‘Show, don’t tell’

A character in Rupa Gulab's Girl Alone confesses that "he'd never read P.G. Wodehouse before, because it was only available in Penguin, and he'd always assumed that books with a Penguin logo were terminally boring classic types like Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea or something" (14). My point, exactly. Not about Penguin being terminally boring but being the classic type. I have had my share of P.G. Wodehouses, graduating to Of Human Bondage or Heart of Darkness to the Greek classics. To me Penguin always connoted books of substance. To read Gulab's Girl Alone from Penguin came as a surprise and disappointment.

There seems to be a growing appetite for South Asian writing in English. It comes as no surprise, then, that David Davidar, former CEO and publisher of Penguin Books India came up with his first novel in 2002 titled The House of Blue Mangoes. It seems kind of fitting that the publisher of a house that has produced so many Indian writers, from Vikram Seth, Arundhati Roy, and RK Narayan to Rohinton Mistry should want to feel the urge to compose his version of the 'great Indian novel'. But then, his book was a bestseller and he is already finishing his second one now.

As publishing houses are doing their parts in accommodating to this craving, one wonders if they are not compromising certain sets of standards. As we read from among the hundreds of books being printed from India alone we come across still hundreds of different story lines. We realize that vast untapped materials are still available for depiction. A novel can be remarkable in its ability to make heroic the ordinariness of everyday life. It reminds us that not all novels have to be about the partition of India, or the problems of assimilation, or the trials between mother and daughter, or the oppressed lives of women who find a hard won freedom once they come to the West. Or about the single working woman alone in a big city.

While all these subjects are important and continue to make us think, I know, at least for now, I don't want to read another novel of a love-starved individual trying to sort out the looming problem of not finding a suitable life partner. I feel that certain topics have reached a saturation point producing cripplingly unimaginative work. Even though in general, I prefer having an increasing pool of writers and texts to choose from rather than the stalwarts, Raja Rao, Mulk Raj Anand and R.K Narayan; the familiar Salman Rushdie and V.S. Naipaul; the staples Kamala Markandaya, Anita Desai and perhaps Shashi Deshpande and Bapsi Sidhwa, this celebratory proliferation has produced works that sometimes have little merit.

The blurb says that the story is about Arti, an emotionally insecure intellectual snob, who is always falling for the wrong men. Arti's intellect is reflected through constant reminders of books, music and films until the novel reads like a list of her eclectic favorites. The singers or the musical groups who are mentioned are George Rafferty, Baker Street, Police, Air Supply, Boy Zone, Tom Petty, King Crimson, Pink Floyd, Deep Purple and more. Writers or books mentioned are Madam Bovary, Sharky's Machine, Lady Chatterley's Lover, The Mayor of Casterbridge, Harold Robins, Oliver Twist, P.G. Wodehouse, Beowulf, The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire, Eliot, Poe, Browning, Freud, Richard Crompton, Tom Sharpe, Douglas Adams, Enid Blyton, Carol Lewis, and my personal favorite Georgette Heyer. I don't want to enumerate movies or movie hunks but there are plenty. References are drawn not because they mean anything but because a particular music was being played at a particular time or a particular individual reminded her of a particular fictional character. Here are a few examples from the book: "You know that song, Art Garfunkel's Heart in New York, the lyrics reminded me of Bombay…"(12), "The first man I fell head over heels in love with was Michael Henchard, the protagonist in Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge" (34), "I listened to Gerry Rafferty's Baker Street over and over again to get centered" (36), "As the strains of King Crimson's deeply pessimistic Epitaph washed over the room, I mentally kicked myself again and again for my stupidity" (49), "I'd been looking for love in the strangest places, just like in that Uriah Heep song, July morning" (97), "I was lying in bed listening to Crosby, Stills & Nash's Our house and really missing New Guy" (129). Would it have made any difference if this information were not so painstakingly included? No. Would it have been better if Gulab had not mentioned the scope of her reading and listening habits? Definitely.

It's not the plot that is unappealing but the fact that the plot gets buried under too much unnecessary description. As the first tenet of Creative Writing 101 emphasizes: "Show, don't Tell," the book would have benefited from some pruning and revising. The book reads like a patchwork of very little happening and more of justifying of what happens in terms of other characters' experiences from other books. One reason could be that the novel was originally parts of a regular column for the glossy Cosmopolitan magazine. "Dating Dairy," Gulab's column, might have been successful as magazine bits but fails to pull itself off as a well-crafted novel. Also, something could have been done about the aesthetic appeal of the book's exterior. The shiny yellow and blue cover is not kind on the eyes. Writing from Delhi, this is Gulab's first novel.

Rebecca Sultana teaches English at East-West University, Dhaka.