A Chance Encounter: Harishankar Parsai
At the Oxford bookstore in Delhi, among the Booker Prize winners and other big names, there was a thin little book titled ‘Inspector Matadeen on the Moon’, satires by the inimitable Harishankar Parsai. At any other bookstore where it would have been lost among the crowd one would have seldom noticed this book. But placed nicely on a milky white self, standing all by itself in the bookstore I picked it up. It had been some time since one had read satire.
It seems that our minds have been programmed in such a way that when we read something by an author of an Indian name and that too Harishankar, the first impression of its quality is low. Its equivalent to guilty until proven innocent that is bad until proven good. At least I find it in my case. So when I started reading the first story the satire seemed pretty dull, the situation forcibly superimposed. An expert had been invited by the Government of Moon to train its police officers under a Cultural Exchange Scheme. As no other senior officer wished to go, Matadeen a senior inspector was asked to perform the task with a request from the house of SP sahib to bring a heel polishing stone from the moon for his lady.
Once on the moon the inspector took charge. His first step was to order a decrease of wage of police officers. After that he took such drastic steps that the number of cases increased and so did the convictions. He became a hero on the moon and the moon parliament passed a resolution to thank the Government of India. When the Indian Home minister watched the proceedings he started making plans to make a goodwill visit to the moon. Then one fine day after a secret emergency meeting of the moon parliament, Inspector Matadeen was asked to leave. He was offered triple salary on earth by the moon government. The moon people had realized what he had done to the place. He refused to bulge from his duty and left only when the moon government wrote to the Government of India. The story ends with a part of the letter sent by the moon government to the Indian government. It was an exquisite piece of satire, indirect yet hard hitting. I decided to buy the book immediately.
Each of the stories in the book is a slap on the face of the pretentiousness in the Indian society. The second story, my favourite is about a man who is asked to go and he does go on a fast to win a married woman who has no romantic interest in him. It is a story of how false promises and manipulative people can change the social viewpoint causing immense harm to the disinterested and unprepared. As the man’s popularity on the fast rises big leaders come to meet him and take their own sweet profit from the situation. The woman’s husband proposes that she tie a Rakhi on the man’s hand to resolve the situation which no body is ready to accept. Finally the poor woman tries to commit suicide but is saved. The poor man who is on the verge of dying is saved when the government forms a committee to look into the matter. He then joins politics. Behind all this is a manipulative Baba called Sankidas who keeps the fast going. One wonders how applicable this story is in different walks of the society at present.
There is satire on sending a Divine Lunatic mission to America as we have more or less sent everything we have to that country including Kamasutra. There is a brilliant story on a businessman giving his reasons on why he is opening an educational institute and how it is supposed to be run. In the end of the story there is a 15 point agenda for the institute, one of which says “In the college yard mango, papaya and jackfruit trees should be planted. All the produce must always be sent to our house. If the principal fails to do so, he may be sued for breach of contract.” There is a story on research as well where four lines penned by an amateur poet when discovered 100 years later become the four lines which were penned by the greatest poet of the last century and research was able to prove the same. There are a number of other good stories as well.
The final story though is a short memoir of the writer himself. It’s called ‘The Days of Gardish.’ Gardish here stands for Restlessness, which the author had all through his life and which he counts as his motivation. From having a poor and struggling life to travelling ticketless on trains to asking for loans to fighting the relentless attacks of the world the author writes these line “The crying of the one who is awake doesn’t end. The Gardish of a satirist never ends either.”
The stories were written in 1960’s but none seem to have lost their relevance. Harishankar Parsai as I later found out was a winner of the Sahitya Academy Award. The English translation is published by Katha.
It seems that our minds have been programmed in such a way that when we read something by an author of an Indian name and that too Harishankar, the first impression of its quality is low. Its equivalent to guilty until proven innocent that is bad until proven good. At least I find it in my case. So when I started reading the first story the satire seemed pretty dull, the situation forcibly superimposed. An expert had been invited by the Government of Moon to train its police officers under a Cultural Exchange Scheme. As no other senior officer wished to go, Matadeen a senior inspector was asked to perform the task with a request from the house of SP sahib to bring a heel polishing stone from the moon for his lady.
Once on the moon the inspector took charge. His first step was to order a decrease of wage of police officers. After that he took such drastic steps that the number of cases increased and so did the convictions. He became a hero on the moon and the moon parliament passed a resolution to thank the Government of India. When the Indian Home minister watched the proceedings he started making plans to make a goodwill visit to the moon. Then one fine day after a secret emergency meeting of the moon parliament, Inspector Matadeen was asked to leave. He was offered triple salary on earth by the moon government. The moon people had realized what he had done to the place. He refused to bulge from his duty and left only when the moon government wrote to the Government of India. The story ends with a part of the letter sent by the moon government to the Indian government. It was an exquisite piece of satire, indirect yet hard hitting. I decided to buy the book immediately.
Each of the stories in the book is a slap on the face of the pretentiousness in the Indian society. The second story, my favourite is about a man who is asked to go and he does go on a fast to win a married woman who has no romantic interest in him. It is a story of how false promises and manipulative people can change the social viewpoint causing immense harm to the disinterested and unprepared. As the man’s popularity on the fast rises big leaders come to meet him and take their own sweet profit from the situation. The woman’s husband proposes that she tie a Rakhi on the man’s hand to resolve the situation which no body is ready to accept. Finally the poor woman tries to commit suicide but is saved. The poor man who is on the verge of dying is saved when the government forms a committee to look into the matter. He then joins politics. Behind all this is a manipulative Baba called Sankidas who keeps the fast going. One wonders how applicable this story is in different walks of the society at present.
There is satire on sending a Divine Lunatic mission to America as we have more or less sent everything we have to that country including Kamasutra. There is a brilliant story on a businessman giving his reasons on why he is opening an educational institute and how it is supposed to be run. In the end of the story there is a 15 point agenda for the institute, one of which says “In the college yard mango, papaya and jackfruit trees should be planted. All the produce must always be sent to our house. If the principal fails to do so, he may be sued for breach of contract.” There is a story on research as well where four lines penned by an amateur poet when discovered 100 years later become the four lines which were penned by the greatest poet of the last century and research was able to prove the same. There are a number of other good stories as well.
The final story though is a short memoir of the writer himself. It’s called ‘The Days of Gardish.’ Gardish here stands for Restlessness, which the author had all through his life and which he counts as his motivation. From having a poor and struggling life to travelling ticketless on trains to asking for loans to fighting the relentless attacks of the world the author writes these line “The crying of the one who is awake doesn’t end. The Gardish of a satirist never ends either.”
The stories were written in 1960’s but none seem to have lost their relevance. Harishankar Parsai as I later found out was a winner of the Sahitya Academy Award. The English translation is published by Katha.
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