CHAPTER-I

INTRODUCTION

1

The present study attempts an in-depth analysis, interpretation, evaluation and

exploration of the major themes in Timeri N Murari‘s selected novels like, The Field

of Honor (1981), The Imperial Agent (1987), The Last Victory (1987), The Taj (1985),

The Enduring Affairs (1991), The Arrangement of Love (2005), Four Steps from

Paradise (2006), The Small House (2007). The study explores the major themes such

as Imperial tendencies, East-West encounter, love and sex in the life of upper-class

Indians, corridors of history and treachery and exploitation in Timeri N Murari‘s

novels. He deals with the colonized mind of Indians, alienation, loss of identity, loss

of faith as well. This study traces political and socio-economic milieu of Murari‘s

time and its impact on his works. It traces out the overall contribution of Timeri

Murari in the historical growth and development of Indian writing in English in

particular and the place of Murari‘s literature in the world literature in general.

In order to know the place of Timeri Murari in the tradition of Indian literature

it becomes mandatory to take a critical survey of Indian writing in English fiction.

One of the most notable gifts of English education to India is prose fiction in English.

Though India was the fountain-head of story-telling, the novel was an importation

from the West. Sanskrit literature had a tradition of prose fiction. Dandin's

Dasa'Kumara Charita, (6th

century), Subandhu's Vasavadutta (late 6th

or early 7th

century) and Bana Bhatta's Kadambari (first half of the 7th century) are noted

examples. Sanskrit criticism makes distinction between two types of fiction. The

Akhyayika built around real people and the Katha whose plot was pure invention.

The earliest specimens of Indian English fiction were tales. Their use of

fantasy shows their links with the ancient Indian tradition. Kylash Chunder Dutt's A

Journey of 48 Hours of the Year appeared in The Calcutta Literary Gazette on 6 June

2

1835. The author has narrated the story of an imaginary revolt against the British rule

a hundred years later. Shoshee Chunder Dutt‘s Republic‟ of Orissa: Annals from the

Pages of the Twentieth Century depicted an imaginary British defeat leading to the

establishment of a democratic republic in Orissa.

Bankim Chandra Chatterjee's Rajmohan's Wife (1864) is a melodramatic story

of the trials of suffering middle class. Its overt didacticism also has its roots in the

Sanskrit tradition of the didactic tale. The urge for social reform was a significant

aspect of the Indian renaissance of the nineteenth century. It naturally became an

important theme in some early Indian English fiction. The questions that engaged the

minds of some of these novelists were the position of women, the plight of the

peasants and the decay of the old aristocracy. Shevantibai M. Nikambe's Ratanbai: A

Sketch of a Bombay High Caste Hindu Young Wife (1895) is an overt plea for female

education. It depicts the successful struggle of a Hindu girl married at the age of nine

to secure education, in spite of strong opposition from her in-laws. R. C. Dutt's The

Lake of Palms: A Story of Indian Domestic Life (1902) strongly advocates widow

marriage. Peasant life is the theme of Lal Behari Day's Govinda Samanta or The

History of a Bengal Raiyat (1874). In his Nasrin, An Indian Medley (1911) Sardar

Jogendra Singh presents a realistic study of decadent aristocratic life in North India.

The political theme is hardly to the fore in the fiction of this phase as the day

of large scale organized political activity then was far off. Sanat Kumar Ghose's The

Prince of Destiny: The New Krishna (1909) is an early attempt to deal with it. The

novel depicts an enlightened Rajput prince of the later nineteenth century who

symbolizes the union of the best in the East and the West. The novel ends with a

fervent hope for a stronger bond between Britain and India. A bond of mutual

3

understanding, appreciation, goodwill and the assurance that before long ―India will

be the most ultra-British portion of the British Empire in partnership."1

The religious life forms the chief motif in two prominent novels. B. R. Rajam

Iyer‘s unfinished novel, True Greatness or Vasudeva Sastri (serialized in Prabuddha'

Bharata, 1896-98; published in book form, 1925) offers an idealized portrait of a hero

who has attained the stature of the Sthitaprajna of the Gita, while at the same time

exposing the charlatan Siddha, whose pseudo-magical tricks fool some people for

some time. A Madhaviah's Thillai Govindan (1916) (first published pseudonymously

as A Posthumous Autobiography edited by Pamba (1908) is an absorbing account of

the mental development of a contemporary south Indian Brahmin youth, who loses his

faith temporarily under the impact of western education but regains peace after his

rediscovery through the Gita.

Another type of fiction which made a fairly early appearance was historical

romance. Prominent examples are Mirza Moorad Alee Beg's Lalun, the Beragun, or

The Battle of Panipat (1888); T. Ramakrishna's Padmini (1903), A Dive For Death

(1911); R.C. Dutt's The Slave Girl of Agra (1909), Jogendra Singh‘s Nur Jahan: The

Romance of an Indian Queen (1909), Svarna Kumari Ghosal's The Fatal Garland

(1915); and A. Madhaviah Clarinda (1915). The historical period covered from Tamil

times (A Dive for Death) to Maratha history (Lalun, the Beragun). While the locale

ranges from the South (Padmini) to Agra and Delhi (The Slave Girl of Agra and Nur

Jahan) to Bengal (The Fatal Garland). Some of the early fictions are

autobiographical. As already noted in both Madhaviah's Thillai Govindan and

Nikambe's Ratanbai, the autobiographical element is thinly disguised. Krupabai

Satthianadhan's Kamala: A Story of Hindu Life (1895) and Saguna: A Story of Native

4

Christian Life (1895) are autobiographies in fictional form. Even in Toru Dutt's

Bianca (1876), the heroine appears to be a self-portrait, in view of her ―dark colour",

"dark brown eyes . . . large and full" and her "long black curls."2 John B. Alphonso-

Karkala aptly remarks that, "Toru's treatment of her heroine leaves one to wonder of

the portrait of Bianca may not reflect, to some extent, Toru's own feelings and

attitudes. Some of the attitudes are more likely to be Indian than European."3

K. S. Ramamurti maintains that the early Indian English novelists were not

imitators but conscious experimenters who adopted an alien form and medium to

socio-cultural situation and sensibility. It is possible that the sentimental romances of

Mrs. Henry Wood (1814-87) and numerous other novels could have influenced early

Indian-English social novelists. Their work shows the same appetite for a world in

which issues are generally simplified, with innocence meekly suffering to triumph in

the end, while vice, flourishing for time, meets its deserts.

The poor technical value in early Indian English fiction indicates an art in its

primary lives. This fiction faithfully copies many of the sins of its models. Their

construction, their tendency to divide people into good and bad and their passion for

authorial intrusion are noticeable.

The only evidence of experimentation in this early fiction is to be found in

Rajmohan's Wife (1864), which uses Indian

words liberally in the descriptive

passages. But it is pertinent to note that Chatterjee's use of Indianism is generally

limited to the employment of Indian words denoting objects (e.g. 'Sari,' 'dhoti 'pan',

'anchal', 'noth', „mahal‟, 'supari', 'Kacheri') alone makes no attempt to impart a

specifically Indian coloring to his style by literally translating into English colourful

expletives, proverbs and expressions etc., from an Indian language.

5

The Gandhian whirlwind blew across the country during 1920-1947.

