Fantasy and Reality

           Rushdie’s East and West evokes the real and the fantastic, the everyday and the out of the box, the exuberant and the calm in order to weave somewhat of a narrative that pertains to his many ideas and thoughts about East and West. It seems as though Rushdie, through these stories, declares his refusal to declare one “home”, the East or the West, his true home. When he lived in India, the West seemed like a magical world of knowledge and prosperity, but now as a Westernized man, he somewhat sees India as the more magical, mysterious place of his past. If we think of the historical context, Rushdie is writing in a post-fatwa time in which he fears for his life. This anthology seems like Rushdie trying to understand his own thoughts by separating East and West and then reconciling them again. 

           When he does combine the two entities into “East West”, the focus of the stories is love, friendship, and relationships, and how they survive and adapt when cultures collide, which seems to me to be Rushdie’s way of saying that our relationships define our home and our life experiences. In both “East” and “West” we encounter things that are familiar, that we have read about before in this class or others or that we have encountered in our western lives. Rushdie juxtaposes the comfortable and familiar with the absurd and ridiculous. He paints a heightened and fantastic image of each place; the plots are twisted and ridiculous but reflect the struggle that comes from being a product of two places and, thinking back to “Imaginary Homelands”, to not knowing what is real and what is fantasy. 

             In “The Prophet’s Hair” we encounter a, for the most part, normal family, that is torn apart by fanaticism when a hair belonging to Muhammed comes under their roof. Rushdie interjects a curse and somewhat magical occurrences into a story that was originally representing the everyday. In “At the Auction of the Ruby Slippers”, Western obsession with possessions and money is made ridiculous by the introduction of a world market and auction where everything is for sale, even people’s souls. In this way, East and West become similar as the West’s obsession with movie memorabilia is compared with worshipping a strand of hair from the head of Muhammed. Perhaps, in doing this, Rushdie is trying to show that when a person comes from two places and have two homes, neither home is based in reality, both are “imaginary”; aspects of both cultures will be exaggerated. 

             In relation to our own discussion of homelands and home, I think that Rushdie’s anthology contributes fascinating ideas about home. We have been trying to understand the authors and their stories and discover what these works are saying about home. I think that part of the closing from “The Courter” really sums up how Rushdie feels about home but also gives insight into other stories we have read and other authors we have encountered. He writes, "I, too, have ropes around my neck, I have them to this day, pulling me this way and that, East and West, the nooses tightening, commanding, choose, choose. . . . Ropes, I do not choose between you. Lassoes, lariats, I choose neither of you, and both. Do you hear? I refuse to choose” (Rushdie 211). Rushdie seems to be torn in this work, but not between two homes, between fantasy and reality. 

Rusdie and Lahiri

Salman Rushdie's East, West portrays characters with various ethnic backgrounds who harbor dual infatuations with two cultures. Indian characters such as Mustafa and Ms. Rehana express their torn sense of self-identity that fluctuates based on the discrepancies between Indian and English culture. The characters in these short stories experience the confusion of cultivating a persona among two differing cultures. Contrasting social norms and cultural values cause strain on one's sense of personal identity. Characters such as Mary from "The Courter" express a longing to return home throughout the duration of the story. Her ultimate decision to return home is prompted by the untimely death of the protagonist, as well as her underlying affinity for India that surpasses her love for England.

The novel The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri correlates with the principle themes of these short stories, as well as the majority of works covered in this class. It tells the story of a Bengali couple who settles in Cambridge MA after having their only son Gogol. An important theme throughout the text is the significance of names and the role they play in cultivating our identities. Bengali culture denotes that children be given a nickname or "pet name" that more or less serves as a term of endearment intended to be used only by the family. Gogol's parents attempt to give him a more Americanized name while at school much to his dismay. The young boy's reluctance to give up his pet name correlates with the notion of not wanting to forsake one's homeland due to the familiarity and comfort they provide. As Gogol matures, he gradually seeks to assimilate into the social culture of his high school and college. During this portion of the novel, Gogol begins to hate his name because it promotes his difference or "otherness" to the American culture he so desperately seeks to join. His assimilation into that culture is solidified by his marriage to an American woman who further helps him adapt to American culture in a way his parents never could. The notion of Homeland assimilation by generational progression is demonstrated in The Namesake.

