BHUBANESWAR, Feb 9; His obsession with roots and continuing engagement with India have brought V S Naipaul this time to Orissa. Nadira Naipaul, who accompanies the writer on his five-day visit to the state, is certain that something ``wonderfully creative'' is going to come of this.An outstanding chronicler of the Indian sub-continent, all of Naipaul's travels to this part of the world have gone on to create masterpieces. An Area of Darkness, India; a Wounded Civilisation and Million Mutinies have redefined India through the vision of one of the greatest living writers in English today.
Naipaul, who visited the medieval temples of the state in and around Bhubaneswar with his wife, felt that modern-day Orissa has no continuity with its glorious past. The countryside is scattered with remnants of a far more progressive civilisation which has been systematically neglected and eroded, he lamented.
These are not the people who created the magnificent sculptures in Orissan temples, saidNaipaul, appalled by the poverty he witnessed. Recalling his first visit to India in 1961, he said ``poverty'' was not the issue then but over the years it has become the ``only issue''.
Though the architectural splendour in Orissan temples has apparently brought him to the state, Naipaul was visibly upset with the lack of perceptible development even after half a century of Independence. The author of India: A Million Mutinies wondered whether the deprivation would fuel a new kind of anarchy.
What, however, pained him the most was the cultural poverty, the lack of proper care of the protected monuments.
If the ``Muslims vandalised'' the monuments, the locals are no less culpable. In the name of worship, the art in stone is being imperilled every day, Naipaul remarked. The only fitting tribute to the architectural heritage would be to open these monuments open to scholars for proper study, Naipaul suggested. This alone would help restore the last links with the past. The famous writer, who iscurrently in India to study the temples, is reticent about how he is going to use these materials in his forthcoming work. He has already visited some South Indian temples and is charmed with Kanchipuram. Nadira is, however, ``determined'' to go to the village from which Makhnu's (as she calls Naipaul) ancestors migrated to the West Indies.
The village is somewhere in Eastern Uttar Pradesh, about 25 kilometers from Gorakhpur.
Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