Established political notions started vanishing from the scene under the dynamic

leadership of Mahatma Gandhi. New ideas and methods appeared, not only in the

political field but in almost every walk of Indian life. The impact of the Gandhian

movement on the Indian English literature resulted into the sudden flowering of

realistic novels during nineteen thirties. Novelists turned their attention away from the

past to concentrate on contemporary issues. Prevailing social and political problems

were given prominence. The nationwide movement of Gandhi not only inspired

Indian English novelists but also provided them with some prominent themes such as

the struggle for freedom, the East-west encounter, the communal problem and the

miserable condition of the untouchables, the landless poor, the downtrodden, the

economically exploited and the oppressed people.

By 1930s Indian English literature was more than a century old. It had not

produced a single novelist with a substantial output so far. Then came a sudden

flowering when the Gandhian age (1920-1947) had reached its highest point of glory

during the Civil Disobedience Movement of the thirties. It provided a fertile soil for

fiction. Three major Indian English novelists Mulk Raj Anand, R.K. Narayan and

Raja Rao began their career during this phase. It was the period in which Indian

English fiction discovered some of its most significant themes related to common

people. It shifted its focus from classes to masses.

The tradition of the novel of social portraiture set by Rajmohan's Wife (1864)

was considerably diversified in this phase. Mulk Raj Anand's novels deal with the

plight of the untouchables in Untouchable (1935), the landless peasant in Coolie

(1936), the exploitation of the tea-garden workers in Two Leaves and a Bud, (1937);

6

and the problems of Industrial labour in The Big Heart (1945). Anand‘s realism is

unsparing, but his humanistic faith and humanitarian compassion often colour his

narratives so strongly that they cause varying degrees of damage to the prime artistic

values in novel. K. S. Venkataramani offers a more clear view of social reforms in his

Murugan the Tiller (1927). The hero, Ramu, founds an ideal rural colony on

Gandhian principles in the end. A. S. P. Ayyar punctuates his narrative in Balnditya

(1930) with the evils of the caste system, pseudo-religiosity, etc.

The social novel of the period aimed at faithful portrayal of the changing

social scene. K. Nagarajan's Athavar House (1937) is a family chronicle dealing with

a Maharashtrian Vaishnava Brahmin settled in south. The action is spread over almost

a generation. It covers the economic vicissitudes in the life of the joint family

relationships and the inevitable clash between orthodoxy and new ideas. It is an

authentic picture of a social phenomenon is the joint family chronicle. Dhan Gopal

Mukherji's autobiographical novel, My Brother's Face (1926) offers an evocative

picture of changing India in limited scope. His narrator returns to India after twelve

years spent in the west and notices the altered face of his native land. He finds "the

best of the seventeenth century at war with the best of the twentieth."4

The realism of Mukherji's narratives of jungle and rustic life Hari, the Jungle Lad

(1924) and Ghond the Hunter (1929) is patently doctored. These novels produce the

impression that they have been written with an eye on the foreign reader. For a more

authentic picture of the Indian village in early twentieth century, one has to turn to

Mulk Raj Anand's The Village (1939). His Across the Black Waters (1941) is a

perceptive account of World War I seen through the eyes of an Indian.

7

R.K. Narayan began his series of Malgudi novels with Swami and Friends

(1935). He is a single-minded practitioner of the novel of local colour. He has

produced his best works after Independence. His notable novels are: The English

Teacher (1945), Mr. Sampath (1949), The Bachelor of Arts (1951), Waiting for

Mahatma (1955), The Financial Expert (1958), The Dark Room (1960), The Man-

eater of Malgudi (1961), The Guide (1963), The Vendor of Sweets (1967), etc.

With the intensification of the freedom-struggle during the Gandhian era the

political theme loomed large in the fiction of the period. K.S.Venkatramani's Kandan,

The Patriot: A Novel of New India (1932) is a picture of civil disobedience

movement. While Anand deals with Gandhism and Communism in The Sword and

the Sickle (1942), Raja Rao's Kanthapura (1938) is the finest evocation of the

Gandhian age in Indian English fiction. This story of a small south Indian village

probes the depths to which the nationalistic urge penetrated and rediscovers the Indian

soul. None of the other political novels of the period attains the excellence of

Kanthapura. K.A. Abbas in his The Tomorrow is Ours: A Novel of the Indian of

Today (1943) deals with nationalism, leftism and denunciation of fascism. C.N.

Zutshi's Motherland (1944) is combination of romance and politics in the field of

fiction. N.S. Phadke's Leaves in the August Wind (1947) also depicts political

development.

The novelists of the Gandhian age were so much preoccupied with the politics

of the day that they had little occasion to turn to the past. Hence we encounter only

one serious practitioner of historical novel during this period. A.S.P. Ayyar went back

to ancient Indian history with the Indian present always uppermost in his mind. Three

Men of Destiny (1939) is set against the background of Alexander's invasion of India

8

in fourth century B.C. He maintains that nothing is more appropriate in the present

glorious renaissance period of India, ―than depicting the story of the time when India

first came into violent contact with the greatest and most civilized nation in Europe

then — the Greeks."5

As a keen student of history, he shows deep knowledge of the

Indian past whether of the Maurya age as in Three Men of Destiny or of the Maratha

period as in Sivaji (1944). His grasp of historical fact is stronger than his artistic

imagination and hence his novels became popular.

Few novels were written during this time about life in Muslim households.

Their most characteristic note is a nostalgic presentation of the decay of Muslim

culture. Ahmed Ali's Twilight in Delhi (1940) aims at depicting the decay of a whole

culture, a particular mode of thought and living. Ali does not relate it to the larger

forces in the composite Hindu-Muslim world outside meaningfully enough. In his

later novel, Ocean of Night (1964) he captures the spirit of leisurely Lucknow

aristocratic life. Iqbalunnisa Hussain's Purdah and Polygamy: Life in an Indian

Muslim Household (1944) offers an equally intimate picture of a traditional Muslim

mercantile household seen through sensitive feminine eyes. Humayun Kabir's Men

and Rivers (1945) depict the East Bengal riverside scene affected by the changing

moods of the river Padma and their impact on the lives of the fisher-folk.

The novels of K.S. Venkataramani and A.S.P. Ayyar did not show much

awareness of the new technical strategies in twentieth century fiction. For instance, in

Kandan the Patriot: A Novel of New India in the Making (1932) the hero has a

prophetic dream before he dies. He makes a long speech of patriotic exhortation on

his death-bed. Likewise, Ayyar's historical novels are episodic chronicles with

9

Baladitya sporting about seventy-five characters and Three Men of Destiny (1939),

one hundred and sixty-three characters.

With Anand's Untouchable (1935), the Indian English novel becomes truly

experimental in technique. He makes the entire narrative a presentation of a single

day's happenings and attempts to probe the thought-processes of his protagonist. He

employed the Joycean device of presenting a single day's events in the life of a hero.

In The Big Heart (1935) Anand found the roomy form of the Dickensian and the

Russian novel more convenient for the expression of his humanist and humanitarian

convictions. In other novels he consciously gave an Indian colouring to his style by

his bold importation of Indianisms into his dialogue. R.K. Narayan‘s significant

experiments with technique in The Guide (1958) and The Man Eater of Malgudi

(1962) came after Independence. In Kanthapura (1938), Raja Rao adopted the form of

the Hindu Sthala-Purana and the Harikatha with their mixture of narration,

description, religious discourse, folk-lore etc. While telling a story of the freedom-

struggle in a small south Indian village Kanthapura he also translated Indian words,

expletives and idioms from his native Kannada into English.

