He appeared and reappeared in our lives for
ten long years captivating our imagination like no other character fiction has
created. First from the pages of the books that featured his triumphs and
travails and afterwards in the magic the darkened cinemas offered. His friends
were our friends, his victories ours to savour, his pathos our tears. For millions
of Harry Potter fans like me, the emaciated and bespectacled boy is the
ultimate hero and much after he vanquished the evil Voldemort and settled into
blissful domestic bliss with his best friend’s sister, continues to be a part
of our lives. Tirelessly embellishing it, smiling at us from bookshelves and
DVD racks. Whenever I encounter him accidentally while surfing television
channels, I am tempted to pause with a smile to caress all the
memories associated with him.
Potter’s appeal was universal. From him, not
just children, but adults too got life lessons on the power of unconditional
love, the importance of having friends in life and how good must always triumph
over evil. That his creator J K Rowling managed to do this without ever preaching from a pedestal was as much of her triumph as that of her creation. It
was always difficult to be objective about the seven books, the Potter series
spawned. How could we critically dissect any of the works that featured him,
his friends and his school? Somehow it felt as if we were being disloyal to
Harry, Ron and Hermione if we dared to pass judgement against their creator.
Now of course in hindsight we know that it
was too much of a good thing. The signs were always there but carried away by
our infatuation, we never bothered to analyze what kind of baggage it must have
left the writer with. It’s no secret how another English author got fed up of
her Belgian muse, Hercule Poirot, and couldn’t wait to bump him off.
Rowling has never publicly shared what she
feels towards her immortal creation that changed not just her destiny but also
the entire genre pertaining to children’s books. Of course we would like to
know whether she holds Potter with the same affection that legions of his fans
bestow on him but she’s not telling. All we have presently to add to our
conjecture is that she has come out with a new book that is as depressing as
the books featuring Potter were life affirming. There are no wizards or muggles
in her latest offering. Only dementors who exist in human forms in a fictitious
English small town called Pagford.
‘The
Casual Vacancy’ is likely to hold the dubious distinction of being one of the
most depressing books ever written. There is not a single ray of
light to wash any of its numerous characters in glory. Everything from the
setting to the characters is designed in such a way that it makes the reader
recoil in horror and disgust. It’s as uncompromisingly bleak a take on life as
it can get. Rowling has gifted her readers with her own version of ‘Clockwork
Orange.’ Reading the book makes you feel she was mono focused on annihilating
all the positive vibes we had imbibed from Potter and his friends.
William Golding, another British novelist of timeless repute had managed to say a lot about the inherent evil present in mankind with
his Noble prize winning work ‘Lord of the Flies.’ But the setting of that one
was understood by the reader to be in the middle of a nuclear war. And from
that realization to make the connection that Golding’s work held a mirror to
what the world had descended to with its weapons of mass destruction was not
difficult. It was possible to have empathy for his characters however depraved
they were in their ambitions and its execution. We could place them in the larger
context and understand their descent into hell. Rowling willfully and deliberately denies her readers that with her latest.
There are five adolescents driving the plot
in ‘The Casual Vacancy.’ Leading the pack are the nasty Fats and the victimized
Sukhvinder. There is also the not so innocent Andrew in the first flush of love and
his object of affection Gaia. And there is the unfortunate Krystal from the
wrong side of the tracks, saddled with an addict mother and a toddler brother
she wants to save. Krystal is the closest approximation to Harry Potter in
Rowling’s latest. Except her creator refuses to salvage her. Just when Krystal
is at the verge of redemption, Rowling decides to snatch away her lifeline plunging her into an abyss from where there can be no reprieve. Making
her destroy that one thing that gave her life some meaning.
The adults in the book are all uniformly losers and even when the writer tries to make amends to some of them
towards the end we are long past caring. All of them without
exception are mean and selfish.
Consider this. Three of them have the chance to rescue a child from
drowning but none of them get down to doing it, preoccupied as they are with
their own petty concerns.
It is only when the reader has reached the
climax of the book after battling frustration and anger for at least one half
of the 500 odd pages the book in hard cover comprises of, that it all starts to make sense in a strange
way. We realize Rowling is holding a
mirror to the world that is inhabited by the middle class not just in England,
but perhaps in all parts of the developed world. That is why there is no
salvation for any of the characters. It’s not because she couldn’t do it but because she didn’t
want to. Think about the numerous characters she redeemed in the Potter series
including that nasty brat Malfoy. Not as if she’s not capable of it if she wants to. Her choices
are deliberate in her latest work. All is not intended to be ‘well’ in this one.
Looks like Rowling has positioned herself
as the ultimate prophet of our times. If in her first seminal creation, she taught
us how everything ennobling was to be found in an imaginary world of magic and
wizardry beyond our reach, with her follow up act she has managed to communicate
we must wake up and smell not the roses but everything that we have destroyed
in our own selfish pursuits. Life, according to her latest work will go on not
because the scars will stop hurting but because ultimately like all the characters
who eventually survive in The Casual Vacancy, we will learn to make our peace
with our demons.
This is another of her lesson well worth
internalizing although the quibble is that she could have imparted the same wisdom with smart brevity and not wasted so many words on the shallow adults who take up
too much space in the first two sections without doing anything to warrant that
attention.
‘The Casual Vacancy’ is an enigmatic book.
It will never lend itself to frenzied adulation but that does not mean it is a
work without any merit. Rowling could have been the Enid Blyton of our times
and rested on her laurels by creating variations of the work that made her the
richest author of all times. Instead she chose to look at life with filters
caked in the grime and filth of our times in her follow up act.
Now that is as brave a feat as any that the
Potter boy attempted.
No comments:
Post a Comment