually and we,therefore,get rain, hot weather,spring,winter etc in time. Although there have been exceptions, nature ‘s schedule seems to be fixed here every year. We therefore find it interesting when we read the beginning of ‘Secret Son’ with the sentence ‘Rain came unexpectedly, after nearly three years of drought. ‘But  Youssef’s and his mother’s living conditions are not unfamiliar to us. Especially ,a single room with grimy walls, doors and roof is what you can find even in our cities which can boast of skyscrapers.

   When it rains unexpectedly, the first priority of both the lady and her son is made clear. She grabs the soup pot by its ears and takes it to the one room home.Meanwhile,Youssef takes the framed black and white photo of his father who gazes back at him with the looks of a gentle man in his twenties.

   This beginning itself tells us about their meagre belongings and the novelist,Laila Lalami makes the setting clear. The narration is such that you never feel the pressure  to quit reading out of boredom. You read about Hay-An-Najat,a poverty stricken rural hilly area where the mother and her nineteen year old son live in one of the tin-roofed houses.

    In a moment of self realization,the teenager understands who he is: He is none other than a slum dweller, the son of a hospital clerk, a man with no illusions about his place in his society.

   The title ‘Secret Son’ denotes the secrecy behind his birth. Although his mother is known as a widow in Hay-An-Najat,the son is the fruit of her fornication, in a sense or in other words, a Mr Nabil Amrani,a well-known business tycoon of  Morocco is equally or more responsible for his birth. The unglittering realities surrounding the secret son leads him to the situations in which even running errands for his mother seems insurmountable for him. At a point, home becomes his only place to hide from the inquisitive eyes around.

   Youssef’s friend Amin tells him once:

   “I should have known better to befriend a son of a whore.”

   The words sting his heart leaving a stark burning sensation. The very thought of his existence tortures him.

   The novel  is introduced as a tale of contemporary Morocco. Where exactly is Morocco in the world map?

   I looked up the map to find it in Africa. It is only a few kilometres away from Spain too. We can guess the answer to the question why the country has not been a member of African union yet. As we know why  Indians are still proud of speaking English(at least the rank and file),we can understand why the ‘widow’-as Youssef’s mother is scornfully considered by the villagers-is said to put on airs, simply  because she can speak French flawlessly. Although it is a positive element in the society, it exacerbates the resentment of the people towards her.Similarly,Youssef’s half sister Amal is suspected  to be an Arab by a middle aged school registrar in the U S first.Later,when it is found out that she is from Morocco, the man says that she ‘does not look Arab’ in a tone that suggested it was a compliment. When she sells her car too, the American car dealer asks her if there are hidden explosives in it.

   The teenager Youssef goes in search of the secrecy behind his birth and finds Nabil Amrani,his rich father. He enjoys the affluence of his father’s set up for some time only to be  thrown to utter disappointment later. As his mother has often told him, ‘appearances are deceiving’ and he realizes it.

   The novel has four parts but it does not make any change in the serial number of its chapters. The part three ends with chapter 14.Then as we can see before the beginning of each part, words of a well-known writer are given. You  read the following words of Joseph Conrad before you enter chapter 15:

The way of even the most justifiable revolutions is prepared by personal impulses disguised into creeds.

   It hints at the catastrophe and tells us what can happen to secret sons or sons of poverty in a society into which Islamic fundamentalism digs its claws.

   We can find the novelist,Laila Lalami in both Rachida(Youssef’s mother),an embodiment of the morality of the rural poor  in a country like Morocco and Amal(Nabil Amrani’s daughter),a girl who prefers the American life style with her partner Fernando, a U S citizen, to the traditional life of a woman in one of the richest families in Morocco.

   I would say, here is a fantastic novel which takes you to many live issues of the contemporary world without letting you feel that it invites you to those issues deliberately.
http://youtu.be/3wD8lT-4EWg

THE ARCHITECTURE OF LANGUAGE by NOAM CHOMSKY

                               

Where shall I begin the review  of this book?

        It begins with the editors’ preface. The editors-Nirmalangshu Mukharji,Bibudhendra Narayan Patnaik and Rama Kant Agnihotri-  are Indians. They themselves are of the opinion that popular, prolonged and intellectual debates are seldom seen in Indian academic scene.But,in their view, Noam Chomsky’s lectures in India in 1996 generated unprecedented enthusiasm in the academic community here.

