In the beginning there was the word, so says the King James Bible, a saying that is true in more ways than one. Philological studies speculate that at one point there was a kind of universal world language that splintered into the multiplicity we see today, with various transcontinental shifts in consonants and vowels. This is the linguistic ground that Aatish Taseer traverses in The Way Things Were, which is partially a story of the quest for identity through a classical language that has more voluptuous poetry in it than the present.
Perhaps there is method in this—Taseer’s protagonist Skand is a cross-genetic mix, the son of Toby, a half-Scottish raja, and Uma, a Sardarni with a Hindu goddess’ name. Toby’s delving into the roots of Sanskrit is a quest to find his own roots, especially since most people in Indira Gandhi’s India mistake Toby for a foreigner—a reflex behaviour that might not necessarily be the case today.
Behind that of course is another layer, the author’s own quest for roots, embodied in the person of Uma and the assassination of Indira Gandhi which triggered the anti-Sikh pogroms of 1984. Taseer’s mother, as the world knows, is noted journalist Tavleen Singh and his father was Salman Taseer, the governor of the Pakistan’s Punjab province. According to the author, it was the deracination that destroyed his family, and that is reflected in the way the novel progresses from Sanskrit studies to the disruption of relationships. Uma’s marriage to Toby falls apart two children later after the anti-Sikh riots and Babri Masjid and her world becomes a sprawling confusion of squabbling women in which the businessman Maniraja is her only anchor.
Maniraja is a Brahmin who is very certain that his roots lie in Hindutva, though that word is not ever uttered. Delighted to encounter Toby, he embarks on a publishing venture with him—Sanskrit classics like the Kumarasambhava translated into English bound in the tawny shade variants of saffron, an endless profusion of poetic names. While Toby and Skand are seeking their roots, even Skyping Sanskrit, Maniraja is very sure what his own are. The flight map on his private jet shows all the Sanskrit kingdoms from the bird’s eye view of Kalidasa’s cloud messenger, creating some kind of floating metaphor.
If roots is the quest, then riots are the catalyst; different kinds of violence that drive the essentially rootless further apart. Relationships are entered into for no real reason but simply because they bear some pale resemblance to the way things were. Toby embraces his western side and marries Sylvia, who has the westerner’s superficial admiration for Indian things. Skand takes up with Gauri, her name a variant of Uma, whose son Kartik carries a variation of Skand’s own name.
Time also floats between the past and the present as Skand, after his father’s death, attempts to understand why his family fell apart the way it did. He has inherited the title of Raja, though the kingdom has been robbed of its riches by the Indira Gandhi administration. His grandmother’s house in Delhi is an abandoned ruin, even though some of the rooms can still be partied in. One thing remains constant—the fact that modern India is anxious about those who espouse Sanskrit, considering it to have right-wing undercurrents.
Throughout, the novel is punctuated by spurts of violence, whether politically motivated or domestic—a fall-out of rootlessness. There is Ismail, for example, who bullies Skand’s cousin Bhaiya by ripping off the boy’s pyjamas in front of a roomful of dinner guests. Or Tunnu, who makes his way to Uma’s room while she is still asleep and begins hitting her. In a sense the domestic assaults make more of an impact, because the people involved are wearers of chiffon and emeralds, with names like Kitty Singh. Quite a few of them actually exist—Naipaul, for example, makes a brief appearance, along with Gita Mehta and her brother—the usual suspects of Delhi Page three.
Some may think the title is a reference to the Barbra Streisand starrer The Way We Were. However, it is a literal translation of the Sanskrit word ‘itihasa’.
