Ashok's Blog

India in Mind
Edited by Pankaj Mishra
Picador India; Rs 275
Paperback; 336 pages

A few weeks ago, I reviewed another anthology, also published by Picador, featuring new writing by promising UK and Commonwealth writers.

Three of the writers featured in the book tracked down my email address and wrote to me, sparking off a discussion as much about anthologies as about their own writing.

One lamented that his piece, an excerpt from an unfinished novel, had not been mentioned in a single review of the book, nor had inclusion in the anthology helped him in finding either an agent or a publisher to date. This happened to be his third inclusion in a major anthology.

The other two authors were more generous, thanking me for praising their pieces and cordially discussing the writing life and the state of the publishing business in India and the UK. But it was the disgruntled, peeved author, featured prominently in three anthologies and still unpublished, that stuck in my mind.

So when I cracked open the cover of this anthology and saw, on the flyleaf page, a prominent picture of the editor grinning up at me, above the usual self-congratulatory bio, it made me think.

Do anthologies exist to publish good writing that would otherwise go unseen? Or do they really only promote the careers of their editors?

I personally know or know of at least three excellent editors based in the US and UK who make a decent living only by editing anthologies, and horror-fantasy anthologies at that.

Between the three of them, they invariably win the major editing award in their genre year after year, and have done so for the past decade or so. Writers come and go, but their careers flourish.

So when you look at Pankaj Mishra's picture and bio, then read his fairly general introduction, rehashing mostly what one already knows about the western 'discovery' of India over the ages, you are tempted to dismiss this collection as just another way for Shri Mishraji to add one more byline, and a decent editing fee, to his resume. But that would be a mistake.

The truth is, this is an excellent anthology. If you can get past the Alberuni-ish conceit of western writers writing about India, with the inevitable exoticisms and occasional gosh-golly-there-goes-an-elephant-in-a-sari kind of Kiplingisms, you will find much to enjoy and cherish.

Mishra's choices, while virtually all classics of this colonial sub-genre, are particularly well picked and arranged.

In some cases, as in the pieces by J. R. Ackerley and Allen Ginsberg to give just two striking examples, he has chosen writers as interesting as their work.

The usual suspects deliver unusual gems. Sir Naipaul rubs uneasy shoulders with his one-time protege Paul Theroux. Fellow travel writers Pico Iyer, Mark Twain and Bruce Chatwin co-exist outside of time, each brilliant in his own individual way, the combination sparking new illuminations in the reader's imagination.

Ved Mehta, George Orwell, Maugham, and Gore Vidal are unlikely co-travellers on this orient express chugging through exotic climes that are halfway familiar while still seeming alien as perceived through their western-tinted eyes. Hermann Hesse and Ruth Prawer Jhabvala share the heat and dust and passion of eastern mysticism. Robyn Davidson, Claude Levi-Strauss, and Rudyard Kipling (of course) join voices with E.M. Forster to receive back the mystifying echo 'boum'.

The cover is terrible, and the whole package so clearly designed for the foreign reader that before you read it, you want to simply toss this book into the bin and rant for 800 words about how Indian literatteurs are selling out to firang publishers for a few thousand quid. But the contents themselves charm you despite your petulance.

In the end, new writing anthologies may aid some of the authors included and leave others unaffected and unsung, and anthologies like this one, collecting seasoned veterans as well as as longdead icons of their field, may not matter a whit to the authors included while gaining a few good reviews and a few more dollars in royalty for their grinning-in-black-and-white editors.

But what the hey. The book's good.

So let the editor have his day. He's done his job and done it well.