Despite wavering, A Love Song for India never disappoints

CULTURE & SOCIETY ? REVIEW

Despite wavering, A Love Song for India never disappoints

Writer Ruth Prawer Jhabvala remains inimitable with her eye for the wicked, the odd and the entertaining

By Kala Krishnan Ramesh

The thing about Ruth Prawer Jhabvala?s writing has always been its bite: the sharp, though indulgent nip in her version of people and their motives?both professed and hidden. Since she never allowed herself to be completely at home anywhere, Jhabvala always got the observer?s advantage: her vision had the acuity of an outsider, with the privileges of an insider.

In Jhabvala?s newest book, A Love Song for India, the best stories have this feature?the writer invents her characters with typical wry, detached affection, and lets them inhabit the story, without asking for any concessions on their behalf. Characters in Innocence, Critic, Talent, A Love Song for India, School of Oriental Studies seem right where they are; their actions seem authentic to who they are and appropriate to the story?s demands. Like Diana in the title story, whose life as the wife of a civil servant in newly-independent India, her unease with Delhi, her feeling of being at home in the districts, her sensibility and her actions, all seem to be just the thing for that story, that plot.

In this collection?s better stories, though there are large time sweeps, there is also a lingering in moments and the reader?s attention span?taken into and out of intense episodes?can run parallel to the story?s physical length, since plot movement rises organically from the story?s semantic energies.

On the other hand, there are some stories, notably The Teacher and The New Messiah, which seem a little disoriented, as if their internal time was out of joint?making characters appear to speak, act and feel as if they?d just woken from a decades-long slumber and got into the wrong story. For instance, the appearance of computers, credit cards and the notion of a ?sex offence? in The Teacher are a little shocking because the story?s tone, right from the opening sentence?with its simple conception that middle-aged women can be ?girlish? because their temperament is girlish?makes you feel the story is set in an older time, a simpler time.

Then there?s Jhabvala?s rather Ayn Rand-ish endorsement of characters?it seems that Kris in The Messiah and the ?teacher? chacko, are a ?real? messiah and a ?real? teacher not only for the story?s other characters, but also for the writer, and when a writer believes the same things her characters do, it?s no longer a story! Perhaps this explains why some stories are predictable, and why Jhabvala allows some rather limp endings.

However, for the most part?bite intact (though softened by time?)?Jhabvala?s vision of the world remains keen, wicked, entertaining and makes these stories?oddly sectioned?in A Love Song for India, attractive.

letters@tehelka.com

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Source: http://www.tehelka.com/story_main51.asp?filename=Ws241211Review.asp

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