Love Without Language

     Salman Rushdie’s East, West is a collection of stories concerning the phenomenon of intercultural exchange between the Eastern Indian lands and the pioneering Western lands of England. What has been so apparent in our studies up to this point is the relation between the post-colonial homelands and the mother nation of England with her many adopted nations. What began as an occupation of English people in foreign lands has evolved into foreigners from those foreign lands migrating to England. From a sociological standpoint, it is clear to see that peripheral nations become increasingly dependent on core nations as time progresses to the point where citizens of the sub-nation must migrate in order to ensure their quality of life. The first half of Rushdie’s book East is largely focused on the Indian homeland after the age of the British Raj. The second part of the book is West and it concerns the English nation as they interact with waves of migrants from different peripheral nations. The final stories in the book are where East and West meet and this meshing of culture is what allows for the story “The Courter”.

      The Courter is a story about an English boy being raised by an Indian woman in London. This dynamic is interesting because it is present in every multi-cultural core nation. When well-to-do couples decide to have children, they must also take into consideration their own personal lives and careers and often times the parents find they cannot relinquish these things so easily and must compromise the upbringing of their child through his or her childhood. Enter the nanny: somewhere in her 40s with a heavy foreign accent but with all the motherly traditions from her homeland. In New York city these nannies are black women but in Rushdie’s England these women hail from the East.

      It is the interaction between the English child and the Indian mother that allows for such a dramatic juxtaposition of culture. There are cultural barriers as well as language barriers as she continually mispronounces his name and fails at several junctions to connect with the boy. Yet this is of little importance as the role of mother uses a universal language. While the two may never see eye-to-eye culturally, they share a bond that can only be formed between a caretaker and the taken care of. It is beautiful to witness the love without words and Rushdie portrays it several times in his collection of stories from East to West.

Dialogue and Language in East, West

                Salman Rushdie brilliantly uses dialogue in East, West to draw readers into the stories he tells. His characters all have different styles of speech which betray their personalities, and the manner in which dialogue is used creates different atmospheres in each of the stories. For instance, “The Prophet’s Hair” contains very little dialogue, most of which is urgent (“’Because we can afford no last-minute backings-out… I am determined to tell you everything, keeping back no secrets whatsoever’”) or severe (“’A dope! I have been cursed with a dope!’”) (40-41, 46). This significantly increases the tension in the story. Moreover, this story is dominated by brief monologues or isolated statements rather than drawn out conversations, which creates a choppy and disjointed mood that a reader finds unsettling.

“At the Auction of the Ruby Slippers,” however, contains little dialogue, and that which does exists resides in flashbacks. The reader and the narrator both become disembodied observers to the story, rather than participants – the absence of speech distances the reader from the events of the story, and so allows him or her to plunge directly into the meaning of the story. “Chekov and Zulu” uses the opposite technique – it is dominated by uninterrupted conversations between characters. The extensive use of dialogue, as well as the casual, joking quality of the characters’ speech, obscures the themes of the story while bringing attention to the characters’ interactions. The way Chekov and Zulu communicate is familiar to the reader, because the inside jokes and implicit understanding between friends is thoroughly realistic. They seem to share a unique, personal language which nobody else can comprehend (certainly not Zulu’s wife, who can barely repeat the message Zulu sends Chekov), and the intimacy of the connection this language creates deepens the tragedy of the friends’ parting.

Dialogue plays a profound role in the plot of “The Courter.” Rushdie immediately establishes the flaws in Certainly-Mary’s and Mixed-Up’s communication – Mary speaks broken English and mispronounces words (particularly those containing the letter P), and Mecir suffered a stroke which greatly reduced his brain function. The children mock them for these faults, as they mock their father for misusing the word “nipple,” but the narrator confesses that he, too, struggled with the language and is ashamed of his difficulties (185). However, these two, who can communicate only brokenly through spoken conversations, learn to communicate instead through chess. Even though they can barely talk to each other, their relationship grows strong, which shows the diversity of languages that can connect people.

Communication is an essential part of human life. We form connections with others through language, whether this is the private language of two old friends or the silent language of a game that two lovers understand more easily than the spoken word. We communicate differently with different people, depending on how we relate to them. With our superiors and elders we know to speak politely and formally, but with our friends we speak openly and share whatever is on our minds. The knowledge that one can speak freely is in itself a sense of home – it indicates a degree of comfort with one’s surroundings. A home is filled with those who speak the same language, whether Indian or English or a web of personal jests that only close friends or family can understand.

