An Area Of Darkness

by V. S. Naipaul

Born and brought up in an Indian colony of Trinidad, V.S. Naipaul always thought India to be the country from which his grandfather came, a country never physically described and therefore never real, a country out in the void beyond the dot of Trinidad… a country suspended in time… So in 1962 he set out to discover this country of his imagination. But during his journey, as the physique of Europe melted away and he found himself into the Aryan Asia, his feelings are described as “Hysteria had been my first reaction, and a brutality dictated by a new awareness of myself as a whole human being and a determination, touched with fear, to remain what I was.” His first journey to India was of “Superficial impressions, intemperate reactions”.

An Area of Darkness is what he sees the real India as. Arriving at Bombay, he travels as north as Kashmir, east to Calcutta and south to Madras and even in the interior of the village where he supposed his roots lay. With some apprehension, he spends one year and experiences the diversities of India in the pilgrimage to Amarnath, stay in the shikara and association with people from different communities. The writing is lucid and vivid with an observer’s perception. His point of view is neither that of a native Indian nor that of a foreign writer. Hence, he observes things which both of them miss.

He does not paint a rosy picture of the real India but brings out the filth that Indians are so oblivious of wherever visible and it is done not with contempt but with a sense of concern and bitterness. He looks beyond places, people and incidents and struggles to recognize India and Indians. This book is his attempt to find himself as a part of India and not to sever himself from it.

Naipaul describes the post British India where England is dead in the eighteenth century monuments which had become part of the country’s alien ruins and yet England lived in the division of the country towns…, in the army officers’ messes…, in mannerisms and jargons… and incisively outlines the british that has trickled into the Indian society and the British that really is. We look into some of the ideas of different authors from the point of view of Naipaul about India, British and British India.

Naipaul’s stay coincides with the Indo-China war and he manages to touch that issue as well. His description may not be appreciated by the native Indians since he looks at thing they are indifferent to but the book is tender and reflective. The readers look not only into the country of India with its flaws and fallacies but also into the mind of a person who continuously soul-searches to identify himself with a lost country. It is a book that gives a reason to look at India not as we have been thinking but as it really is.

To end it in the words of Naipaul “I felt it as something true which I could never adequately express and never seize again”.

[Book Review by Ankita Mukherjee]