        The editors’ preface to the book indicates certain serious issues to be touched before we read Chomsky. One of them is the mere marginal realization of the general conceptual goals of a research programme generally.

        After the preface you have only two parts to read. The first one is Chomsky’s Delhi lecture in 1996 and the second, its discussion that ensued. The 30 pages of the lecture and the 38 pages of its discussion make the reading of this book a simple task. The remaining pages contain the preface and clarificatory notes.

      Although Chomsky’s Syntactic Structures was published in 1957,I did not get opportunity to read it even in early nineties.Meanwhile,the books which I read then on psychology published by Progress Publishers, Moscow could, in fact, present nothing much better than the behaviourist theories of learning. The two names which caught my attention in the books were  V I Lenin and Ivan Pavlov.

        ‘According to Lenin, mind is a highly organized matter.’

        The authors’ attempt seemed only to substantiate this point with the help of the history of psychology. The books  created an impression that Pavlov’s was probably the greatest contribution to psychology till then. Psychologists like Sigmund Freud were  thought to be in the idealists’ block.They,therefore,hardly give any significance to such well-known psychologists

         "A child’s brain is not a blank slate after birth but it is pre-equipped with a biologically determined ability to learn languages."


(-Chomsky in his Rules and Representations,I think)

         This was the statement that linked me to Chomsky’s world.Cognitivism was widely discussed in India and popularly prescribed grammar books such as ‘Guide to Structural Patterns’ by A.S.Hornby  became almost a joke later. In second language learning, mechanical drills lost their charm.Chomskian thoughts almost revolutionized the field. English teachers  everywhere experienced it.Besides,communists,especially the communists in Kerala, welcome Chomsky mainly because of his severe criticism of US foreign policy and the legitimacy of the US power. May be ,this has left him uncriticized by the communists to a great extent.

         The question,therefore,remained in my thoughts was this:

        How much do Chomsky’s views correspond to materialism- whether dialectical or not?

        Although it is apparent that language learning is not so simple as behaviorists analysed it, to me, Chomsky seems to mystify things a bit especially when he states in his Delhi lecture that ‘science is a strange activity and it only works for simple problems’.

        He further makes it clear as follows:

      “The idea that deep scientific analysis tells you something about problems of human beings and our lives and our inter-relations with one another and so on is mostly pretence in my opinion-self-serving pretence which is itself a technique of domination and exploitation and should be avoided.”

         An interesting detail in the beginning of his lecture is the following interaction of Chomsky with the audience:

“Can you hear me?”

(Section of the audience):No

If you say ‘no’, then you can.

         In ‘Discussion’, there are a number of serious questions from the audience and Chomsky’s answers to them. Some of the questions are anyway a bit funny(I do not mean they are silly).For example:

QUESTION:

Is it possible to have bilingual or trilingual children out of mixed marriages?

CHOMSKY:

It doesn’t make any difference. These things are all totally independent. It is like asking: Can you have long arms coming out of mixed marriages? Or an interest in Greek philosophy?

I am going to read two other books by Chomsky.See them below. 

Of these books, On Language(Penguin Books,2002) discusses linguistics mainly. Necessary Illusions-Thought Control in Democratic Societies(Viva Books Private Limited 2007) is Chomsky’s social criticism. I think, reading the two books  together will help me understand Chomsky better.An amalgam of his social criticism and linguistic theories in my mind........I am waiting for such an experience.I hope I will get something better to tell you then.

MYTHOLOGIES by ROLAND BARTHES

        " Idle reader,beware:you are about to begin a corrosive,insolent,strange,cold and yet witty book."

           Louis Althusser killed his wife during one of his bouts and ,in my view,that delineates his arguments to a certain extent.Whatever were his theoretical assumptions,what they led him to is sufficient for a critical reader to rethink of them.(Of course,it may be ridiculous to attribute his periodic mental illness to his 'thoughts'.Words from a 'sound' mind need not be better than those from a mind suffering from periodic bouts either.However,if you come to know that a teacher who has moralized a lot is a lesbian,you start reviewing her words.)
         I know these are not the right words to introduce Roland Barthes' Mythologies.Its significance cannot be belittled by any distractive thoughts either.I just want to say that there is a possibility to think of the mold when you see a pot.