After independence India had many challenges to face and many changes

came over Indian life. Complications took place in social, political, economic and

cultural spheres but India handled it all thoughtfully and adequately. The fact of being

independent and having its own identity spurred Indian English writing. It provided

the writer with self-confidence, broadened his vision and sharpened his self

examining faculty. As a result of these developments important gains were registered

in fiction, poetry and criticism. Fiction grew in both variety and stature.

10

The first remarkable feature of post-independence Indian English fiction is the

consolidation of their reputations by the leading trio of Anand, Narayan and Raja Rao.

The graph of Anand's achievement has never followed a steady course; it exhibited

bewildering ups and downs. It is possible to maintain that his first novel Untouchable

(1935) still remains his finest work. His Seven Summers (1951), Morning Face (1970)

and Confession of a Lover (1976) promise to be an impressive fictional statement.

R.K.Narayan was finally able to enlist his good-humoured irony as a serious moral

concern by creating thoughtful fiction. It has its centre in Malgudi but has a

circumference embracing the entire human conditions. All the three novels treat the

theme of nemesis impressively. They raise significant questions such as, the role of

the class-nexus in modern society in The Financial Expert (1952), appearance and

reality in The Guide (1958) and the fate of evil in human life in The Man-eater of

Malgudi (1962). Raja Rao's The Serpent and the Rope (1960) is one of the greatest

Indian English novels. As an enactment of east-west confrontation and as a

philosophical novel, it has gained a perennial place in India‘s fictional world.

While the momentum gained by fiction during the Gandhian age was

sustained after independence by major novels, the new writers appeared on the scene.

With the exception of All about H. Hatterr (1948) by G.V.Desani, the achievement of

the post-independence novelists could not match Anand and his two major

contemporaries. Bhabani Bhattacharya‘s first novel was published within a few

months of Independence. He continued the tradition of social realism and social

purpose in fiction. Sometimes his tendency to present neat and machine-made

contrasts and easy romantic solutions blunts the edge of his social purpose. So Many

Hungers (1947) is a starkly realistic study of the Bengal famine of the early forties. S.

11

Menon Marath‘s Vignettes of Kerala Life is evocative. His study of the disintegration

of a traditional matriarchal Nayar family in Wound of Spring (1960) is noticeable.

Contribution of women novelists is also considerable. Depiction of the social

scene has always been the strong suit of women novelists. In a series of novels

beginning with To Whom She Will (1955), Ruth Prawer Jhabvala offers engaging

comedies of north Indian urban middle class life. Kamala Markandaya's pictures of

rustic life in Nectar in a Sieve (1954) and Two Virgins (1973) are superficial. Her

attempt at low class urban realism in A Handful of Rice (1966) is unconvincing. Venu

Chitale‘s In Transit (1950) is a story of three generations of a Poona Brahmin joint

family between the two World Wars. Rama Mehta's Inside the Haveli (1977) is an

absorbing account of Rajasthan Purdah life. Zeenuth Futehally's Zohra (1951) depicts

the princely state of Hyderabad in the Gandhian age as its setting. Attia Hosain‘s

Sunlight on a Broken Column (1961) is a nostalgic account of aristocratic life in pre-

partition Lucknow. Perin Bharucha presents Parsi in Life in Fire Worshippers (1968).

Ethnological studies by men are equally interesting including B.K. Karanjia's novel of

Parsi life in Bombay: More of an Indian (1970) and Leslie de Noronha's account of

Colonial Goan life: The Mango and the Tamarind Tree (1970).

Though the freedom-struggle was over, the political theme was hardly

relegated to the background. The nationalistic movement had dominated the life of a

whole generation. It could now be viewed from a fresh angle from the vantage ground

of freedom. Several events of the early post-independence period such as the partition

of the land and its terrible aftermath, the merger of the princely states into the Indian

Union and war with Pakistan and China furnished usable material to the novelist.

There are touches of irony in Narayan's treatment of it in Waiting for the Mahatma

12

(1955). Khushwant Singh's I Shall Not Hear the Nightingale (1959) continues the

same spirit. The freedom-struggle is clothed in the haze of romantic love in Kamala

Markandaya's Some Inner Fury (1955). The attempt to paint an objective picture of it

in K.A. Abbas's Inquilab (1955) is reduced to mere reportage. Nayantara Sahgal's A

Time to be Happy (1958) offers a more faithful picture of the period of the arrival of

independence.

Raja Rao's The Serpent and the Rope (1960) deals with East-west encounter.

B. Rajan's The Dark Dancer (1959) and Manohar Malgonkar's Combat of Shadows

(1962) continue this theme. The work of the numerous women novelists of the period

offers a more sensitive picture of this theme. R.P. Jhabvala in her Esmond in India

(1958) and Heat and Dust (1975) is content to dwell on the surface. Anita Desai's

Bye-bye, Blackbird (1971) is notable. The clash between western-oriented rationalism

and traditional religious faith in Kamala Markandaya's A Silence of Desire (1960) is

powerfully realized. The most memorable record of the East-west encounter during

this period is G.V. Desani's novel, All About H. Hatterr (1948).

The tragic drama of partition inspired three novels. Khushwant Singh and

Chaman Nahal diluted the stark realism of their narratives with a strong admixture of

conventional romantic love in Train to Pakistan (1956) and Azadi (1975). Malgonkar

does not look beyond the sheer horror and brutality of it in A Bend in the Ganges

(1964).

The issue of the merger of the princely states into the Indian Union is

presented by some novelists. Anand's The Private Life of an Indian Prince (1953) is a

pathological study of a neurotic Maharaja. Malgonkar's The Princes (1963) brings out

the strength and the weaknesses of Indian feudalism.

13

The Chinese invasion of 1962 forms the setting of Bhattacharya's Shadow

from Ladakh (1966). Nayantara Sahgal is preoccupied with the political theme. Her

This Time of the Morning (1968), Storm in Chandigarh (1969) and A Situation in New

Delhi (1977) contain portraits of leading political personalities.

Historical fiction was cultivated by the writings of Manohar Malgaonkar,

B.S.Gidwani and Kamala Markandaya. One of the popular Indo-English novelists of

the modern era is Manohar Malgaonkar. He started his career after independence with

the publication of Distant Drum (1960). He is an artist of the first order. He excels in

literary sensibility and critical maturity. He subtly makes a landmark as a historical

novelist. His major preoccupation seems to be the role of history in individual and

social life in India.

Distant Drum (1960) is a documentary of army life in its various aspects and a

celebration of army code as developed by the Britishers in the army. Combat of

Shadows (1962) derives its title and epigraph from the Bhagvad Gita. Malgaonkar‘s

best novel The Princess (1963) is also a successful political novel. It reveals the bright

side of the princely world. The setting of A Bend in the Ganges (1964) is partition

while Ramayana is the source of its title and epigraph. His novels after 1980 include

Bandicoot Run (1972), The Garland Keepers (1987) and Cactus Country (1992).

Malgonkar's The Devil's Wind (1972) deals with the great revolt of 1857 and B.S.

Gidwani's The Sword of Tipu Sultan (1976) is fictionalized history. Kamala

Markandaya attempts to combine conventional historical fiction and a psychological

study in The Golden Honeycomo (1977).

Experimental fiction with a strong Indian orientation scored some success in

the post-independence Indian fiction. Sudhindra Nath Gose's tetrology comprising

14

And Gazelles Leaping (1949), Cradle of the Clouds (1951), The Vermilion Boat

(1953) and The Flame of the Forest (1955) is an exciting experiment in the expression

of ancient native tradition of story-telling. G.V. Desani's All about H. Hatterr (1972)

is the comic autobiography of a Eurasian eccentric and Indian character. M.

