Vishnu Vasu’s ‘Made in India’: Bohemian’s unconventional travelogue of India

Vishnu Vasu, in contrast, uses a worm’s eye to present the real India to us. The corruption that is endemic in the Indian bureaucracy from top to the bottom, the harshest suppression of people on caste grounds, life in slums and their equally or sometimes more corrupt occupants, god-like worshipping of movie star heroes and heroines, and the crafty twisting of systems by people to get advantage for themselves are some of the unseen pictures which he paints for us throughout his travelogue. To narrate those stories, he goes to the very source, gets it from the horse’s mouth, adds his own Bohemian comments and commentaries, and presents to us a completely different side of India, Indians, and their way of living. That has been the purpose of his disjointed travel stories

A disjointed travelogue

Sri Lankan novelist and social critic, Vishnu Vasu, launched his newest book in Sinhala, a disjointed travelogue viewing India’s unseen social, cultural, political, and religious scenarios not visible to an ordinary person, titled ‘Made in India’ in Colombo recently. This is his fourth creative work, the previous three being ‘A Dream of an Uncultured Person’, ‘Simple Simon’, and ‘Men in Sarees’. He has his own genre of writing, looking at people and events from a non-conventional and non-traditional angle. Made in India also has followed this writing style.

Backpack travellers

He welcomes his readers with a piece of advice from His Holiness the Dalai Lama, about whom he has the highest respect and regard as he reveals later in the book. The Dalai Lama has advised us that “Once a year, go someplace you have never been before”. Vishnu Vasu seems to have faithfully and ardently followed this advice even before he became a disciple of the Dalai Lama.

As he says in the prologue, he had been an artist with an inborn love for traveling from place to place aimlessly, a behavioural pattern that may have been implanted to him at the time he was conceived in his mother’s womb. By now, he has travelled in 63 countries in all the five continents with a backpack containing only a meagre supply of daily necessities of a traveller.

In India where he has spent the longest period in his life, there is not any city, arts theatre, or slum, to mention but a few, which his feet had not treaded. That is because India has been the land of his destiny. Leaving all the suffering he had been subject to during his childhood behind, he could have a new birth, he claims, in that land of opportunity and diverse experiences. India opened the wide world to him as a traveller which he could satisfy thanks to the generous support he got from his father. If his life had been guided just by a single star, his father’s support had brought him a galaxy of stars.

Vishnu Vasu, the self-proclaimed capitalist Bohemian

Vishnu Vasu calls himself a capitalist Bohemian. This is again two concepts that will not sit agreeably with each other. A Bohemian follows an unconventional lifestyle or becomes a part of a subculture that prioritises community living and artistic endeavours, rejecting certain behavioural patterns of mainstream society such as the worshiping of money and addiction to purposeless social etiquettes. Therefore, Bohemianism is usually associated with writers and social activists who have formed themselves to a movement counter to the harsh marketplace which we all are faced with. They love creative freedom that does not value materialism, violence, or other aspects of society which they regard as corrupt. Bohemians are, therefore, people who live on the fringes of society and are often associated with living in poverty and simple life while rejecting luxury.1

Dislike of leftists’ hypocrisy

Vishnu Vasu has all these qualities except his branding himself as a capitalist. Perhaps what he means by being a capitalist Bohemian is his rejection of the duplicity of leftists who preach one thing and practice another. There are innuendos here and there revealing his dislike of leftists in general in his travelogue. According to him, the criticism levelled against Mahatma Gandhi that he was not a morally upright Guru because he was said to have been engaged in a carnal act when his father was dying in the next room is a fake story concocted by reactionary socialists or communists.2 In another place, he says that it is a very frank demonstration of real human nature to get drunk openly, a behaviour you cannot expect from the beggar type leftists who do so clandestinely.3

