Sir? Vidia

Yet another review of V. S. Naipaul's authorized biography by Patrick French confirming my initial impression of this man when I read his travelogue, India: A Wounded Civilization (1977).

Now it is clear, just as a Brahmin can smell a lower caste, or a Shia can spot a Sunni, like dogs sniffing each other to keep up the hierarchy, Naipaul is coloured so sadly and deeply that he can do nothing now but be himself -- hateful of his heritage, his pidgin culture and grateful to the western (read White) culture which has awarded him the Nobel Prize and even Knighted him.

His hatred for all things Indian, including himself, was only an inkling for me at the time I read A Wounded Civilization. What's more evident from his autobiography is that Naipaul has not only hated himself and his background but is caught in the chasm between the old and the new (read western) world. Unable to jump to one side or the other, perhaps unable to straddle as many of us do, he is a sad excuse for an Indian, a great writer and completely inhumane to those nearest to him.

So I send to Sir Vidia this poem by Derek Walcott and hope that he will find rest with recognition of who he is:

Love after Love

The time will come when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

I will end with an excerpt from the latest review to come to my attention on Naipaul's recent biography:

The woman's name was Margaret Gooding, and Naipaul met her in 1972 in Buenos Aires. French's new biography of Naipaul, The World Is What It Is, quotes extensively from her letters: unbearable scrawls that read like clinical case studies drawn from the pages of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch. She begs, moans, despairs, and pleads for Naipaul's "cruel sexual desires." She calls him her "god," her "black master." Her multiple abortions of his children sicken her, but she offers them up to him as proof of her love and abasement.

And all this sex stuff is only the beginning. Throughout The World Is What It Is Naipaul shows himself arrogant beyond belief, and vile-tempered, and as self-obsessed as a man simpering while he looks at himself in the mirror. His letters and conversation are full of references to "niggers" and dismissals of Africans and dark-skinned Indians.