                I’ve recently been exposed to such a codified “inside language” in an unexpected way. At my service site, Tunbridge Public Charter School, the teachers and students have a system of rules and terms that threw me for a loop during my first few days there. The school promotes what they call “pax,” which is essentially good behavior. The teachers turn rules into games that the young children can understand – when they want the students to quiet down, they will say “show me your bubbles!” and the students know to puff up their cheeks and listen. The teachers have established these methods to communicate with the younger kids who cannot understand the language that adults would use to communicate with one another. It was somewhat strange to find myself in a position where pre-K students understand what was going on better than I did, but every time I return to Tunbridge I become more familiar with the language of the school, and I learn to speak to the students in terms we all understand.

The Old and Young

I enjoyed this anthology of Rushdie's work. I was particularly fixated on the old versus young dynamic that took place in this story as it reminded me in very subtle ways of Chandra's handling of the old/young dynamic in "Love and Longing in Bombay." It seems to me that one of the present themes in the works we've read is this idea that the young people know better or don't know better than the elderly about the conditions of their placement in the post-colonial world. Most clearly I see this theme explored in the words of the old man who admits, "Yes, I know, I'm an old man, my ideas are wrinkled with age [...] Maybe all the views of the old can be discounted now, and if that's so, let it be. But I'm telling this story and I haven't finished yet" (Rusdie 30). In my mind, I took this to mean that the elderly people's views should not be discounted as they are still alive, and still have a story left to tell and live out. It seems to me that the very set up of Chandra's story sought to impart this knowledge as well. The very first story of this anthology, "East, West," is about a woman who seeks out advice from an elderly man that she, ultimately, does not follow. Additionally, it seems as if their is this general understanding that the knowledge that the elderly posses is somehow outdated or outworn.
This strikes me as interesting because I know that in West African culture it is very much the case that when an elderly person speaks you listen. The words of the elderly are so revered and prized that I have often heard an older person say, "even if I'm speaking rubbish,you must listen to my rubbish." A proverb that I think really captures the essence of this attitude is a Nigerian proverb that roughly states, "What a young man can't see standing on the mountain, an old man can see sitting down in his chair." The general attitude is, in fact, that wisdom comes with age. I know that from my personal experiences growing up with this background in the Western world, it has been a difficult pill to swallow. I think that in the West we are so ready to accept that age doesn't prove anything, but that we have taken it one step further, and produced an idea that the young have much to teach the old. As the movers and shapers of the present and the future, our stories are important, and definitely need to be heard and not silenced. Here, I am reminded of Potiki where the characters are discussing how they must know where the location of their jumping off point so that they know where they will land. The stories of the elderly tell a history that is still useful in the formation of the present and the future.

Ultimately, I feel that the message that Rushdie and Chandra are trying to communicate is not that the elderly voices matter more than the younger generation of stories, but that we shouldn't forget their stories as we cultivate our own. The stories of the old are an important resource in the formation of the future. Often it is looked at as progressive to go against the advice or position of the old, but sometimes that may not be the case. In the end, the elderly and the young need to be in conversation with one another in order to realize their present truths.

A Meshing of Culture and The Borderlands

The short stories in Salman Rushdie’s East, West examine the meshing and overlapping of two distinct cultures, as well as the difficulties that may arise from being divided between two homelands. Some of the themes present in this book are reminiscent to another piece that we’ve examined this year by Rushdie called “Imaginary Homelands”. In both works, we how troubling it can be to identify with two different homelands at some times, and at others, be unable to identify with any home at all. In “Imaginary Homelands,” Rushdie explains that “[s]ometimes we straddle two cultures; at other times, we fall between the two stools,” which could accurately be used to describe the circumstances of some of the characters in the final short story, “The Courter”. (Rushdie “Imaginary” 15).  The narrator and his grandmother Mary both experience a loss of identity to a degree, as they struggle to adjust to English culture while juggling their Indian roots. Luckily for Mary, she meets the courter, who is able to help her grow into her new home through chess, which eventually “had become their private language” (Rushdie “East” 194). Their relationship helps her to feel more comfortable in England, as the courter increased her familiarity with the country and its culture. The significance of the courter’s presence for Mary is clear when he is stabbed and she decides that can no longer stay in England and that she must return home to India. The courter represented her link to this new world—one that allowed her to mesh into the society rather seamlessly despite her deep roots in India. Without him, she feels lost, as if the home that she had begun to build in England had been torn down around her, and thus she naturally reverts to what was always comfortable for her.