Anantarayanan, in his The Silver Pilgrimage (1961) adopts a purely oriental form in

narrating a story set in sixteenth century Ceylon and India, but succeeds only in

creating a clever pastiche of the traditional Indian narrative.

Recent Indian English fiction seems to be trying to give expression to the

Indian experience of the modern predicament. Arun Joshi is one of the leading

novelists in eighties. He is preoccupied with different facets of the theme of

alienation. Arun Joshi (1939-1993) and Anita Desai have recorded modern man‘s

traumas and agonies in his novels with rare competence and gravity. Indira Bhatt

comments that, ―It is with the novels of Arun Joshi and Anita Desai that a new era in

the Indo-English began and also witnessed a change in the treatment of themes.‖6

His emphasis is on individual psyche of the protagonist throughout his five novels.

His technique of introspection opens a new dimension in the art of Indian English

Fiction. Joshi understands the psychology and the inner conflict of human beings. He

draws it into his writing. Joshi recognizes a reality beyond the mere phenomenal

world, a reality which only an artist could imagine and capture by giving a consistent

form to the shapeless face of human existence. Joshi‘s place among major Indian

English novelists of the twentieth century is undisputed.

Chaman Nahal is also an important novelist. His most outstanding work before

the eighties was Azadi (1975). It is one of the most prominent novels on the theme of

partition. His has also written My True Face (1973), Into Another Dawn (1977) and

15

The English Queens (1979). Among his novels after 1980 are: The Crown and the

Lioncloth (1981), The Salt of Life (1990), and The Triumph of the Tricolour (1993).

Handling of the sex-theme is a noticeable trend in recent novels like Sasthi

Brata's She and He (1973), Saros Cowasjee's Good-bye to Elsa, (1975), Kamala Das's

Alphabet of Lust (1976), Vikram Kapur's The Traumatic Bite (1978) K.M. Trisnanku's

Onion Peel (1973) etc. Trishanku's Onion Peel unravels the thought process of his

hero who is to have an operation which will make him impotent. Bharati Mukherjee‘s

study of the abnormal mind of the frustrated Bengali wife in New York in Wife (1976),

and experiment with --Black in Goodbye to Elsa also indicate others new directions.

The classic theme of east-west encounter recurs in Reginald and Jamila Massey‘s The

Immigrant (1973); Chaman Nahal's Into Another Dawn (1977); A. Bhaskar Rao's The

Secret (1978); and S.S. Dhami's Maluka (1978).

Raji Narasimhan argues that during the period intervening the age of

Narayan-Raja Rao-Desani and the emergence of the new novelists "some vital

disjunction would seem to have occurred in cultural apprehension as a whole, eating

into the individual ability to find replenishment for and vindication of the cultural

varieties from within one's own self." 7

But this is a sweeping generalization which

hardly does justice to post-independence writers. Indian thought and art of the last

thirty-years provides no evidence of this kind of "vital disjunction". The new Indian

writer's apprehension of his experience is bound to be different in many respects from

that of his predecessors. Trends in recent fiction unmistakably indicate how the new

novelists are trying to tread fresh paths. The Indian English novel is now a century

and a half old. Hardly fifty years have elapsed since it came of age. During this short

span it has certainly given to the world some major novels which could only have

16

been produced in modern India. David Mc. Cutchion once asked "Whether a truly

Indian novel is all possible."8 Novels like Untouchable (1935), All About H. Hatter

(1972), The Guide (1978) and The Serpent and the Rope (1960) have provided a clear

answer to-this question.

Indian English novel has reasonably grown up during 20th

century. The novel

during the colonial period had a different outlook. After independence the Indian

writers looked at the Indian scene from the new point of view. There were new hopes.

Social, economic, religious, political and familial issues emerged and drew attention

of the creative writers. The partition, the communal riots after partition, the problem

of casteism, the subjugation of women, poverty, and illiteracy became the focal

points.

Writers like Anita Desai, Ruth Prawer Jhabwala, Bhabani Bhattacharya,

G.V.Desani, Chaman Nahal, Manohar Malgonkar and B. Rajan portrayed the picture

of the post-independence Indian society. The stream of the early fifties turned into a

broad river with new currents and cross currents. The old traditional method of the

novel writing gave way to modern techniques.

It is gratifying to note that the novel became a living and evolving literary

genre in the hands of its Indian practioners. Form, substance and expression are

recognizably Indian, yet bearing the mark of universality. Apart from the major

novelists discussed above, there are many more writers of fiction with a substantial

corpus to their credit in the post-independence period. With the growing interest in

Indian English literature, there has been a certain spurt of fiction. Notable novelists

are; B.K.Karanjia, Leslie de Noronha, Timeri Murari, Reginald and Jamila Massey,

17

Saros Cowasjee, K.M.Trishanku, Bunny Ruben, Raj Gill, Rohit Handa, Chaman

Nahal, Naredra Pal Singh.

New faces have emerged on the fictional scene in the eighties. Khushwant

Singh, Kamala Markandaya, Ruth Prawer Jhabwala and Salman Rushdie have

achieved greater heights in the field of fiction. Vikram Seth, Amitav Ghosh, Shashi

Deshpande, Shoba De, Bharti Mukherjee, Rama Mehta, Manju Kapoor, Arundhati

Roy etc. have given new tones, tenor and content to Indian fiction in English. New

reviews and magazines, critical studies and journals have been published in this field.

New themes, new trends and forms are emerging. Meenkashi Mukherjee aptly

remarks, ―That as long as novelists continue to write, critics will continue to assess

the work, is as much a truism as saying that as long as there are mountains,

mountaineers will climb then.‖9

Indian English novel which began as a hot house plant in our country, has

taken deep-roots in our soil. The large bulk of the novels justify that a major shift in

the direction of the Indian English fiction will continue to take place in succeeding

years. The Indian English Novel has passed through a tough time. There was a time

when Mulk Raj Anand‘s Untouchable (1935) was left untouched by Britishers

publishers before it was recommended by E.M.Foster to Lawrence and Wishart. The

same happened with R.K.Narayan‘s Swami and Friends (1935). It had to wait for

Graham Greene‘s recommendation. But today the case is different. Indian English

literature is now readily accepted abroad. Although Indian English literature struggled

hard to gain ground, the recent acclaim won by Vikram Seth (A Suitable Boy) and

Arundhati Roy (The God of Small Things) has put it in the global spotlight.

Indisputably, the Indian English novel has gained a unique viability, vibrancy and

vitality.

18

The Indo-English fiction has so many novelists but very few sympathetic

critics. Meenkashi Mukherjee expresses her sympathy in the following words:

‗Indo-English fiction, which has served for so long as a file or document of

sociology of anthropology or educational theory must now be regarded as

literature and evaluated as such. That is the service it requires from critics, and

this study is modest essay in this direction.‘10

The sympathetic and generous views shown by Iyenger towards the Indo-

English fiction are praiseworthy. Mc Cutchion is very harsh towards the Indo-English

novelists. His analysis of the Indo-English fiction is that in the novels moods are

invoked of sadness and fantasy.

Murli Das Melwani comments that an Indo-English novelist is always in

search of subjects and critics. According to him, none seems to have grappled yet with

the new and exciting India of the fifties, sixties and seventies. M.K.Naik says that the

trends in recent fiction show that the new novelists are trying to trend fresh paths.

