[Paybeskf]

Bard,

AR and Rushdie write about India and describe India very successfully, but their points of view, their influences and their sensibilities, seem to me essentially Western. To me, they seem to think and write like Westerners who never really experience India below the level of the picturesque. Even starvation is beautiful seen through train windows or from behind sun-glasses.

I am afraid I read them too long ago to be able to give references. When I say an Indian novel, I mean the kind of novel that a foreigner can read and instantly get a glimpse of what the typical Indian lives, thinks and feels like. It is possible that when I say RKN is more Indian, I actually mean that he is more South Indian than some of the other people I am comparing him to(because I am South Indian).

VS Naipaul and RK Narayan describe India (or Indianness) more authentically, through Indian eyes. Or the guy who wrote Train to Pakistan. There is a earthiness in RKN's books, for example, that instantly recalls the hot and dusty roads of South India.

This is just my memory of the impression I came away with, after reading Midnight/Satanic and God..Little. Not that I am belittling any of those books: they were wonderfully creative and immensely enjoyable. I grew up reading RKN and that may be why I am biased.

So, what do you think? Do you personally find (I assume that you're Indian?) that Rushdie's characters and situations "feel" Indian to you?

By the way, was that "we" regal or representative?