The duplicity of the extant left oriented politicians who had promised ‘sun and moon’ to woo voters has been subject to his harsh criticism. People are still suffering from extreme economic hardships but at election meetings, the politicians had promised to free the country from the debt trap overnight by getting their overseas supporters to send billions of dollars to the country or give a bonus to people by bringing back the money that had been concealed by top politicians belonging to previous regimes in countries like Uganda.4 He has referred to this Uganda story earlier also to prove how the shrewd politicians create appealing tales to mislead people.5

It seems that though Vishnu Vasu is a proletariat to the bone he differs from the rest of the left-oriented Bohemians because he does not practice duplicity. He does what he says and says what he does. There is no pretension in that respect either in fear of cultural restrictions or prohibitive social taboos. In my view, the correct branding he should have used for himself should have been not a capitalist Bohemian but a fiercely independent free-thinking Bohemian.

A rare worm’s eye view of India

Those who travel across India with a bird’s eye would see a country which is fast developing, blessed with educated and rational people, and endowed with incomparably superior civilisational footprints. This is the beautiful picture that is painted for visiting business or religious travellers. It is not surprising that they immediately fall for such vastly exaggerated stories.

Vishnu Vasu, in contrast, uses a worm’s eye to present the real India to us. The corruption that is endemic in the Indian bureaucracy from top to the bottom, the harshest suppression of people on caste grounds, life in slums and their equally or sometimes more corrupt occupants, god-like worshipping of movie star heroes and heroines, and the crafty twisting of systems by people to get advantage for themselves are some of the unseen pictures which he paints for us throughout his travelogue.

To narrate those stories, he goes to the very source, gets it from the horse’s mouth, adds his own Bohemian comments and commentaries, and presents to us a completely different side of India, Indians, and their way of living. That has been the purpose of his disjointed travel stories.

Beating Indian bureaucratic barriers

His encounter in Trivandrum, the capital of Kerala, is a case in point.6 After completing the hazardous immigration requirements at the small airport in Trivandrum, he tries to get a train ticket to Bangalore. To get this long-distance train ticket, he is sent from place to place. Only after getting the ticket, he comes to know that the next train to Bangalore is in the following day morning.

He plans to stay the night at the railway station, but he is arrested by a railway security officer who speaks only the native language, Malayalam. He faces his first communication issue in India. When he is handed to the station master who could speak English, he is told that it is dangerous to spend the night at the station. There had been many instances of even the boys being raped by wandering nocturnal sex assailants. He is advised to find a lodge outside to spend the night.

His real agony starts only when he tries to find a lodge which would accept him as a lodger. On seeing his Sri Lankan passport, he is flatly refused entry. He is sent from place to place and at the end, someone explains to him why. Sri Lankan passport holders should be reported to the local police immediately, until a police officer comes, the passport is taken away, and it is not certain when a police officer would come. Till such time, he is kept in lodge custody. Even when the police officer comes, he is invariably required to pay a bribe, either in cash or in sex services, to have his papers passed quickly.

Vishnu Vasu decides to cheat the corrupt and inefficient Indian bureaucracy. He chooses a lodge not frequented by lodgers, conceals his Sri Lankan passport, gives a fake address in Madras, and gets a room. So, he learns how to twist the Indian system to wade through the bureaucratic barriers and he uses this technique later also when he travels to the other places. There is nothing wrong even for a Bohemian to cheat others if it serves his purposes well.

Unknown side of Gandhi’s life

Mahatma Gandhi is venerated throughout the world as a leader who preached non-violence, had sympathy and empathy for fellow beings, and a Guru of worth. But this is not a common view shared by all as Vishnu Vasu has discovered in his encounters with Indians. This is first told to him by Malavika, who is nicknamed Matilda by Vishnu Vasu’s WhatsApp group.7 To her Gandhi is an anathema, just like a repulsive herb called Andu to a cobra. The wonder is that there are many people who support her in her locality. There is a generation of Indians who use social media to bring out Gandhi’s many sinful activities since the mainstream media do not publicise them. What Vishnu Vasu found to his surprise is that there is an annual hero’s day being celebrated by some section of people at Shivaji Nagar in Pune, Maharashtra State, to commemorate Gandhi’s assassin, Nathuram Godse, and his supporter, Narayan Apte. The hero’s day falls on 15 November marking the day on which the duo were hanged to death by the Indian Government in 1949.