This is the surest sign of the continued vitality of an art though actual achievement

would be determined by many factors.

Paul Verghese appreciates Indo-Anglican novels for opting ―Humanism‖ and

―Hunger‖ as their themes. Chalpati Rai is very caustic when he remarks that writing is

close to life, but the Indo-Anglicans have little to do with life. Uma Parameswaran,

who criticized Indo-English fiction earlier in pessimistic tone, now, appreciates

Salman Rushdie for Midnight Children in 1981. Saros Cowsjee, Kirpal, R.K.Dhawan,

William Walsh, P.S.Sundaram, R.S.Singh, Balram Das Gupta, Harish Razda,

E.J.Kalinnikova, R.S.Pathak, R.S.Songh, K.K.Sharma and others are amongst the

sympathetic critics.

19

Timeri N Murari was born in 1941 in Madras, India. He went to England to

study electronics, but after two years, he grew dissatisfied with the subject. He

switched on to the bachelor‘s program in political science and history in the McGill

University in Montreal, Canada. Murari started writing articles for the Kingston Whig

Standard in Kingston, Montreal, in 1965. He moved to London in 1966. He worked as

a subeditor for the London Gurdian and also started writing some fiction and non-

fiction. His first novel The Marriage (1973) was set about the immigrant Indian

community in England. Then he wrote The New Savages: Children of the Liverpool

Streets (1975). It is a documentary about the lives of four boys.

Timeri Murari moved to the United States in 1975. He remained there until

1987. During this time, he wrote novels such as Lovers Are Not People (1977), The

Oblivion Tapes (1978), The Field of Honour (1981), Taj (1985), The Shooter (1986),

The Imperial Agent (1987) and The Last Victory (1987). Taj achieved success in

Europe. It was translated into nine European languages like French, Italian, German,

and Portuguese. It came out in paperback in 1986.

Timeri Murari moved to India in 1990 and since then he has been living in

Chennai in his ancestral home with his wife. He has written novels like, Enduring

Affairs (1991), The Arrangement of Love (2004), Four Steps to Paradise (2006), The

Small House (2007),Children of the Enchanted Jungle (2009) etc.

Timeri Murari also wrote a documentary trilogy for Thames Television

entitled Only in America and a nonfiction text Goin‟ Home: A Black Family Returns

to South (1980). It is an eloquent self-portrait of several generations of a black family

and its search for dignity within the American dream.

20

Timeri Murari has written two memoirs; My Temporary Son: An Orphan‟s

Journey (2005) and Limping to the Centre of the World (2008). My Temporary Son:

An Orphan‟s Journey (2005) delights and saddens in turn. Murari and his wife

provide a firm presence as the baby Bhima suffers and triumphs. Limping to the

Centre of the World (2008) challenges readers to examine the foundations of their

own spiritual beliefs and encourages them to consider those less fortunate in the oft

uncaring world of today.

Timeri Murari has written two films scripts. They are The Squire Circle

(Daayra) and The Only Thing. The Squire Circle was one of the ten best films of the

year 1997. It is about innocent village girl finds her whole secure life shattered by an

unexpected event. On the occasion of her marriage fortunately a stranger befriends

her. He is a transvestite but a wise and witty character. He‘s an entertainer, earning a

living from his performances in villages and on the roadside. She forces him to help

her get home. In order to ensure safe journey he disguises her as a Man. The Only

Thing is a 28 minute comedy film. The Only Thing is a black comedy about a young,

innocent man Anil. He comes from a small town to Madras for higher studies, and

discovers life of corruption of Mr Ramswamy.

Timeri Murari has also written stage plays, Chicanery (also directed), Lovers

are not people, Hey, hero, The Square Circle (also directed), Killing Time, The

Attempted Assassination of Salman Rushdie etc. The Square Circle is about a procurer

kidnapping of a village girl, Sita, from her village on the eve of her wedding. She

manages to escape them later finds herself lost. Lahshman/Lakshmi doesn‘t help her

to return home. She's beaten up and raped. He nurses her to health, dresses her in

man's clothes. They make the journey to her village, her as the man, him as the

woman.

21

Timeri Murari followed up an investigative story on the Liverpool street gangs. He

found the Liverpool of today the Madras of today. In Madras the rival gangs, gonads,

dadas, ruthless policemen, rising crime rates and corruption. He dusted up the play,

changed the names, added local references in "Hey, Hero". After writing novels,

Memoir, non-fiction, films and plays Timeri Murari‘s most recent novel, Children of

the Enchanted Jungle, was published in 2009 by Viking Penguin.

Timeri Murari is a prolific writer. His career spans not only with the writing of

fiction, but newspaper articles, nonfiction, television documentary, and most recently,

film, it becomes difficult to single out some works as more representative than others.

Timeri Murari brings to his fiction the historicized views of the journalist, while at the

same time actively inserting himself into his nonfiction. A similarly historicized view

dictates a common strain, an abiding concern, in all of Timeri Murari‘s fiction.

Murari‘s first novel The Marriage (1973) is based on the problem of coloured

immigrant in UK and their quest for identity with the new homeland. The action takes

place in a small industrial town. Deckhand is a sweeper in a factory. He is widely

respected by the local Indian community. On the other hand it is the unscrupulous

Harbans who gives job to the newcomers and takes donation and monthly tributes. An

attempt is made by English Steward Roy and Tekchand to end these unholy exactions.

But it could not succeed. Harbans blackmails Tekchand into minding his own

business. Tekchand‘s daughter Leela is involved in a love affair with Roger, but her

brother fights and wounds the boy. Tekchand takes Leena back to India to be married

off and Roy is left alone to continue the war against Harbans. Indians being

miscellany rather than a close-knit community become prisoners of their helplessness

and precariousness. The generation gap, again, is as wide as the chasm between the

white and the coloured, and it all arises from the failure of understanding and love.

22

But while the sociological slant is important enough, it is nevertheless the Leena-

Roger romance that is the heart of the novel.

Timeri Murari‘s The New Savages (1975) shows Liverpool city with an

identity all its own. It is a documentary about the lives of four boys-fictitious. It's a

unsentimental story of two days in their lives. On Friday nights the two gangs, half-

caste and white, battle; on Saturday, they wait for the action that never comes. In this

account of their pointless, hopeless lives, Timeri Murari brilliantly evokes one of the

problem areas in our society.

In 1978, when Timeri N Murari was a journalist with The Guardian, he wrote

Lovers Are Not People. He had just moved from London to New York. Twenty-five

years later Carlton America, the Hollywood film production company, is recreating

his novel as a contemporary film. This novel was written in the first person. It is the

account of a wife whose husband deserts her and their two young children for a

younger woman. Instead of letting him go, the jilted wife resolves to bring him back.

Playing detective, she learns he has gone to America with the young girl. She follows

him to New York, befriends the girl, undermines the relationship and wins back her

husband. Thus it is a detective story of the heart, written with wit and compassion,

about the mystery called love and marriage.

Murari‘s next novel The Oblivion Tapes (1978) tells a horrendous, fascinating

story about a deadly plague which has been deliberately started in a South American

country to achieve economic gains.

Murari‘s Goin Home (1980) is an eloquent self-portrait of several generations

of a black family and its search for dignity within the American dream. It is a book

about promising futures. A book with the appeal that audiences found it‘s roots.