         I have just read Mythologies by Roland Barthes.It was my second reading.I first read it about 20 years ago.I had studied neither linguistics nor ELT then.(I do not mean that one has to learn either of them to read Mythologies).I had no better understanding of the terms like ‘sign’ and ‘signified’.What prompted me to read such a book was a kind of enthusiasm-I thought of it as an intellectual curiosity then-that was aroused from the perusal of the essays by writers like Prof.K.Sachidanandan,who introduced  new lefts and a lot of post-colonial writers to the voracious readers in Kerala.But the revolutionary youth had already  realized the whims and fancies of some of their leaders.(For instance,read these words of Charu Majumdar,a leader of Naxal movement in India): 

“By the end of 70-s Hindustan will be full of the Red Army(Indian revolutionary forces) marching forward to sabotage the bourgeois government.” 

        In reality,anti-communist marchers stormed the streets of Moscow and brought about the downfall of the U.S.S.R –though in 1991-shattering the dreams of enthusiastic communists elsewhere.

        Let us come back to ‘Mythologies’.Roland Barthes started authoring those essays in the early fifties.The English version of the book was first published in 1972.Today you get the new copy of it with its introduction to the 2009 Edition.The quoted warning to the 'idle readers' under the title above is from the beginning of the introduction.

         Reading a book like ‘Mythologies’ gives us different meanings each time we read it.

         The prose style this time reminded me of a noted critic in Kerala, Prof.M.N.Vijayan.Probably there are some similarities at least in the way facts are elucidated by the both to substantiate their points.In an article,M.N.Vijayan draws the analogy of an elephant keeping intact the hook slanted on it by its mahout while he is away for his recreations, to connote the way the state apparatus keep us loyal and servile to its power.Similarly Roland Barthes exemplifies the myth of a wrestler whose gestures signify suffering,defeat and justice.

“The physique of the wrestlers therefore constitutes a basic sign,which like a seed contains the whole fight.But this seed proliferates,for it is at every turn during the fight, in each new situation,that the body of the wrestler casts to the public the magical entertainment of  a temperament which finds its natural expression in a gesture.”

Wrestling is ,therefore,like a diacritic writing.

       Referring to the Roman characters in films,he writes:

“The intermediate sign,the fringe of Roman-ness or the sweating of thought,reveals a degraded spectacle,which is equally afraid of simple reality and of total artifice.For although it is a good thing if a spectacle is created to make the world more explicit,it is both reprehensible and deceitful to confuse the sign with what is signified.And it is the duplicity which is peculiar to bourgeois art.”

In another article,he traces the mythological development of ‘ Holidays’.The essay titled ‘The Writer on Holidays’ analyzes the myth of being a writer in a bourgeois society.Bourgeois society liberally grants a glamorous status to its spiritual representatives so long as they remain ‘harmless’.

In ‘The Poor and the Proletariat’,Barthes analyzes Charlie Chaplin’s misconception of the poor and the proletariat.In his view,it makes Chaplin’s films like ‘Modern Times’ apolitical despite the fact that it has a proletarian theme.

         In ‘Novels and Children’ he begins with a comment on the photograph of 70 women novelists. A woman of letters is a ‘remarkable zoological species’

“Women are on the earth to give children to men;let them write as much as they like provided that they do not depart from their Biblical fate.”

These words of sarcasm bring out the attitude of the male chauvinist society.In his preface to the 1957 edition of ‘Mythologies’,Barthes writes:

“In the account given of our contemporary circumstances,I resented seeing Nature and History confused at every turn,and I wanted to track down,in the decorative display of what-goes-without-saying,the ideological abuse which,in my view, is hidden there.”

Roland Barthes was a structuralist.His autobiographical texts suggest that he was a homosexual too.I would say that these things are associated although that is not the topic to be discussed here right now.

“There are ,in any petit-bourgeois consciousness, small simulacra of the hooligan,the parricide,the homosexual,etc.,which periodically extracts from its brain,puts in the dock,admonishes and condemns:one never tries anybody but analogues who have gone astray:it is a question of direction,not of nature,for that’s how men are.”

He examines the myth on ‘the left’ and ‘the right’.On the right,the oppressor’s language is rich, multiform,supple,with all possible degree of dignity at its disposal.When the language of the oppressed aims at transforming,that of the oppressor aims at eternalizing.

Roland Barthes analyzes tautology too.To define poetry you quote poets like William Wordsworth and P.B.Shelley.But none of those definitions is found apt and finally,you say ‘poetry is poetry’.Barthes says that tautology is a faint at the right moment,a saving aphasia.It is a death or perhaps a comedy,the indignant ‘representation’ of the rights of  reality over and above language.

