Book: Intimacy

Author: Hanif Kureishi
Publisher:

All of us yearn for more. We are never satisfied. Wisdom is to know the value of what we have. Every day, if there is some little good fortune, and our children smile at us or for once do what we say, we should consider ourselves lucky. (Hanif Kureishi in Intimacy)

The book is a kind of long soliloquy (spread over 118 continuous pages, without chapters in between), a silent monologue about all kinds of things. The narrative is described in ‘first person pronoun’ (I) without any name so for the sake of convenience, I’ll refer to the narrator as K. It’s a rambling and disorderly monologue flitting abruptly from one thought to another covering K’s school life, life with his parents, special relationship (kind of love-hate) with his father, his wife Susan, his sort of British alter ego Victor (He wants what I have, and he wants to be like me) a friend and kind of Pakistani British alter ego Asif, and whatever his mind is cluttered with. The narrative is consequently disjointed. The overriding thought or half-baked determination is his intention of moving out next day for good without telling his wife and children or any body else for that matter. The reason seems to be boredom. The flame of love, if there ever was, has gone out of his married life; his domineering wife bores him but there is still some bond with and attraction for his children. The monologue depicts the uncertainty of modern married life. At one place, the author writes, “She (Susan) says I had a dream – that you weren’t here. Then I woke up and you weren’t there. You’re not going to leave me, are you?”

The monologue is sprinkled with ticklish and provocative phrases and lines. For example, he writes, “How do I like to write? With a soft pencil and a hard dick – not the other way round.” He describes K at one place as “..morose, over-sensitive, self-absorbed fool.” His life is made complex by his desire to be loved and cared for by his wife, Susan, and his attraction for his girl friend, Nina,. Sure he talks of his other girl friends and flings also in an impersonal manner, without naming names, but Nina is his obsession. His trouble is that ‘he doesn’t want what he wants.’ And he doesn’t know what he wants. Such is the complexity of modern life. Kureishi writes in his book: “In love, these days, it is a free market; browse and buy, pick and choose, rent and reject, as you like. There’s no sexual and social security; everyone has to take care of themselves, or not.. Fulfillment, self-expression and creativity are the only values.” When so much is available, one doesn’t know what to keep and what to throw away.

The diversity of human life is amazing. On the one end of the spectrum are the scientists who are possessed by an obsession for objective reality. They construct theories to correlate their empirical data so that they could make predictions about the yet to be experienced facts. They want to understand every thing including creation of our universe. They cannot afford intellectual laxity even figuratively in their work. Then there are philosophers who seek meaning in everything that is said and written. They formulate theories of knowledge and language; they analyze rationally the metaphysical concepts of being, God, soul, human life, eschatology and the whole lot. They play with words but with care and caution. They do write with soft pencils but not with hard dicks for fear of falling out of line with their carefully sequenced thoughts. Not that they don’t talk about sex and human anatomy. They theorize about them. There is nothing in the world, which is beyond the compass of their thoughts. The mathematicians usually evoke images of uninteresting, dried out, and boring people. Their language, mathematics, is said to be the most accurate language that we have. Do they have a symbol for dick? I don’t know, I have never seen a mathematical equation involving a dick or a vagina (not to be unfair to the feminists). It doesn’t mean that they don’t use them in their daily life. Most of them are like us with families and children. There are poets who romanticize everything. They can render glory and glamour even to a dry stick. Then there are artists, Hanif Kureishi, Gurpreet Kaur and hosts and hosts of others who are busy changing our culture for better or worse. Somehow, C.P. Snow’s essay, Two Cultures, comes to my mind.

Another thought kept on coming to my mind persistently: Why am I reading this book? Probably because I don’t have anything better to do. Behzti has bubbled a storm in my coffee cup and has ruffled my consciousness. What was so compelling that she had to do her rape scene in a gurdwara? Life is an enigma. My life is probably not less complex than Kureishi’s but in different ways.

Towards the end of the book I started thinking that K would change his mind and would stick with his dysfunctional family life. He went through a long seesaw for getting out and staying in. Although in the end getting out wins, Asif’s argument seemed to sway him. Part of their conversation is as follows:

Asif said, “All couples fall out. Even Najma and ..”
…………………………………..
“Fair enough. She and I disagree .. at times,” Then he said, “It is easy to turn away too soon. Why be hasty? See what happens. I beg you to wait a year.”
“I can’t wait another week. In fact I am off in the morning.”
“Surely not? But a year is nothing at our age. Is it because of the girl (Nina)?”

The book is interesting, not captivating. I wish I was not so empty-headed and Behzti had not possessed me so strongly. What was so compelling that she had to do her rape scene in a gurdwara?

The book might interest many others though, who are more appreciative of the modern arts than myself. I am an old man having one foot in the west and the other in the east. Ka'abah meray peechey hai Kaleesa meray aagay. And that is what is complicating the life of the immigrants, even the second and third generation, in the west. A new culture is taking birth which is not wholly western or eastern and birth pangs of this new culture appear now and then to rattle us.

The book was published in 1998. So this review is somewhat belated. I hope the readers wouldn’t mind it.