Bookworm

Books have become a way of life. On the one hand there are the Classics, the great big volumes that take too much time and effort to be read in normal life. And anyway, they at least resemble education, mental challenge, productivity.
Then there are the books about India. Not travel guides or fact books about finding your chakra. Fiction, set in India. It gives insight that would otherwise be closed off. Yet there prevails a dilemma. If I stick to Indian authors, I don’t understand them. Not the language itself is a problem, more the content. It’s like trying to read a book on Advanced Chemistry and skipping the introduction. The letters and words one can understand, the meaning they are trying to convey, however, remains obscure.
Then there are the foreign authors who have long-standing connections with India, have travelled extensively, speak a bit of the language. Yet they are and always will be foreigners. They are perceived and treated as such and the horror of the dirt and poverty is either played down as to make it seem less than invisible, or the author loses himself in only those, sometimes even making them seem picturesque. Even after the descriptions of a rapt admirer, you feel slightly as though you’ve been punched in the stomach when you realise he’s been staying in a 5-star hotel, while he makes you feel guilty for indulging in such pleasures yourself. “What’s the use of going to India if you’re going to hide?” they ask while probably having a hot shower every day. On the whole, they don’t give more insight in how to understand this country and its people than does the Lonely Planet (don’t get me wrong, I revere the traveller’s bible as much as the next backpacker, but at times it can frustrate).
The obvious answer is expatriate Indian writers. But apart from Salman Rushdie, no names come to mind. Suggestions are welcome; especially since it can be quite disconcerting coming up for air from Henry Miller and finding oneself in conservative India. The contrast is just too great.