Modern Mind

Muslims to execute them quickly, wherever they find them, so that no one will dare to insult the Islamic sanctions. Whoever is killed on this path will be regarded as a martyr, God willing. In addition, anyone who has access to the author of the book, but does not possess the power to execute him, should refer him to the people so that he may be punished for his actions. May God’s blessing be on you all.’ 31
    Inside forty-eight hours, Rushdie and his wife had gone into hiding, where he would remain except for brief forays into the limelight, for nearly ten years. In subsequent months, the ‘Rushdie affair’ claimed many headlines. Muslims in Britain and elsewhere staged public burnings of the tide; ten thousand demonstrated against the book in Iran, and in Rushdie’s native Bombay ten people were killed when police opened fire on demonstrators. 32 In all, twenty-onepeople died over
The Satanic Verses,
nineteen on the Indian subcontinent, two in Belgium. 33
    Like Salman Rushdie, V. S. Naipaul’s novels – his later novels especially – generally concern people living outside their native context. He himself was born in Trinidad, a second-generation Indian, moved to England to attend Oxford, and has remained there ever since, except to research a remarkable series of travel books.
    Naipaul is less concerned with faith than Rushdie, and has more in common with Anita Desai’s fascination with modernisation and technological change, though he uses this to reflect his preoccupation with the nature of freedom. A
House for Mr. Biswas
(1961) ostensibly follows the building of a house. At the same time Naipaul deconstructs Mr. Biswas himself. 34 His facility for sign writing leads him out of the prison of poverty and into a marriage where he is trapped, but in a different way. Sign writing leads to other forms of writing, letters to his son mainly. As he discovers language, like a writer discovers language, so Biswas discovers another layer of freedom. But total freedom, Naipaul infers, is not only impossible but undesirable. Fulfilment comes from loving and being loved, a status Biswas achieves, but it is not freedom. In
The Mimic Men
(1968), the scene has shifted to England, not the dream England that a poor Trinidadian might conceive of but the drab, suburban England of the immigrant, with the endless fresh attempts to get going on a career, the chronic tiredness, and the poor sense of self that comprise modern city life. 35 Again, freedom boils down to one struggle replacing another. The later books –
In a Free State
(1971), which won the Booker Prize,
Guerrillas
(1975), and
A Bend in the River
(1979) – are more nakedly political, juxtaposing political and private freedom in deliberately jarring ways. 36 In the 1971 book, two white people, Linda and Bobby, drive back to their expats’ compound through a black African state laid low by civil war. Their politics differ – Bobby is a liberal homosexual, Linda a bombastic right-winger. Naipaul is asking how they can enjoy so many freedoms at home when they can’t agree on anything. In the car, there is civil war between them.
    In his films, Satyajit Ray (1921–1992) embodied a bit of Desai, a part of Narayan, and aspects of Rushdie and Naipul, and this is because he was more than a filmmaker. He was a commercial artist, a book designer, an author of children’s books and science fiction, and a celebrated musician. He began as a filmmaker when, in 1945, he was asked to illustrate a children’s version of a popular novel,
Pather Panchali. 37
Ray had the idea instead of turning the novel into a film; he set about it with no experience of filmmaking, trying his hand at weekends (it never had a proper script). 38 The project took ten years and was only finished after Ray several times ran out of money, when the Bengali government stepped in with funds. 39 Despite its unpropitious beginnings, the film was a triumph and became the first in a trilogy of trilogies, for which Ray became famous: the Apu Trilogy (
Aparajito
, 1956, with music by Ravi Shankar, and
The World of Apu,
1960), the Awakening Woman trilogy (including, most notably,
Charulata,
‘The Lonely Wife,’ 1964, still very popular), and a trilogy of ‘city’ films, which included
The Middleman
(1975). 40 Ray’s films have alsobeen described as a mixture of Henry James and Anton Chekhov, though they are marked by an emotional generosity that James, certainly, rarely showed. But the strength of Ray