23

Despite its initial promise, the north is no longer the promised land for Blacks. In

increasing numbers they are returning to the south, even at the cost of losing the

economic security found in northern cities. Goin' Home (1980) is the story of one

such family's migration, told in its own words.

In The Field of Honour (1981) Timeri Murari narrates Gunboat Jack as it‘s

hero. He is Nicky‘s boxing coach who is the prince of Tandhapur state. This novel

presents a boxing match played between prince Nicky and English boy Ian. It

becomes the field of honor for Nicky and at last he wins the match. The novel is set in

1948. This year signifies the moment of decolonization. The process of

decolonization also affects the princely state. The Rajah‘s of princely states also take

part in India‘s freedom struggle.

In his next two subsequent novels, The Imperial Agent (1987) and it‘s sequel

The Last Victory (1987) is influenced by Rudyard Kipling‘s Kim (1901). It pursues

the theme which is already at work in Timeri Murari‘s fiction: those of an India

opening itself to the West through colonialism and those of a West finding itself

changed in the process. The main character in both novels is Kipling‘s Kimball

O‘Hara. He is an Indian born son of British parents who is left to the care of his

guardian, Colonel Creighton, and who, in these novels, grows in maturity in India‘s

colonial period as he discovers where his actual allegiances lie. Employed as a British

spy by Colonel Creighton in The Imperial Agent (1987), Kim sets out to hunt down

two Indian men, whom Creighton believes to be freedom activists. Later he falls in

love with an Indian girl, Parvati. Parvati is fleeing from her husband, an upper-class

Indian in cahoots with Creighton himself. Later on, she is separated from Kim, and in

his search for her, he voyages literally and spiritually through India. By the end of the

24

novel, Kim discovers that Creighton‘s real intention is to use him ruthlessly in order

to ensure British‘s continued presence in India.

The Last Victory (1987) picks where its predecessor left off. It opens in 1910

in North India and ends in 1919 with the historical Jallianwallah Bagh massacre in

Amritsar, in which General Dyer ordered his troops to fire on a large and peaceful

gathering of Indians. It also shows Kim‘s transformation from a spy to a freedom

fighter and his death.

In his author‘s note to The Imperial Agent (1987), Timeri Murari remembers

Kim from his intense adolescent reading of Rudyard Kipling. He was disappointed

with Kipling‘s ending to Kim. He states there that he wrote The Imperial Agent

(1987) with the conviction that Kim was truly Indian. Timeri Murari initially presents

Kim as an ambivalent character in terms of his partly Indian, partly Western identity.

Like Gunboat Jack of The Field of Honor (1981), he is spilt between these two fronts.

But, more emphatically than Gunboat Jack, Kim embodies the changes wrought by

Indian influences when, by the end of The Last Victory, in 1919, he is on the side of

the Indians in the Freedom Movement against British.

Murari does not make as his subject the grim contradiction involved in the

articulation of a spilt identity. Especially those contradictions get formulated when a

formerly colonized country takes stock of its colonial legacy. Conversely, he does not

pose the question of exactly how Kim can be truly Indian when he is, in fact, British

and, indeed, complicit with the actual British machinery of imperialism. Rendering

his colonial characters as uniformly evil, he delineates Kim as essentially good and

Indian at that. But while The Imperial Agent (1987) and The Last Victory (1987) do

not forcefully foreground these kinds of difficulties, they usefully enact the risk-

25

ridden implications of a post colonial, diasporic appropriation of a colonial text such

as Kim (1901). Viewed from this perspective, Murari‘s rewriting of Kipling itself

enacts the passage of Indian writing from a local literature to a global presence.

Alpana Sharma Knippling writes, ―However, not only do we repeatedly read of

Britain‘s colonial legacy in India; we also witness some of the ways in which the

West finds itself changed as a result of the colonization of India.‖11

As an Indian writer who was born before India became independent of the British and

who has made his home in both Britain and the United States, Timeri Murari seems

most interested in India‘s points of overlap with the West.

In Murari‘s next novel Taj (1985) the writer tells two different stories. The first

one talks about the love affair of Shah Jahan and Arjumand till her death. The latter

narrates the story of the later years of Shah Jahan till his death. It also shows the

exploitation of poor people done by Shah Jahan and his successors to retain their

future in India. It is an old fashioned and stylish novel, told to perfection. More than a

historical romance it brings out the political and social life of the Mughals. A

historical novel written with amazing simplicity, the book also gives a fascinating

description of how the immortal monument of love was built.

In The Shooter (1998) Paul Scott plays the hero. He is a great detective but a

bad cop. He has just been released from prison after serving a sentence for taking

kickbacks. His former partner, Harry Margolis is murdered and drugs planted in his

apartment. Scott sets out to avenge Margolis and clear his name from false allegiance.

He soon senses that he is on the hit list. The thoroughness and ruthlessness made him

a first-class detective. His personal anxieties grow with the kidnapping of his wife and

26

daughters. The Shooter is described as an entertainment in the style of Graham

Greene, with an original plot and very real people making it a chilling thriller.

In his next two consecutive novels Enduring Affairs (1991) and Four Steps to

Paradise (2006) Timeri Murari continues his exploration of relationships between the

West and India; Enduring Affairs (1991), is the story of two young men- Dexter

Franklin Prescott III, an American, and Chellapthimalai Venugopalan Jagan (Charlie

V) an Indian. Both are close friends. The writer shows political situation in India and

America and it‘s impact on them. This novel also shows the way these two cope with

the situation. The novel moves between two time frames and histories: the United

States in the 1960s and India in the 1990s.

The Arrangement of Love (2004) is set like a medieval tapestry. It begins with

the return of Nikhil Figgis, a young theatre director from New York, to Chennai.

Within minutes of his arrival, a taxi driver makes off with his suitcase that contains a

precious copy of the book, Georgetown. He wishes to adapt into a play. He meets

Apu, who runs a detective agency. Nikhil hires her to locate S.K. Naidu. He lives in a

fortress-like house and entertains no visitors. He is also Nikhil‘s long-lost father and

the author of a book Georgetown. Delicately, Murari weaves Apu, her family and

Nikhil‘s estranged American wife, Renee, into the plot.

Four Steps to Paradise (2006) is story about the break-up of the Great House

of the Naidu‘s. It is set in a gentler, more laid-back era. Young Krishna and his family

live in a sprawling mansion on a vast estate hidden in the heart of Madras with a

motley group of doting siblings, cousins, uncles and aunties who also squabble

amiably every now and then. But as in every story about paradise, the serpent lurks

just beneath the idyllic existence. The boy‘s father decides to bring Victoria Greene

27

an Englishwoman into the conservative Naidu household, first as a governess and

then as a stepmother to the children. Three of the siblings learn to accept the change,

though reluctantly at first, but the eldest sister, Anjali, rebels. The joint family is

headed by Ranjit a strong-willed patriarch, whose business speculations go terribly

wrong, paving the way for the break-up. When he dies, Krishna‘s father and

stepmother move away, taking the younger three children with them. The slow decay

of the joint family that‘s now broken apart, with various strands going their separate

ways, is described with a gentleness that is strangely moving. The narrator, Krishna,

takes in the love and hate, the joys and the tragedies with the unhurried perusal of a

sensitive observer, taking us into his world when he‘s only eight and keeping us there

right up to his 50s.

His next novel The Small House (2007) takes on big questions of love,

fidelity, history and betrayal. It describes sex plainly, almost to the point of bluntness.