I remember what one of my friends,a teacher, said about her student who asked her the question ‘Why does one use the word ‘I’ to refer to oneself,when every thing else is called in the name of its own?’In her view,the student who asked such a question was a ‘moron’.

          As Barthes says, “The usual  reply at the end of ones tether is: ‘because that is how it is.’

          It is the reply when one is at the loss for an explanation indeed.

          Whatever may be his idea of myth,as the introduction to the 2009 edition of ‘Mythologies’ indicates,an idle reader may not be able to apprehend the profundity of its content.The book demands critical perusal each time you read it.


(Kindly feel free to comment on this review,which will undoubtedly keep me going.)

THE CASE OF THE POPE by GEOFFREY ROBERTSON

While-Reading Quotes
An excerpt from the extracts taken from the official transcript of the deposition of Bishop Curry in one of the cases brought against the church in Los Angeles for negligent supervision of paedophile priests, given below will certainly give you an idea as to what this book is all about:

Question:Did you believe in 1986 that you could be cured of molesting children?

Answer:I don't know that I had any belief about that.

Q:Did you know in 1986 that molesting a child was a crime?

A:Yes

Q:Did you call the police?

A:No

Q:Why?

A:He came in under........a confidential understanding with the church confessing to something that he had done and I believed that that was a confidential matter.

       The above quote is from one of the appendices given in the controversial book titled The Case of the Pope by Geoffrey Robertson.As the blurb claims,the author is a distinguished human rights lawyer and a judge who evinces a deep respect for the good works of Catholics and their church.He explains how Vatican or the Holy See as it is popularly called remains a serious enemy to the advances of  human rights.
       Saying it is not his purposes(or expertise) to explore the cases at a sociological level,Geoffrey Robertson presents his arguments in the style of a court order.
       Here goes another excerpt from the same book,not from the any appendix but from the first chapter itself:

.....In effect,the church has in many countries been running a parallel system of criminal justice, unbeknown-st to and deliberately hidden from the public,police and parliaments,in which the guilty went unpublished and the lips of their victims were sealed.

       How is it?Does it remind you of many problems around?Or is it a cancerous growth world wide?
      The book is probably an answer to the question.

THE FINKLER QUESTION by HOWARD JACOBSON

'United Kingdom is full of anti-Semites.Attacks against the Jew are on the increase.'
     This is the impression you get if you read Howard Jacobson's The Finkler Question,the Man Booker Prize won fiction in 2010.When I started reading the novel,it had only been shortlisted for the award.I hoped to read it easily as usual,in two or three days until I understood that the novel lacks a developing plot in which each chapter or division narrates something new chronologically.But you read about Julian Treslove, a middle aged man first.He has two friends by name Samuel Finkler ,a Philosopher and Libor Sevick an octogenarian who was their teacher once.
     The novel has two parts.Both the parts contain almost flashes of their reminiscence.Zionism, Antisemitism,the Holocaust etc are the terms that you read quite often in the novel.
    Being confused about the anti-Semitic rages of the British found in the novel,I  tried to get it clarified.I asked one of my friends in London about it.He had not even heard of it before.Then I met a couple from Briton who are now with BBC I think,during my tour to Munnar recently.The man said it would be highly exaggerated to say that the British are so much anti-Semitic in their outlook.
    The novel,anyway,gives us an account of such attacks in several countries.One thing I can assure you:
The Finkler Question is witty and rich in language.Those who are fed up with the English translations will find it as a treasure with a lot of original and beautiful English expressions.That is why I read it twice or thrice.Its detailed critical review will be added in a few days(I hope).Given below are the photos taken by me in Munnar in Kerala.In the first one,you can see the British lady I mentioned above,with my students.

  (  I hope you will not dislike the pics below,though they have nothing to do with the book reviewed here.)

A JOURNAL FROM KERALA

 Simply,for your Information

Journal of Literature & Aesthetics is published from Kerala.When the issue in the picture above  was published Dr.K .Ayyappa Panikker was its Chief Advisory Editor.Prof.Susan Basnett ( UK ),Prof.Jonh Oliver Perry  (USA) and 3 others were its Advisory Editors.Its Chief Editor is Dr.S.Sreenivasan.

