Journey to Spirituality

Journey to Ithaca

By Anita Desai

Published By Mandarin Paperbacks as ‘Minerva Edition’

First Published in Great Britain By William Heinemann Ltd.

Way back in October, 1996, when I was still unemployed I used to visit almost regularly British Council Library, Kolkata. At one fine noon I borrowed Anita Desai’s book from the library. From the very first page it captured my attention.

Matteo was a rich Italian who was reared up in a materialistic atmosphere where his parents did not, care for the mental and spiritual development. First, he realized that there is another world of imagination with the help of his British tutor, Fabian. This increased his sense of emptiness which always clings to his heart. He eventually married Sophie, daughter of a banker. She also did not care much about her parents’ sophistication. In stead they both come to India in order to discover the mystery of India, about which Matteo was well aware due to a book Journey to East by Herman Hesse which he read earlier. First he went from Gurus to Gurus in order to realize the mystery of the religion. It appeared to him that his land is a land of Mystery. But he did not find peace in his mind. At last he came to Mother’s ashram. Here he felt that he got spiritual enlightenment at the feet of the Mother.

But Sophie, who was more down-to-earth, now mother of two children---a girl and a boy---Isabel and Guacoma, refused to believe Mother’s identity as a spiritual enlighter. She decides to trace the Mother’s own story. The Mother was originally a Turkish girl called Laila who had fascinated over the art of dancing. She once met a dance troupe from India whose leader was ‘Krishna’. Laila thought that the spiritual fervour in their dance was what she wanted. She joined the dance troupe and towed through Milan and America. At last she came to India, her land of dream where she spiritually belonged. Gradually, she realized that “Krishna’s actual love is dancing”. So she left the troupe and went to attend pilgrimage to Himalyas. She, in the midst of nature, experienced the Eternal Devine Truth and came in contact with his spiritual Master. Gradually she became the Mother.

All these were found by Sophie and she also found a diary of the Mother, which belonged so far to the old ‘Krishna’. Now she returned to the Mother’s ashram to meet Mother and reveal her findings. But she came to know that the Mother was dead a short while ago and Matteo also left the ashram to go to Himalaya where the Mother received her enlightenment. Sophie also decided to go for a pilgrimage.

This novel is cunningly structured, beautifully evocative, rich with sounds, smell and sights of Italy and India, and it draws the reader into the heart of the most untranslatable of human experience.

Anita Desai writes well, lucidly and convincingly, when she describes the outside world. When she describes the pilgrimage that Matteo and Sophie join months after their coming to India, when she describes the beaches of Goa hazy with the clouds of drug that is being smoked there, I felt like a witness. The passage in which Desai describes the meeting between Sophie and the Mother is one of the most beautiful ones in the book. It is in such passages rich with symbols that I could finally glimpse Desai's craft.

Where she fails in this novel is in characterisation. One never understands how Matteo ticks, why he is ready to accept anyone and everyone as his saviour. Why he accepts that living in filth is essential to spiritual quest. The part dealing with Laila is the least convincing in the entire book. That this girl is yet another rebel is fine, but that she is so utterly uncaring towards the needs of all but her own is portrayed a bit too thinly. That she becomes the leading dancer of an Indian dance troupe within two months of starting to learn the dance is as unconvincing as her later incarnation as the Mother. The one character who has some spirit, one person who comes across as being a real person instead of being a two dimensional caricature is Sophie, but unfortunately her part is not sketched to the full. Just when I thought that this is a good book (the part where Sophie sees the Mother), the novel loses all the tension that was built up till then. It suddenly becomes too filmy, too unreal to be credible. If this journey is a journey to Ithaca, it is one that does not fulfill, that does not satisfy.

Excerpt of Review by other reviewers:

"A daring, colorful novel almost impossible to absorb in one reading... Anita Desai is a fluent artist, working from one vivid salience to the next. She knows the different lights of India, and she sees everything under the sun."

