Bollocks

I've read two novels about India this year: "A Fine Balance" by Rohinton Mistry and "Midnight's Children" by Salman Rushdie. This post contains significant spoilers about both, so if you don't want to know, best skip this post.

It's fair to say that I didn't really enjoy "A Fine Balance". It was basically a thousand pages of awfulness happening to our heroes, but throughout it all Ishvar is sustained by one hope: that he will arrange the marriage of his nephew Om and see the family continue in the next generation.

As the book reaches its climax, and just as it looks like Ishvar might have succeeded, they find themselves rounded up by government forces, and suffer forced vasectomies. And even then, despite the absurdity of it, Ishvar retains hope - a vasectomy can be reversed, so as expensive as it is he'll find a way...

It is only then that he discovers that during the night a local authority, in an act of pure spite, has in fact had Om castrated.

The moral of the story is that the powerful will always abuse the weak, and that the only way to avoid being a victim is to be the biggest bastard around. And also, while hope is the last thing that they'll take, they will take it from you.

The book ends shortly thereafter in despair and hopelessness.

"Midnight's Children" isn't so hard going, partly because it's considerably shorter and partly because there is considerably more light to contrast with the dark. But as the novel goes on it likewise becomes increasingly dark. Still, I consoled myself that at least that final indignity wasn't on the cards.

Until the protagonist finds himself rounded up by government forces. Uh-oh, I thought...

Sur enough, Saleem promptly finds himself castrated. He even coins the term 'sperectomy' for a cutting out of hope (though apparently the etymology of the term is wrong...). And then, again, the novel ends in hopelessness and despair.

Sigh.

It's fair to say that I'm now not really looking forward to "A Suitable Boy"! Though surely it must be a coincidence... that can't be a pattern, can it?

I'm not really building to a great point here - mostly, it's just a good excuse for an amusing title.

I did think it was an interesting coincidence that both these books went with the same final indignity to heap upon their heroes' heads. It's also interesting in that that action is actually nothing less than an attack on the fundamental nature of the person themselves - what we are is not just the sum of our memories and experiences, but also very significantly impacted by the particular cocktail of hormones that our brains are pickling in. Removing the testicles, and therefore dramatically altering that cocktail, inevitably alters that.

(I should note at this point that there's a difference between someone deciding that for themselves versus them having it done to them. That's one of those things that should go without saying, but...)

Anyway, it's been bothering me for some time (actually, since I finished "A Fine Balance"), so there it is. But that's all I have to say about that.