You get an idea of its content from the cover itself.As a half-yearly Journal ,it is still published from Kollam.The word still is emphasized because I know what happens when you try to publish a scholarly journal.The following are the cover of the first and second issues of a journal published by me.Unfortunately the third issue is expected to be the last unless some miracle like the extension of support by its readers happens.Updating one's professional knowledge is, probably ,'not Indian's cup of tea'.So long as we get salary with the meager knowledge that we have,every attitude remains the same.

A FEW WHILE-READING QUOTES

I would like to quote a few interesting sentences from the book that I am reading now.'Finklerish' thoughts,'Finklerish' queries,'Finklerish' answers.......

Here they are:

Many a time Libor stood behind his wife Malkie while she played  her piano.Marvelling at her expertise,at the smell of  aloes and frankinese(all the perfumes of Arabia) that rose from her hair,and at the beauty of her neck.

A neck more graceful, he had told her the day they had met,than a swan's.Because of his accent,Malkie had thought he had said her neck was more graceful than a svontz,which had reminded her of a Yiddish word her father often used,meaning penis.Could Libor really have meant that her neck was more graceful than a penis?

Another excerpt:

'You think there is no such thing(anti-Semitism)?What do you say to St Paul,itching with a Jewishness he couldn't scratch away until he'd turned half the world against it?'
'I say thank you,Paul, for widening the argument.'
'You call that widening? Strait is the gate,remember.'
'That's Jesus, not Paul.'
'That's Jesus as reported by Jews already systematically Paulised.He couldn't take us on in the flesh so he extolled the spirit.You're doing the same in your own way.You're ashamed of your Jewish flesh.Have ranchmones on yourself. Just because you're a Jew doesn't mean you're a monster.'
'I don't think I'm a monster.I don't even think  you're a monster.I'm ashamed of Jewish,no,Israyeli actions-'

'GOOD BOY' WINS NOBEL PRIZE FOR LITERATURE

ON MARIO VARGAS LLOSA 

What do you mean when you say someone is a 'bad girl'?

        If she has many lovers at a time or she is not loyal to her husband ?Or if she drinks or smokes? Or if she does not dress well i.e. revealing those parts which are not good to be revealed in your society,for example, a  purdah clad woman showing her face in public?Or if she does not get married even after the age for marriage approved ideal by the society?
        Think of the possible answers by men from different parts of this tiny world of human beings.
       The Nobel laureate in Literature for 2010 has an answer to this question.He ,probably answered it in 2006 or 2007.That is why he gave the title 'Bad Girl' for his novel that year.And there are many reasons to believe that he is the 'good boy' mentioned in the novel,at least partially.
       I have only 3 other novels by Mario Vargas Llosa with me now.They are:1.Conversation in the Cathedral 2.In Praise of the Stepmother and 3.The Feast of the Goat.In most of his novels,bad girls have some thing to tell us about a similar world.

       As the title denotes,Conversation in the Cathedral is a conversation between Santiago,the son of a politician and Ambrossio,the politician's chauffeur.But you cannot expect a bishop in the vicinity because the Cathedral is,actually, a bar.The novel is,in fact, a 32 or 33 year old novelist's(Llosa's) impression of  Peru under Manuel Odría between 1948 and 1957.

        In Praise of the Stepmother is almost a literary erotica.Praising one's stepmother in such an erotic way amounts to incest.The narration,however,deserves comment,especially the shift from erotic fantasies to mythic recreations. The beautiful paintings with which its chapters are interspersed also make the novel different.In some readers' opinion,the novel is nothing less than pornography.The three characters-Don Rigoberto,his son Fonchito and his stepmother Lucrecia make an unusual threesome who love one another in their own way.The boy probably cannot see anybody in place of his own mother.That is why she is subjected to his carnal desires.Parent-child relationship and husband-wife relationship in this novel reflect the inventive imagination and ability of the novelist.Nevertheless the stepmother-son affair is nauseating even though the artistry of the writer as a story teller is of infinite sophistication.

         Compared to this novel,The feast of the Goat is free from excessive erotic descriptions.Its thrust is  the gory fangs of oligarchy.A 14 year old girl is brutally raped-in a peculiar manner-by the tyrant Trujillo.The most unfortunate thing is her father's role in this incident.The rape is revealed only in the last chapter of the novel.The protagonist Urania Cabral's detestation of amorous advances of men around her is the result of this heinous incident.As we read we get a clearer picture of the impact of oligarchy on the minds of Peru.Llosa weaves history into his narration so beautifully.That is his narrative technique without which the novels may not be of much seriousness.
          The 'good boy ' Ricardo Somocuricio is an expatriate except on a few occasions in the novel 'The Bad Girl'.
         The first chapter is set in his own country Peru.The bad girl is Lily while in Peru.She is believed to be a Chilean girl.It is this status that makes the boys glue to the girl.But before long the mysteries related to the 'Chilean' girl are clarified.She was not a Chilean at all ! She was a cheap girl from some neighborhood who passed herself off as a foreigner and slipped in among the decent natives of Peru.