Most of all, it creates a set of characters with whom the reader becomes engaged,

notwithstanding their weaknesses, and introduces a series of events that readers will

want to follow to their conclusion. And that ultimately is the goal of any writer, and

any story.

Critical responses to Timeri Murari‘s literature are diverse and varied. They

testify his greatness as a literary artist with vigour. Right from the beginning Timeri

Murari‘s works began to attract critical attention.

His first novel The Marriage (1973) has been briefly mentioned by

K.R.Srinivasa Iyenger in his seminal book, Indian Writing in English (1985). K. R.

Srinivasa Iyenger thematically connects The Marriage (1973) with other studies of

coloured immigrants in UK like Anita Desai‘s Bye-bye Black bird, V.S.Naipaul‘s The

28

Mimic Men, Dilip Hero‘s A Triangular View and Reginald Massey‘s The Immigrants

etc.12

Raji Narsimhan‘s Sensibility under Stress (1976)13

is an attempt to pigeon-

hole Indi-Anglican fiction under the age of R.K.Narayan and Raja Rao, age of Anita

Desai and age of Timeri Murari. M.K.Naik also referred to the works of Timeri

Murari in his History of Indian English Literature (1982).14

Some articles have also been published on Timeri Murari‘s works. Emanuel.

S. Nelson‘s Writers of Indian Diaspora: A Bibliographical Critical Sourcebook

(2010)15

introduced Timeri Murari as a writer with enormous talent. An article written

by Alpana Sharma Knippling discussed that Timeri Murari brings to his fiction the

historicized vein of a journalist. In this article the writer has focused on the three

major novels of Timeri Murari The Field of Honour (1981), The Imperial Agent

(1987) and The Last Victory (1987) etc. In these novels Timeri Murari focused on

British imperialism in India and a vivid description of the various characters.

The critical reception to Timeri Murari‘s works consists of some

miscellaneous book reviews as well. Generally, reviewers have expressed a mixed

response to his works. Few readers appreciate of the art of story-telling have read The

Imperial Agent (1987) and The Last Victory (1987) and praised Timeri Murari‘s

ability to move the narrative while displaying colourful characters, romance, intrigue,

and vivid descriptions of India. Others found themselves drawn to ―the emotional

complexity of deeply entangled British-Indian relationships.‖ Yet others have

explored an overcrowded cast of characters only tangential to the plot or a tendency

toward melodrama.

29

Buck Mason16

in his review of The Imperial Agent (1987) highlighted few

important things. Scarinci, Florence17

also reviewed The Imperial Agent. One more

important review came on The Imperial Agent by Steinberg Sybil18

. Timeri Murari‘s

The Last Victory (1987) was reviewed by Nanducam. P.19

which was later published

in the prestigious Indian Literature in 1989. Steinberg Sybil20

also reviewed The Last

Victory in 1990.

Anoop Verma21

wrote a review to Timeri Murari‘s one of the latest novels

Four Steps to Paradise (2006) which was published in Indian Literature in 2006.

Anoop Verma writes that Timeri Murari‘s Four Steps from Paradise fulfills the

promise of fiction, awakens curiosity about India and it‘s people, throws fresh

perspectives on the year long swallowed by the sands of time and history. The themes

around which the 654-pages book revolves are universal relationships, particularly the

bond between father and son, a closeness that is concomitant with a sense of

estrangement, and the love that carries with it an undercurrent of hatred. There is the

gamut of familial bonds pitted against the implacable forces that are molding a new

India, an India where old values are fading, but where a new set of values are yet to be

discovered. There is inherent hypocrisy of a rigid class system: and the horrific

realities that a traditional family must confront when its members back the age old

taboo and accept an outsider as its own.

D. Maya, in her book Narrating Colonialism: Postcolonial Images in Indian

English Fiction (1997) focuses on Timeri N Murari‘s two consecutive novels: The

Imperial Agent and The Last Victory. This book is an investigation into postcolonial

reactions to the colonial experience as mirrored in Indian English Fiction. Almost the

entire range of post-independence Indian English Fiction from the works of Mulk Raj

Anand to Salman Rushdie is brought within the canvas of the study. His book

30

provides a fascinating portrait gallery of the British imperialists, the memesahibs and

the anti-imperialists caught in the ideological conflict resulting from colonization. The

author goes beyond the stereotyped images of Prospero and Caliban to probe into the

highly complex nature of the colonizer-colonized relationship. The historical and

psychological aspects of experience give the work larger dimensions. The book,

written in lucid and illuminating style, makes a valuable contribution to the

postcolonial studies.

Poornima Immanuel in her book History as Novel Rewriting History writes

about Timeri Murari‘s novels like The Imperial Agent, The Last Victory and Taj. She

says that the post colonial rewriting of history attempts to create alternative histories

of the colonized as opposed to the official history of the colony. The different ways in

which the decolonizing artists employ history in their novels in order to shape the

historical outlook of the people is the main focus of her book. Timeri Murari‘s he The

Imperial Agent and The Last Victory depict colonial India. They give ample scope to

explore the decolonizing artist‘s urge for debunking imperial myths, resurrecting

national glories of the eventful past epochs and deducing valuable lessons for the

post-independence India from the pre-independence era. Murari‘s Taj is also taken up

for study as Murari feels that the base for present day Hindu-Muslim conflict was laid

during the Mughal era.

Timeri Murari as an Indian writer in English provides the manifesto of virtual

reality through his novels. He surpasses the shorelines of National literature and

builds a bridge between East and the West. It is clearly seen through his journey in

various countries and he produced literature of all kind during his stay there. for ex,

during his stay in England he wrote the novel The Marriage (1973), and the

journalistic study The New Savages: Children of the Liverpool Streets(1975), after

31

that he moved to United States there he wrote the novels, Lovers Are Not People

(1977), The Oblivion Tapes (1978), The Field of Honour (1981), Taj (1985), and The

Shooter (1986) etc. The Imperial Agent (1987) and The Last Victory (1987) during his

stay in India he produced great novels like Enduring Affairs (1991), The Arrangement

of Love (2004), Four Steps to Paradise (2006), The Small House (2007),Children of

the Enchanted Jungle (2009).

His novels present an archetypal journey from veil to vision and ignorance to

knowledge. He fictionalizes unity in variety, mixed psyche, possessing both good and

evil at one and the same time. His fictional corpus is a virtual spring of knowledge.

Timeri Murari through the themes and characters of his novels presents law of change

in post-modern context of the global age where survival is optional and change is

obligatory. Thus he consistently fictionalizes changing facets of Indian life through

his fictional corpus.

The tradition of Indian English Fiction is quite rich and varied. Right from

Dandin, Kylash Chunder Dutt, Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, Shevantibai M.

Nikambe, R.C. Dutt, Sanat Kumar Ghose, B. R. Rajam Iyer to the three major Indian

English novelists— Mulk Raj Anand, R.K. Narayan and Raja Rao. Of post-

Independence Indian English fiction Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Venu Chitale, Rama

Mehta, Attia Hosain to Anita Desai, Khushwant Singh and Chaman Nahal, Historical

fiction writers like B.S. Gidwani, Kamala Markandaya, from recent Indian English

novelists like, Arun Joshi, Bharati Mukherjee, Chaman Nahal to Reginald and Jamila

Massey, Saros Cowasjee, K.M.Trishanku, Bunny Ruben, Raj Gill, Rohit Handa,

Chaman Nahal, Arun Joshi, Naredra Pal Singh, some international success and

magnum like Salman Rushdie, Vikram Seth, Amitav Ghosh and among women

novelists Shashi Deshpande, Shoba De, Bharti Mukherjee, Rama Mehta, Manju

32

Kapoor and Arundhati Roy etc. Timeri Murari adds individual talent to this rich

tradition through his novels.

