Inside the novel factory

A version of this was in Outlook

For over half a century, the ‘Gulf’ has been Eldorado for the people of South Asia, particularly Kerala. As the narrator in Al Arabian Novel Factory reflects, “God blesses some small Arab country with petrol dollars. And then a tiny sliver of land far away gets to enjoy some of those blessings… There was a long and lonely road between the two lands, and it could tell many stories of sacrifice.

It is these stories of sacrifice, toil, humiliation, deprivation, loneliness, despair and alienation of the ‘Gulf Malayali’, and the wider immigrant community, that Benny Daniel — who writes as Benyamin — chronicles in much of his writing.

Over the years, especially in Malayalam, there have been books and films on the Gulf immigrant experience. But few of these capture the granular details of immigrant life in the region with authenticity. And it’s these granular details that Benyamin writes about with authority, perhaps because he was, himself, a Gulf Malayali for over two decades.

With almost a score of books across genres to his name, Benyamin explores a world that is familiar to Kerala, but also alien, especially the darker side of that world. He received widespread recognition with his award-winning 2008 Malayalam novel Aadujeevitham, translated into English as Goat Days, and soon to be a Malayalam film. Since then, he’s returned regularly to his known turf  — facets of immigrant life in the Gulf and the complicated relationships that entwine the locals and the ‘guest’ workers who keep Arab nations ticking.

At first glance, Al Arabian Novel Factory seems to have a simple narrative. Pratap, an Indian-Canadian journalist, travels to a West Asian country known only as the ‘City’, ruled by an authoritarian regime. He’s ostensibly there to helm a research project. But his real objective is to reconnect with Jasmine, his onetime lover, who lives in the City and is an elusive but constant presence through the book. In the City, his life tangles with the lives of his team members and also with the tortuous journey of A Spring Without Fragrance, a mysterious manuscript written by Sameera Parvin, a radio jockey who once lived there.

But appearances can be deceptive: Though a standalone novel, Al Arabian Novel Factory is also a companion volume to Benyamin’s Jasmine Days (Mullappoo Niramulla Pakalukal in Malayalam). Positioned as Jasmine Days’ sequel, it could just as easily be a ‘prequel-sequel’ hybrid. So intensely interwoven are the narrative strands and devices that connect the books that it does get a little convoluted at times.

Both novels though, are set against the backdrop of the Arab Spring, with this one focusing on the period immediately after. It captures the immigrant experience, but the immigrant here is mostly the comfortably off one. The sort who sings praise songs for the City’s despotic ruler while hosting a workshop on ‘socialism-driven freedom in Kerala’; the immigrant who is a ‘socialist’ at heart, but lives a capitalist life. 

Translated from the Malayalam by Shahnaz Habib, the book also tackles other themes including freedom of speech, thought and action; minority rights; and women’s rights. And looming over everything that happens is the all-seeing City, a character in itself. Habib’s translation is always competent and occasionally exquisite, capturing the nuances and cadences of the original; I must confess that I could occasionally visualise the original Malayalam line as I read the English version.

Sometimes, in factories, things can go out of kilter and so do things in this novel factory — not seriously awry, though. The narrative tends to meander occasionally. Also puzzling are some sections, particularly those in which Pratap behaves somewhat naively despite his journalistic experience. You could attribute it to the pangs of love, but one method he explores to trace Jasmine is far-fetched, stupid even, if not downright dangerous. Perhaps it was intended as a narrative device, but it seemed rather off. 

What is disconcerting is the depiction of some female characters. They’re portrayed as unaware of and uninterested in little beyond their immediate surroundings and passions. Knowing the many informed, opinionated and worldly-wise women around us, even among the demographics presented in the novel, this characterisation seems baffling. This, even as several male characters, at times, appear misogynistic.

Perhaps, it is all a pointer towards one of the book’s takeaways — that we are all flawed beings. Or that glittering facades often hide messy secrets and disguise dreary, grasping lives where self-interest reigns supreme. As Pratap says: “I have always been curious about the City, how it rose out of dust like an enchanted land in a fairy tale.” More than anything else, Al Arabian Novel Factory reminds us that there are no fairy tales.

The bells of St Clement’s

It seemed appropriate. Commemorate the anniversary of my father’s passing in a place associated with aviation — something he devoted much of his adult life to, while in the Indian Air Force (IAF) — that was also a place of reflection and spirituality. St Clement Danes, the central church of the Royal Air Force (RAF), in London was the perfect spot to be in.

I stumbled across St Clement Danes several months earlier, on the website of the RAF Museum, and realised that I’d passed the church several times without noticing it. Perhaps I’d overlooked it because of the scaffolding that cocooned it then. Or perhaps it was its location on an island, buffeted by streams of vehicles, just where the Strand and Fleet Street meet.  

Inside, though, the sounds of modern-day London fade and the hush enfolds you. On a sunny early spring morning, it’s a glorious sight — light pouring in through the windows, including the magnificent stained glass one behind the altar; the white vaulted ceiling with its gilded flourishes; the radiant golden ceiling of the apse; the slate floor inlaid with several hundred unit, squadron and other formation badges stretching up the nave to the altar; colours and squadron standards displayed in various places; and the gleaming pews with cartouches (of various Chiefs of the Air Staff) fixed at their ends.

A church has stood on the site for centuries; with the first one reportedly established by Danes living in the area. The present building, by Sir Christopher Wren, was completed in 1682, but was terribly damaged during the Blitz. By the late 1950s, St Clement Danes was restored and became the RAF’s central church. It is also believed to be the church referred to in the English nursery rhyme “Oranges and lemons/ Say the bells of St Clement's.” And indeed, the church’s bells do ring the tune through the day.

On the floor, as you enter the nave, is a ring of badges of eight Commonwealth air forces around the insignia of the RAF. And one of those eight badges is of the Indian Air Force. Other references to India can be found across St Clement Danes, especially in the unit badges laid into the floor. There is, for instance, the 152 ‘Hyderabad’ Squadron, with a turban in its insignia. According to the squadron’s tribute website, 152 was the gift squadron of Hyderabad and took as its badge the headdress of the erstwhile Nizam of Hyderabad. Formed in 1918, the squadron was disbanded in 1919, but reformed in 1939 and operated in India between 1943 and 1947.

St Clement Danes also remembers those who lost their lives while serving in the RAF through the Books of Remembrance that start from 1912 and continue to the present. Around the church are memorial boards for RAF personnel who have died on various operations and plaques with the names of those who have won the Victoria and George Crosses.

As I emerged from the church, to the rhythms of the Strand, it was impossible to miss the statue of William Gladstone, flanked by those of Arthur Harris and Hugh Dowding, wartime leaders of the RAF. Pausing for a moment in Gladstone’s shadow, I told myself that I needed to ask my mother if she and my dad had ever been to St Clement Danes when they lived in the UK. I never did. And seven months later, she too was but a memory.