-- Paul West, The New York Times Book Review

"A triumph... What distinguishes the voice of Anita Desai is the physical intensity of her prose, the range of her capacious intelligence, her unsentimental compassion... Her work is an illumination and a blessing."

-- Pearl K. Bell, The New Republic

"A rich tapestry of the contemporary human condition in an alien environment ... Desai creates images rooted in the external environment that leave indelible imprints on our internal landscapes."

-- Mandira Sen, San Francisco Chronicle

"Powerful...a wonder of exquisitely crafted prose. As she piles detail upon detail, the intensity of India is seamlessly conjured up."

-- Judith Weinraub, Washington Post Book World

"A marvelous writer ... The book is exhilaratingly alive."

-- Esther Harriott, New York Newsday

My virtual first blog

Read, read and read……..I tell myself

Like any history of the world, history of literature is full of anecdotes which might not have any or little significance in the mainstream. But these anecdotes are lively, more interesting and captures the true spirit which perhaps is beyond the capacity of dry leaves of history. For professional reasons I have to take care of endless dates and incidents and works of English literature. Sometimes, it appears to be very boring. It’s like studying a skeleton. Anecdotes and legends about any author appears to me a draft of fresh wind. I today recall the legendary friendship and endless stories that revolved around this friendship between Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the avant-garde exponent of Romantic literature and the prince of English essays, Charles Lamb. Charles Lamb in of his many refreshing essays opined that the populace of the human being can be divided into two categories:-(a) people who buy books but never or very little read it, (b) people who seldom buy book but always read innumerable number of books. Then Lamb goes on illustrating his point by sitting an example from his own life. He said that Coleridge was a very good friend of his. But for sometimes, he was noticing that whenever Coleridge calls on him, he was very eager to taste Lamb’s cooking ability. So he made conscious attempts to make Lamb disappear for a considerable time into the kitchen. When finally Coleridge left his house sometimes, it was discovered that some books were missing in the book shelf. But Lamb could not be sure of the correlation between the vanishing act of the books and Coleridge’s visit. Though this thought gnawed, he was never bothered about it. So soon, he forgot all about it and continued to welcome Coleridge warmly to his abode. One day, however Lamb pays back a visit to Coleridge’s little hut. When Coleridge was making tea for his guest Lamb was browsing through Coleridge’s impressive collection of books. Suddenly, Lamb put his hand on a book which bore his own name on the title page. It was a handwriting easily recognizable because it belonged to Charles Lamb himself. Without telling anything Lamb put the book in his pocket. He returned to his own place and opened the pages. A surprise was waiting for him. In the margins of the book, Lamb, to his surprise and joy, could locate handwritten notes by his friend, i.e. Coleridge which is the product of unfathomable scholarship. At the end of the essay, Lamb advises the readers that if they have such a friend, like that of Coleridge, they should give him ample opportunity to steal the books. And after some times, if possible, those books should be rescued after being enriched by the scholarship of those ‘thieves’. Charles Lamb told that he belonged to the first category people, the people who buy books but seldom read them. While Coleridge belonged to the second category, people who read books but seldom buy it. And naturally the second category is superior than the first one.
I too belonged to the first category. I love to buy books. I am a kind of bibliomaniac. The printed pages within the covers appeal me most. I could not resist the temptation to buy those books. But in queer incidents it happened that I bought two copies of same book after a long interval completely forgetting that the first copy was bought long ago. I could not keep track of the books which are already in my collection. So it is not only very distressing mentally but also it causes immense financial loss. I can safely say that I have not read a little more than fifty percent of collection of books yet.
However, this blog is not about my book collection or my habit of not reading sufficient books. This blog is intended to review of books. I wish to write articles about how a particular book impresses me or disappoints me.
I also request my beloved readers to contribute their opinions about the articles. Moreover I would be glad if they write articles about other books. Please, please enrich my blog with your well-thought articles. Wish you all very good and happy reading life.