The Cripple and His Talismans (27 page)

Carrying a leper’s dismembered finger, donated as a weird compass for his journey, the narrator encounters a dead woman selling rainbows. Lighting a thousand oil lamps to burn for the duration of his travels, she warns him that a sworn enemy will try to end his journey before it is over. Given the narrator’s antisocial past, there are any number of candidates. Perhaps it is Viren, a school mate whom the narrator abused despicably. Or will it be Horasi, the eunuch he smokes hookah with, and whom he has betrayed in a hallucinatory vision/memory? And then there is Malaika, the prostitute with whom he is engaged in a perpetual tussle of love and hate …

Joining literature’s pantheon of anti-heroes, our protagonist may be Bombay’s answer to Roskolnikov or Humbert, Gollum, Gregor Samsa or Grendel, the mad narrator of Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart, or Burrough’s Bill Lee. And yet he remains wholly distinct. For while he can be a frustrating mess of opposites, capable of cruelty and compassion, recklessness and regret, madness and acuity, he is also earnestly, heart-rendingly, in search of redemption.

With
The Cripple and His Talismans
, Anosh Irani makes his powerful debut as an up-and-coming star in the absurdist literary tradition. At the centre of his novel’s darkly comic narrative lurks a powerfully charged and deeply perceptive moral outrage, illuminated by hope.

ANOSH IRANI
was born and raised in Bombay, India. He moved to Vancouver in 1998, and received his Masters in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia in 2004.

First published in 2004,
The Cripple and His Talismans
was Irani’s first novel, earning him critical acclaim and a spot on
Quill and Quire’s
“writers to watch” list. The novel has also been published in the United States, Germany and China.

Irani’s second novel,
The Song of Kahunsha
, was published in 2006. It is a tale of children in Bombay struggling for survival amidst the violence of the 1993 racial riots. It became a Canadian and Italian bestseller, and was a 2007 CBC Radio “Canada Reads” selection. His 2010 novel,
Dahanu Road
, is an epic love story about three generations of the Irani clan: Zoroastrians who fled from persecution in Iran to Bombay.

Irani is also an award-winning playwright. His first full-length play,
The Matka King
, premiered in Vancouver in 2003. His 2006 play
Bombay Black
won four Dora Mavor Moore Awards including Outstanding New Play. He was a 2007 Governor General’s Award nominee for Drama for
The Bombay Plays
. His most recent play is
My Granny the Goldfish
.

Irani divides his time between Bombay and Vancouver.

Irani says of his birthplace: “In the
Commedia dell’arte
, there was a tradition of sending clowns on stage during a play whenever the audience was bored. They performed physical comedy sketches called
lazzi
which had no real connection to the actual story of the play. At times, Bombay’s like that. It’ll be a normal day, with eggs and traffic, that sort of thing, and then suddenly, out of nowhere, something absurd will happen.”

1. Discuss the unreliability of the unnamed narrator. Does he have any moments of lucidity? Can you ever trust what he says? Why do you think Irani chose to keep him nameless?
   
2. “There is an unwritten rule, or, if it is writ, it lies sculpted on God’s arm. Once your journey begins, you cannot end it. You can propel yourself off track, skid in different mud, but it will only make your journey that much longer.” (
   this page
   ) What do you think the narrator is saying here? Read what he says next, about widows and mad dogs. What does he mean? What do these words indicate about his state of mind?
   
3. Discuss the many pairings of opposites in the novel (for example, light/dark; left/right; good/evil; rich/poor). What effect do they have?
   
4. What is the meaning of the narrator’s encounter with the woman who sells rainbows?
   
5. This novel is structured as a classic quest narrative. What is the unnamed narrator really in search of? Does he achieve his quest?
   
6. Irani has said in an interview, “There are certain stories that simply cannot be told in a realistic manner. They need an element of the absurd, the illogical, to arrive at a deeper understanding.” What do you think of this statement, in the context of this book? Does Irani achieve this goal? Can you think of other ways in which humans use allegory and symbolism to engage with truth?
   
7. What do you think is the deeper meaning of the story of Gardulla, the giant who lives underwater?
   
8. What does the narrator learn when he smokes the hookah with the eunuch Horasi?
   
9. What do you think is the root cause of the narrator’s troubles?
   
10. Discuss the impact of the dark humour throughout the book. What does it contribute to the novel? What, for you, was the funniest part?
    
11. Hieronymous Bosch was a Flemish painter known for his bizarre depictions of paradise and hell. Why do you think Irani chose this as Viren’s middle name? Try looking up Bosch’s most famous work, The Garden of Earthly Delights. Does it remind you of any passages in the novel?
    
12. Discuss the prologue and the epilogue, considered together. How has the narrator’s quest impacted the world in the epilogue? What do these allegories mean?
    
13. Near the end of the book, Baba Rakhu says, “The world can be changed not by ending suffering, but by a more judicious distribution of it.” (
    this page
    ) What do you think of this philosophy?
    
14. Literature throughout history has featured flawed heroes. Did you ever find yourself rooting for the narrator, despite his despicable acts? Why/why not? Do you think literature allows for a heightened capacity to empathize with someone who does terrible things, as opposed to real life?
    

The Cripple
is set in Bombay, the city of your birth, yet you wrote it while living in Vancouver, your new home. Did the relocation help you to write about Bombay?

I’ve said in interviews before that Bombay is a cross between a nightingale and a vulture — beauty and death. It inspires and haunts at the same time. When I moved to Vancouver, the impulse to write was driven by this strange mix that Bombay offers. The distance from Bombay, in terms of both time and physical space, certainly gave me perspective and the room to invent. If India is the catalyst, Canada is the canvas.

This novel is filled with vivid, extraordinary characters. As the author, do you have a favourite? Who was most fun to write?

The Cripple. He’s psychologically disturbed, and yet has a delicious sense of humour. And when he meets Baba Rakhu, the hacker of arms and legs, he meets his nemesis, someone who has rejected society’s moral code and created his own. The interaction between the two, as it emerged, was fascinating for me.
Are the allegories in
The Cripple
— for example, the genesis story of the flying boy and the tree, or the underwater giant — taken from mythology, or did you invent them? Have you always been interested in mythology?

They’re all inventions. The underwater giant, for instance, was a story I had told my class when I was in grade 3 or 4. I still remember that day vividly. The teacher asked if someone would like to tell a story, and I just got up from my chair, went to the head of the class and started talking about a giant who lived underwater, whose only wish was to see the sun. But he was not allowed to emerge from that river. I can’t remember why.

You are an accomplished playwright, in addition to being a novelist. How are the literary forms different for the writer?

When I’m writing a play, I always think of an audience. Even if it’s not through direct address, I’m aware that the characters are on a stage and people are watching. When I’m working on a novel, I never think of the reader. At least not in the early drafts. When I am closer to a final draft, I think of the reader, but only in terms of how clear the story is to him or her.
What are some of your favourite books?

The Stranger
by Camus.
A Fine Balance
by Rohinton Mistry.
Lolita
by Nabokov.
Ham on Rye
by Charles Bukowski.
Barney’s Version
by Mordecai Richler.

If you weren’t writing, what would you want to do for a living?

I’d be a clown. Somewhere in France, I hear there’s a great clown school …

Are you working on any new fiction now?

I just spent four months in Bombay, walking the streets at dawn and late into the night. These are my two favourite moments to observe the city — when it just wakes up, and when it tries to sleep, but is like a tired beast gasping for air. The brothels, the zoo, temples and churches, potholes, fancy cars, dizzying money, gorgeous women, old beggars, street children — they all invigorate the city, and I wait for all of it to disappear and start a novel with the one image that remains.