         In the second chapter,we see her as a guerrilla fighter-a comrade who was selected to experience the fever of the Cuban Revolution.Llosa writes that Paris was teeming with young people from the five continents in the early days of the 1960s.Ricardo meets her in Paris.She is Comrade Arlette now.
         Once,as they are having a chat, he tells her about his examination.Then she asks him to cross his fingers and knock a table three times for passing the exam.To provoke her Recardo asks her if those kinds of superstition are compatible with scientific doctrine of Marxism-Leninism."To get what you want,anything goes" was her reply.
         She proves it with her life.She leads her life very cunningly to get what she wants.She is Madame Robert Arnoux next time,the wife of a high-ranking UNESCO official.Nevertheless, we find her going to bed with Ricardo,although she is indifferent.She makes no corresponding movements while being kissed or caressed.'Her body seemed like an iceberg'.She is not loyal to anybody.Next she is Mrs.Richardson.
        A character,a hippy, by name Juan Barreto says,

"The secret to happiness,at least to peace of mind,is knowing how to separate sex from love"

        When Ricardo approaches her this time,she rudely tells him to let go of her calling him a fucking beast.But later she gives in - with her proverbial indifference,without the slightest gesture of reciprocity.Later we find her as the mistress of a Japanese businessman Fukuda.Thus wherever she goes Ricardo happens to be there as usual.
        Finally she becomes his wife.Readers probably learn to differentiate sex and love,to separate sex from life.When she is bed ridden due to chancre he nurses her(before marriage).After waking up from a deep sleep she asks :

"I ruined your night,didn't I,Ricardito?"
Ricardo replies:
"And you'll ruin my day too.Because you're going to stay here in,in bed.No arguments allowed.The time has come for me to impose my authority over you,bad girl"

She is also justified for telling lies:

"Living in the fiction gave her reasons to feel more secure,less threatened than living in the truth than in a lie"

They get married on an autumn in October 1982(They met in 1950) and that same afternoon he had to leave for Rome with a two week contract at Food and Agricultural Organization. But do not think that he wants to lead a typical conjugal life.The novel that is  narrated from the point of view of Ricardito goes on like this:

At times it was difficult for me to see her leading a life that was so normal,enjoying her work and,it seemed to me,happy in, or at least resigned to,our petit bourgeois life,working hard all week,preparing supper at night,going to the movies,the theater,an art show,or a concert,eating out on weekends,almost always by ourselves.....

It tells us a lot about Mario Vargas Llosa's view of life.It also tells us about his profound knowledge of Marxism as well.Even after giving up Marxism,he is not free from its influence.May be that is what made him a  writer whose works are historically significant.
         Mario Vargas Llosa deserves Nobel Prize.(It is said to be a baptism to anti-communist block too.)As some readers opine,  Nobel Prize came too late for Llosa.

THE ELEPHANT'S JOURNEY by Jose Saramago

A 16 th Century Royal Entourage 

into the Heart of Today

         Reading of a novel varies from place to place, from time to time. When a Portuguese novelist involves Indian and Austrian cultures in his novel, it can be reviewed from different angles .The words may have different connotations too.

         The novel The elephants journey by Jose Saramago centres around two names mainly: Solomon, an elephant and Subro, its mahout. Both are of Indian orgin.It is mentioned that Subro and the elephant are black, especially among the white Portuguese, although it has nothing to do with racial discrimination.

         Historically, an Indian elephant travelled on foot from Lisbon to Vienna in the 16^th century. Several parts of India were Portuguese colony then.

         It was in 1551 that the Portuguese king John 3^rd decided to give an Indian elephant as his wedding gift to Maximillian , the Archduke of Vienna. Transporting the gift was obviously a difficult task. There was no other way for the king than to walk the elephant the long distance from Lisbon to Vienna. The unusual gift was 'something valuable and most striking' in the words of the king in Saramago’s novel.