Therefore Timeri Murari is an international writer beyond any shore line.

Many prestigious publications around the world like, Macmillan, Methuen in London,

Simon and Schuster in New York, Dell in New York, and Viking Penguin in New

Delhi have taken note of his work and published it. Reviewers like Buck Mason,

Mutter John and Scarinci Florence have reviewed his novels which published in

reputed New-York times Book Review. Even few Indian reviewers like Nandakum. P,

Varma Anoop has written reviews on Timeri Murari‘s novels which were published in

Indian Literature respectively. Great Indian writers like K.R.Srinivasa Iyenger in his

Indian Writing in English and Naik. M.K in his A History of Indian English Literature

has given place to Timeri Murari in their immortal books which prove Timeri Murari

as a great writer. One can say that Timeri Murari is a writer, like rainbow, as high as

the sky but rooted to the earth. His contribution to the tradition of Indian English

fiction in the contemporary scenario is worth considerable.

The succeeding chapters explore the major and minor themes in the fictional

corpus of Timeri N Murari. Chapter II explores Imperial tendencies in his three

novels: The Field of Honour (1981), The Imperial Agent (1987), The Last Victory

(1987). This chapter depicts British imperialism and Indian‘s resistance to it through

few scenes. Timeri Murari seems to coalesce and concentrate his historical vision of

India‘s colonial past and its impingement on India‘s contemporary social, political

and cultural life. According to Timeri Murari, the attempt of many Indians to wipe out

the past of two hundred years oppression ignores the reality of British influence. It is

evidenced in the numerous ways in which the English language and culture have

radically structured India‘s own government, administration and education. We

33

repeatedly read to the British‘s colonial legacy in India; we also witness some of the

ways in which the West finds itself changed as a result of the colonization of India.

As an Indian writer who was born before India become independent of the British and

who has made his home in Britain and the United States, Timeri Murari seems most

interested in India‘s points to overlap with the West.

Chapter III explores the East-West relationship with special reference to The

Enduring Affairs (1991) and Four Steps to Paradise (2006). Enduring Affairs (1991)

is the story of two young men- Dexter Franklin Prescott III, an American, and

Chellapthimalai Venugopalan Jagan (Charlie V) an Indian. Enduring Affairs (1981)

continues his exploration of relationships between West and India, as the novel moves

between two time frames and histories: the United States in the 1960‘s and in the

India in the 1990‘s.

Four Steps to Paradise (2006) is a story about Naidu Family. Present chapter shows

east-west encounter of character. Victoria Greene is the representative of west and the

members of Naidu family represent east in this novel. Characters like Bharat and his

daughter Kaveri show union with Victoria Greene. But few others like Ava, Anjali

and Krishna show east-west encounter of separation.

Chapter IV will explore the theme of love and sex in the novels like The

Arrangement of Love (2005), The Small house (2007) and Taj (1985). The

Arrangement of Love (2004) rotates around the theme that ‗loveless marriages are not

tenable‘. It begins with the return of Nikhil Figgis, a young theatre director from New

York, to Chennai. Within minutes of his arrival, a taxi driver makes off with his

suitcase that contains a precious copy of the book, Georgetown, which he wishes to

adapt into a play. He then meets Apu, who runs a detective agency. Nikhil hires her to

34

locate S.K. Naidu who lives in a fortress-like house and entertains no visitors. He is

also Nikhil‘s long-lost father and the author of Georgetown. Delicately, Murari

weaves Apu, her family and Nikhil‘s estranged American wife, Renee, into the plot.

The Small House (2007) discusses the theme of man-woman relationship in upper

class Indian society. Murari has depicted few pairs of relationships in it. Murari‘s Taj

depicts the love-story of Shah Jahan and Arjumand-banu-begum.

Chapter V deals with the theme of treachery and exploitation in Murari‘s

novels like Taj (1985), The Imperial Agent (1985) and The Last Victory (1985).

Murari narrates in Taj the predicament of common Indian during the reign of Mughal

Emperors Shah Jahan and Aurangzeb. More than a historical romance it brings out the

political and social life of the Mughals. This chapter further discusses few scenes

from The Last Victory and The Imperial Agent which depict exploitations of Indians

under British yoke.

Chapter VI would sum up the important points discussed in the previous

chapters. It discusses the position of Timeri Murari in the Indian writing in English

and also discusses major issue in his novels, and its importance in the present era. It

also provides areas for further research. This chapter is a brief summing up of the

findings I have arrived at.

Thus, Timeri N Murari is one of the less known but richly gifted Indian

writers in English today. The range of themes that he deals with, linguistic and

stylistic variations in his writing, his art of delineation of characters and setting are all

extremely instructive and entertaining.

35

REFERENCES

1. Ghose, Sarat Kumar. The Prince of Destiny: London. 1909. P. 622-623.

2. Quoted by Harihar Das. Life and Letters of Toru Dutt: London. 1921. P. 317.

3. John, B. Alfonso-Karkala. Indo-English Literature in the Nineteenth Century:

Mysore. 1970. P. 80.

4. Mukherjee, Dhan Gopal. My Brother's Face: New York. 1924. P. 19.

5. Ayyar, A.S.P. Three Men of Destiny: Madras. 1939. Introduction, P. vii.

6. Bhatt, Indira and Alxander, Suja. Arun Joshi‟s Fiction: A Critique. New Delhi:

Creative Books. 2001. P.11.

7. Narasimhan, Raji. Sensibility Under-Stress: Aspects of Indo-English Fiction. New

Delhi. 1976. P. 18.

8. McCutchion, David. Indian Writing in English: Critical Essays. 1969 Calcutta, P.

84.

9. Mukherjee, Meenakshi. Twice Born Fiction. Atlantic Publishers and Distributers.

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10. Ibid. P.209-10.

11. Alpana Sharma Knippling. ―On Timeri Murari‖. Writers of Indian Diaspora.

Rawat Publication. (2010). P.250.

12. Iyenger, K.R.Srinivasa. Indian Writing in English. Sterling Publishers Private

Limited. 2004. P.740.

36

13. Ibid. P.772.

14. Naik, M.K. A History of Indian English Literature, Sahitya Akademi: New

Delhi. 2007. P.

15. Alpana Sharma Knippling. ―On Timeri Murari‖. Writers of Indian Diaspora:

Rawat Publication. (2010) P. 249-54.

16. Buck, Mason. Rev. of The Imperial Agent. New-York times Book Review. Aug,

6, 1989. P.18.

17. Scarinci, Florence. Rev. of The Imperial Agent. Library Journal. June 1, 1989.

P.148.

18. Steinberg, Sybil. Rev. of The Imperial Agent. Published Weekly. Feb.9, 1990.

P.55.

19. Nandakum, P. Rev. of The Last Victory. Indian Literature 32. 1989. P.36.

20. Steinberg, Sybil. Rev. of The Imperial Agent. Published Weekly. Feb 9, 1989:

P.43.

21. Verma, Anoop. Rev. of Four Steps From Paradise. Published by Sahitya

Academy‘s Bi-Monthly Journal. May-June 2006. P. 201-03.