LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 13:3 March 2013
ISSN 1930-2940

Managing Editor: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.
Editors: B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. A. Sharada, Ph.D.
         A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.
         Lakhan Gusain, Ph.D.
         Jennifer Marie Bayer, Ph.D.
         S. M. Ravichandran, Ph.D.
         G. Baskaran, Ph.D.
         L. Ramamoorthy, Ph.D.
Assistant Managing Editor: Swarna Thirumalai, M.A.

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Manu Joseph’s Serious Men – An Indian Postmodern Bizarre of Juxtapositions and Playfulness

M. Subha, Ph.D. Research Scholar

Abstract

21st Century Indian Postmodern era consists of fast life, fast food, dead-end-job, obesity, vulgarity, etc. Manu Joseph’s debut novel The Serious Men (2010) presents caste conflict with politically incorrect statements. It is a deprived man’s angst and vengeance. It is the story of vindictiveness of a Dalit (supposedly lower caste within the Hindu caste hierarchy) over Brahmins (supposedly upper caste within the Hindu caste hierarchy). Undeniably this is one part of the multifaceted Indian reality. This novel is an original byproduct of a land of controversies, and it registers the contemporary crisis in the universal language.

Ayyan Mani, the antagonist, perceives that “The Brahmins had nowhere to go now but to suffer in silence or to flee to non-vegetarian lands” (SM 82). Throughout the novel Manu Joseph has juxtaposed the extremities of characters, their thoughts and attitudes. For instance, when Ayyan Mani thinks of his wife, when she first walked into his house with a newly married bridal fear, she was so beautiful “on the first night, when he sat beside her on the conjugal mattress that was filled with funeral roses left by neighbours and friends” (SM 16). And frequently he gets in to the mind – voice (stream of conscious technique) to escape from the humdrum of reality. Then he builds small plots around his ten year old son Adi to create a myth, which finally overtakes him.

The novel is a satire on “class, love, relationships and our veneration of science” (SM) that is aimed at the reformation of contemporary absurdity of human life. This paper is an attempt to explain the features of a postmodern Indian novel which is a “metafiction” that carries Indian reality up to the horizon.

Beginnings of Indian Postmodern Fiction

Indian Postmodern novels started evolving after the publication of Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children (1980), which is an amalgam of fantasy and reality. Longman’s Dictionary of Contemporary English defines it: “a style of Building, painting, writing, etc., developed in the late 20th century that uses a mixture of old and new styles as a reaction against MODERNISM”. It is mainly a reflection of contemporary life in art, literature etc. with all its naivety. It is neither the acceptance nor the denial of modernism. Fragmentation, Paradox, Questionable narrators, Playfulness, Juxtapositions, Black-Humour, Irony, Non-linear presentations of time as well as characters, and Promotion of ethics are some qualities that are attributed to a postmodern novel. In India the backdrop is complicated with multi-lingual and multi-religious features.

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

M. Subha, Ph.D. Research Scholar
Bharathi Women’s Arts College
Chennai – 600 108
Tamilnadu
India
subhamarimuthu@gmail.com
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