They were hanged ignoring the pleading by Gandhi’s sons, Manilal Gandhi and Ramdas Gandhi, for mercy. According to the legend, the remains of the cremated Nathuram Godse had been handed to his youngest brother and the family had to honour his last request that until the River Indus flows across Bharat, his ashes should not be floated in that river.

In other words, until India and Pakistan are amalgamated into a single country, his ashes should be kept safely. That is because the River Indus flows across the newly carved out Pakistan by the colonial government. This is why this annual hero’s day is celebrated even today. Vishnu Vasu, together with his friends, had treaded to Pune to experience this special ritual which starts exactly at 5:17 p.m. at which time Godse shot Gandhi in 1949.

So, in India, Gandhi is venerated in a large measure, but his assassin is also venerated even in a small measure without any fanfare.

Crazier movie goers

In general, Indians are crazy cinema fans and those in Tamil Nadu are crazier cinema fans. For the Tamil Nadu people, the ever-alive cinema hero was M G Ramachandran, known as MGR, and his support female actress, Jayalalitha. MGR is said to have been born in Nawalapitiya in Sri Lanka. Some of the movies played by MGR and Jayalalitha, though they are now dead and gone, are still screened in Theatres in Tamil Nadu.

To experience the thrill of watching an MGR movie with his fans, Vishnu Vasu chooses to visit one of the theatres that had played MGR’s 1968 movie Oli Vilakku continuously for all these years.8 The fans are all rag picking old people with silver hair on their heads. The necessary paraphernalia to enjoy the movie are the Beedis, Cigarettes, Hashish and illicit alcohol like Kassippu in Sri Lanka. The cinema hall is fully packed and there are even people who are sitting on the floor.

Even when MGR’s name appears on the screen, viewers go into an uncontrollable ecstasy fully supported by the doses of Hashish and illicit alcohol which they have liberally consumed. It is therefore not only whistling for MGR and Jayalalitha but also a time for enjoying life away from the wrath of the frowning womenfolk at homes.

The Dalai Lama, a living Boddhisatva

Vishnu Vasu completes his travelogue with his encounter9 with His Holiness the Dalai Lama who is viewed by Tibetans and those who practice Mahayana Buddhism as a living Buddha. Vishnu Vasu, the capitalist Bohemian, becomes a disciple of the Dalai Lama. After the Tsunami disaster in 2004, he leaves for USA to join the Bhavana Society run by Rev Henepola Gunaratana in Western Virginia. It was a very hard living because their day started from 3.30 am and ended in close to midnight.

After about three months of his life at the Bhavana Society, he is summoned by the Dalai Lama to Dharamsala in India where His Holiness had resided ever since he had fled Tibet in 1959. Vishnu Vasu had worked for the Dalai Lama in numerous capacities: helping him to develop his website, documentation of the life stories of those who had fled with the Dalai Lama to India, teaching English to young Tibetans, and so on. Vishnu Vasu had spent two years with the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala.

His last comment on His Holiness gives his deep devotion to that great human being: “When I am close to His Holiness, I have no words to describe the feeling of mental calmness, shining, and the great sympathy and compassion that oozes from his physical body. In my view, He is a living Boddhisatva and there is no question about it.”

I recommend Vishnu Vasu’s travelogue, ‘Made in India’, to readers who wish to have a worm’s eye view of India.

Footnotes:

1 For details, see: https://www.britannica.com/topic/bohemianism

2 Made in India, p 40.

3 Ibid, p 52

4 Ibid, p 73

5 Ibid, p 30

6 Ibid, pp 12-20

7 Ibid, pp 29-49

8 Ibid, p 26

9 Ibid, 97-108

(The writer, a former Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka, can be reached at [email protected].)