          The real entourage from the Portuguese coast through Spain and over the Alps to Austria must have been tedious as they had to cross such a vast, monotonous land. But Saramago invents history by imagining the details of the real-life journey.

          An Indian elephant was entirely new to the people they passed by. It provides ground for Saramago to skew reality for satiric purposes .The winter himself interrupts the flow of narration by his witty reflections on human nature.

         The elephant becomes an embodiment of many misconceptions. At a point, a character says that god is an elephant, to which the priest who listened to replies 'god is in all creatures but none of them is god'.

         The mahout discusses religion with the fellow travellers. Being a Hindu, he has his own views on Christanity.But  the views from an outsider are not welcomed with ease by the others. When Subro tries to glorify the myth behind the Hindu deity Ganesh , it is

belittled  as fairy tales by a soldier .Subro retorts that it is ‘like the one about the man who , having died rose on the third day’. He also neglects the blasphemous remark that Parvathi /Kali ,one of the Hindu goddesses, could have been called a centipede if she had hundred legs instead of hundred hands. I do not know how a true devotee of Parvathi will take the comment whether it is by the soldier or Saramago himself. Anyway his comments on the trinities in both Christianity and Hindu mythology will not be read by an Indian and a Portuguese  alike. The word elephant itself probably connotes Ganesh in India whereas it is only a pachyderm with amusing proportions of body ('a trunk like that of no other animal in creation the elephant could never be the product of anyone’s imagination'- novel)in many other  countries .The term pachyderm is  used for elephant in many places in the novel. Only the translator knows what the original term used in the Portuguese script is. Mostly, it will be difficult to translate the term pachyderm to Indian languages. In addition to the mahout Subro and two men exclusively to assist him, the convoy constituted the men in charge of food and water supplies, the cavalry troop with its commanding officer responsible for security along the way and a quartermaster in a wagon drawn by two mules. Besides, the ox-carts bearing the water trough and loads of fodder made it unique. It is indeed irrational to expect all the animals to keep up the same pace. The crisis begins there. The rest is fun. The attitude of the people on the way, the probable threat of robbers, adverse climate, availability of water, shelter to spend nights-everything mattered.

         A people’s perception of other peoples is also worth discussing. It refers to the concept of hierarchy in every society. The commanding officer and his soldiers have some preoccupations about the general attitude of Austrians and Spaniards. Certain attitudes can insult human dignity easily. For example, see this excerpt from the novel:

         You never can tell with Spaniards they’ve been very cocky since they’ve had an emperor, and it will be even worse if, instead of the Spaniards, the Austrians appear, Are they bad people ,asked the commanding officer, They think that they’re superior to anyone else, That’s a common sin.

        The episodes in which a priest tries to sprinkle the elephant’s head with ‘holy water’ (in fact, water taken directly from the kitchen without having been touched by the empyrean) and gets kicked, gently though, the elephant forced to kneel in Padua and it raises a girl into air when everyone expects it to trample her etc. are quite natural in the eyes of the people who are familiar to the behaviour of an elephant. But, here, to the onlookers who are totally new to it, the elephant is divine or a wonderful creature.

        The boring journey, however, becomes a delight for the most part in the novel, The idea of writing a long story based on such a journey occurred to Saramago during a dinner arranged at a restaurant called the Elephant in Slazburg. The writer acknowledged his gratitude to Ms. Gilda, a Portuguese leitora at the University of Salzburg for inviting him for a talk to her students without which, he said, he would not have thought of such a plot.

         The novel contains neither sex nor violence. A reader new to his novels will take time to get used to the long sentence with sparingly used full stops and dialogues without quotation marks. We can ascribe it to his being an anarchist communist, a person who snipes at political establishments.

        To Jose Saramago, ‘literature is one of the richest springs from which the spirit can drink’

        History attests that Suleiman, the elephant which was called Solomon in Lisbon died in 1553. Subro, the mahout who was renamed as Fritz, had to leave Vienna on a mule. Suleiman’s body parts were kept as relics. A chair was made out of its bones and kept in the abbey at Kremsmunster. His tough hide was stuffed and later kept in the Old Academy in Munich and then in the Bavarian National Museum until a bombing wiped it off during the Second World War.

        The novel tells us that Solomon and Suleiman or David and Dawood are the regional variants of the same name. Whether you call something using the speech sounds of your language or those of some other language, the thing will remain the same. In course of time, it might take several other names as well. Nevertheless, your insistence on naming something in your own language is indeed a matter to be discussed.