Sad men behave badly | Daily Star

In January 2023, I sat in the crowd listening to a performance at the 10th and possibly final Dhaka Lit Fest. Sheikh Hasina had already been in power for almost 15 years and it seemed to me that the sun would never set on the Awami League, at least in my lifetime. At the Bangla Academy, Booker Prize winner Shehan Karunathilaka spoke about his disappointment with the presidential coup in Sri Lanka. Also present on the panel was noted essayist and writer Pankaj Mishra, known for his critique of the dark side of India’s economic growth and the deeply problematic rise of Hindu nationalism. While Karunatilaka’s focus was on the anarchy that flourished in the power vacuum that arose immediately after Aragalaya, Mishra, whose novel Run and Hide (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2022) marked his return to fiction after 25 years, believed that systems destroyed by the legacy of colonialism could not hope to function normally.

Two months after the July Revolution, and with weariness set in from the chaotic process of living in a destroyed country trying to rebuild itself, I felt it was a good enough time to open my copy of Run and Hide that had been collecting dust on my computer. TBR.

The story follows the journey of three young men who achieved the holy grail of getting into the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), which a section of the population saw as a chance to rewrite their faith. In the novel’s harrowing opening scene, all three are subjected to a horrific caste-based ritual of hazing that binds them together as they move forward. True to the promise of IIT, these three are truly able to shake off their poor background and rise to the occasion. Virendra, a Dalit who participated in the worst of these rituals, becomes a Wall Street tycoon. Asim, another member of their circle, enters the media and becomes a celebrity pop intellectual. Arun, our narrator, initially takes a different path, living in a Himalayan village and making a living as a translator. As the three change their lives, Modi rises to power and begins to push his nationalist agenda while abroad, the US enters the Trump era, and the UK slowly approaches Brexit.

Woven into this narrative are glimpses of Arun’s humble past, and it is in these parts that the book truly shines. Mishra paints a rich, nuanced portrait of poverty that manages to capture a range of human emotions and everything he wants to convey about the despair that marks the path out of poverty: lack of job opportunities, brutal caste discrimination, etc., then he copes with the subtlety that I would like to preserve in other parts of the book.

Because of this, the three male protagonists are never able to shake off the psychological scars left by their poor beginnings, casual cruelty and the constant panic of discovery amidst the brutal atmosphere of their IIT days. This is evidenced by their empty and blinkered subsequent lives, filled with sexual debauchery and conspicuous consumption, be it Virendra’s obsession with expensive prostitutes or Asim’s constant boasting of his sexual prowess. At first it seems that Arun at least avoids these temptations thanks to his reclusive tendencies, but as the novel progresses, which is written like one long confessional letter to a jilted lover, we learn that Arun’s modus operandi has always been to escape. and hide. He flees his past to IIT, where he hides his true caste. After this, he runs away from his family responsibilities, preferring the meaningless drudgery of the Delhi rat race, even when it becomes clear that his mother and sister need his support. He even hides from the temptation of success by running away with his mother to the Himalayas, and then runs away when she becomes seriously ill. When he begins an ill-timed romance with Aaliyah, an old liberal money activist, he hides his true nature from her and her glittering entourage, acting out his life’s path before eventually abandoning her too.

It is through these three characters that Mishra tries to convey his point that a broken system can only produce broken people who continue to repeat these problematic patterns. I say “attempts” because the rest of the novel doesn’t live up to the brilliance of a few chapters.

Critics of the novel noted that the characters were poorly written, to the point of being cartoonish. Whether we read about Asim’s hypocrisy as he publicly rants about violence in Kashmir, or about the mistreatment of Dalits, but in his stories he associates with the “villains”, or about Arun’s cruel father, who in the last days of his life becomes one of such Trolls in Facebook, or even Aaliyah’s brilliant company talking about global inequality at her fashion parties – there is virtually no nuance to any of these events. characters. Others have pointed out large passages of exposition in which the writer Pankaj Mishra takes a backseat to the social commentator Pankaj Mishra, which damages the integrity of the novel as a work of fiction (sorry, Mr. Mishra, but Sally Rooney did it better). ). These are all valid criticisms, but if I had to voice my personal gripe with the novel, it’s this: the outdated trope of sad men behaving badly has long outlived its welcome. A Künstlerroman should be more than some flawed character who refuses to develop but who somehow needs to be pitied.

Pankaj Mishra has been known to criticize what he calls Salman Rushdie’s “selective humanism”, but at least in Run and Hide he fails to create anything that rises above the most superficial critique of the systems that support it inequality. If you’re looking for an epistolary novel that more satisfactorily subverts the class and caste system, Arvind Adiga’s The White Tiger (Free Press, 2008) is still a better option.

Sabrina Fatma Ahmad writer, journalist and founder of Sehri Tales.