With loyalties divided among three continents
Moyez G. Vassanji, Indian by parentage and tradition, was raised in Africa, studied nuclear physics at MIT and eventually settled in Toronto, where he studied Sanskrit and Indian philology, then began to write. The author of six novels, he has twice won Canada's Giller Prize. "The Assassin's Song" follows Karsan Dargawalla, heir to an Indian shrine dedicated to a Sufi mystic, as he attempts to escape his divine role. Karsan wants to play cricket, read, discover the world outside Gujarat, but when he secretly applies to Harvard and is accepted, his life becomes both easier and immensely more complicated. Vassanji elegantly folds an epic story of modern India into an entirely convincing personal odyssey. He spoke from his home in Toronto.
Q You just returned from India. How was the novel received there?
A I had one very grand review by the grand old man of Indian letters, Khushwant Singh [laughs]. He said it's one of the best novels written by an Indian over the past, I don't know how many years. I don't know what it means, but it sounds good. Indian readers were moved by the novel, I think, because they know the philosophical or traditional background which is almost forgotten nowadays. When they read the book they're reminded of the fact that there were mixed-faith shrines and places of worship. They identify with that completely.
Q You are an Indian born in Kenya, raised in Tanzania, living in Canada. How did that identity shape you?
A I thought India was an ancestral memory and distant. But when I first traveled there in 1993, it affected me profoundly. My life became extremely complicated because what I thought was over was a part of me and I kept going back. Of course in Africa, we built a little India. The architecture of downtown Dar es Salaam, for example, reminds me of . . . Gujarat where my ancestors came from. And when you hear a swear word on the streets of Delhi you understand it.
Q And as a writer?
A You have so many stories to tell, cultures clashing and combining. The modern world of Islam and Hinduism and the big wars that have come up, we never had as children, we just didn't think in terms like that. That for me is a big issue; that ordinary people have combinations of cultures. But the world forces you to become exclusive and in the most dramatic cases, as in this book, become subject to violence because someone has decided what you are.
Q Why did you concentrate on the 2002 Gujarat riots?
A I wanted to keep away from the subject because there are so many more wonderful ones, but I couldn't. It has colored everything; how you view a monument, for example. Yet this is the land of Gandhi. We were placid people, we were cowards, we ran away. I couldn't really believe the kind of violence inflicted on people during that pogrom, especially women, the worst kind you can imagine. I thought it was a good place to start the novel. Begin with the destruction of a shrine and then describe its story.
Q Did you grow up on the wonderful stories and legends you describe?
A Yes, I also grew up with the songs. Three years ago, when I went to some of these shrines in India, I discovered that the songs I knew in Africa were composed by wandering mystics buried there. It's an amazing connection historically; suddenly the pure community is connected to the impure community.
Q You dislike the idea of purity?
A I was brought up straddling cultures and countries. It was impossible to be pure, and often I find myself in embarrassing situations. The Canadians want you to be a pure Canadian, the Indians want you to be Indian, but I also feel perfectly at home in Africa.
Q Why did the character of Karsan, the reluctant elect, appeal to you?
A He's not pure, he cannot take sides the way his brother can, cannot love or hate so easily. At the very end, for example, he does not believe, yet he cannot lift his hand off the shoulder of the person who comes to worship because they need him. You grow old. These problems are never solved.
Q Did you, like Karsan, have a cricket obsession?
A I was not a great cricketer, but every little space you got you played. With a cloth ball, a rubber ball, with marbles, you played cricket. We made up games rolling pencils and depending where they fell that would be two runs or one run. It was an obsession, but it was still a sport. In India now it's become a religion.
Q Did you, like many Indian writers, grow up reading English books?
A I read all of Enid Blyton and a lot of garbage. At the same time there was a longing created, to read something like that -- English moors, caravans, gypsies -- about my own place. Then in high school at one stage I read James Baldwin's "Another Country" and it really affected me.
Anna Mundow, a freelance journalist living in Central Massachusetts, is a correspondent for the Irish Times. She can be reached at ama1668@hotmail.com. 