            There are interesting parallels between the themes of homeland apparent in Rushdie’s pieces and a book that I recently read for an International Relations class this semester. Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza by Gloria Anzaldua sheds light on the meshing of cultures that occurs around near the U.S.-Mexico border, and the effects that it has on the citizens living in this “vague and undetermined place created by the emotional residue of an unnatural boundary” (Anzaldua 25).  The intermingling of people and cultures from both sides of the border create an identity that is both American and Mexican, while at the same time, neither. Anzaldua explains how those who call the borderland their home feel marginalized because they are forced to prescribe to one side or the other, while they don’t necessarily identify with the culture associated with either nationality. Instead, the culture of the borderland represents a unique blend of various backgrounds that form something completely new. This is much like Rushdie’s take on being divided between homelands, as Anzaldua explains that people in this area can prescribe to a variety of different identities such as Mexican, mestizo, Chicano, Raza, or tejanos. Despite the plethora of options by which to identify oneself, there is simultaneously a lack of central identity that plagues those live in the borderlands, much like the narrator of “The Courter” struggled to compensate his Indian Roots with his developing British identity.

An Intersection of East and West in Rushdie's Novel

True to form, Salman Rushdie adheres to his habit of creating anthologies of interweaving stories that demonstrate a crisis of identity as it relates to the concept of homelands. The novel begins with the story of Ms. Rehana, a betrothed woman looking to pass a test in order to obtain a permit to London. She has been sent for by her betrothed, Mustafa Dar, and once at the Consulate, a kindly employee, Mustafa Ali, offers Rehana a simple way to pass the test due to his immediate attraction to her. Instead of accepting his advice, Rehana decides to take the test on her own terms. In a twist of fate for which Rushdie is known for, it is revealed that Rehana lied on all of the questions because she sincerely wished to remain in Lahore. For Ms. Rehana, a geographical region is home, not a man. It is at the end of this story that Rehana fully develops her sense of identity. She knows what she wants, and is completely unafraid to go after it. Ironically, the story is entitled Good Advice Is Rarer Than Rubies, and yet Rehana rejects the good advice offered to her. 

The second story, entitled The Free Radio, also takes place in the East and essentially revolves around government attempts to regulate birth rates and family planning. Again, we see a crisis of identity in a homeland; the government wishes to regulate a basic human right and it leads to a deep questioning of society. The old man watches events unfold between a thief, Ram, and an unsavory widow who Ram eventually takes as his wife. At the conclusion of the story, the old man remarks sadly that, as a direct consequence of his old age, his views and opinions are largely ignored: "Yes, I know, I'm an old man, my ideas are wrinkled with age, and these days they tell me sterilisation and God knows what is necessary, and maybe I'm wrong to blame the widow as well - why not? Maybe all the views of the old can be discounted now, and if that's so, let it be" (Rushdie 30). Again, Rushdie is exploring a crisis of identity. The old man sees what is happening to Ram and he listens to the government's plan for regulating human population, but he no longer has a voice in his own home. His age has rendered him useless in his mind, and he is therefore paralyzed.

The stories from the West weave in multiple pop culture references, including an allusion to Shakespeare's Hamlet and his court jester, Yorick. The second story from the West, entitled At the Auction of the Ruby Slippers, contains yet another reference to a Western pop culture icon. An interesting fact contained in this story is that in the written version of The Wizard of Oz, the slippers were silver. However, in the movie adaptation, the slippers are ruby. The last story from the West is entitled Christopher Columbus and Queen Isabella of Spain Consummate Their Relationship and is again a direct reference to an important Western occurrence as it signifies the beginning of one of the most powerful empires the Western world has ever known. 

Finally, Rushdie concludes his anthology with an intersection of stories from both the East and West, bringing the stories full circle. The Harmony of the Spheres, Chekov and Zulu, and The Courter all weave together cultural differences and provide a sense of home different from what we have encountered thus far. The Courter is especially intriguing because it tells the story of a young boy raised by an Indian woman in London, and she consistently mispronounces the name of the "porter" and instead calls him a courter. It is a brilliant example of the struggle to assimilate into a different culture, and Rushdie drives his point home through the example of a woman trying to do right by this boy, but still making mistakes along the way. 

Overall, I enjoyed this anthology as I found that it related to the cultural melting pot present in America today. Cultures are merging all over the world, and my worldview is admittedly limited to my observations in the U.S., but everywhere I see cultures and ethnic groups mixing and assimilating. I can only imagine how difficult the process must be to leave the comforts of home in search of a different life, and I think Rushdie does a fantastic job of illustrating the differences, but also the similarities, between Eastern and Western cultures.