*

In Search of a Nations Self: A Reading of The Escapist*

Dr. H. P. Shukla
Professor of English
Kumaun University
Nainital

I
The novels and short stories of Manoj Das carry such a rare blend of seriousness and
humour, are so deceptively cloaked in bright scintillating colours as to belie their quiet depths
that more often than not critics have foregrounded the minor embellishment of Dass craft to
the neglect of his major and more serious concerns. Humour is not the burden of his tales, but
only a manner by which he lightens their subtle weight. His fiction and no less, his nonfictional prose is imbued with a vision of the transcendent which in its alchemy transfigures
everything it touches. As a result, all through his writings, magic and realism, rational and
supra-rational, nature and supernatural earth and heaven, in short walk hand in hand in a
dream-like trance. Manoj Das is, therefore, one of those serious artists whose right placement
in the tradition, national and literary, requires a radical revaluation of reputations and
accepted or acceptable values in literature, more specifically those obtaining in contemporary
Indian English literature. It is only by relating the author to his rightful tradition can his
works be appreciated in their true light.
In the sifting of reputations, the first step is to separate the chaff. According to a
popular bestselling author, Stephen King, The serious novelist is looking for answers and
keys to the self; the popular novelist is looking for an audience (xii). Many of the
fashionable icons of Indian English Writing will make their exit here. As for the others, those
who seek the self, not all are seeking the same thing. There is the lower and the higher self
and Self, and in-between an infinity of gradations. The smaller, it seems, is always grounded
in the larger and has no separate independent existence. The individual finds its meaning in a
larger Self, and the Self (the Existent) is figured in its source, the Essence. This larger Self,
we are told, is everywhere and nowhere, and everywhere is where one is. One meets it
therefore in configurations of Nature and also in relationships, ideas, superstitions and fears
embedded in the flesh and emanating from ones culture.
If it be so, then only in the understanding of culture can the self be known and thus
transcended. But since culture goes beyond a geographical area into history and beyond, the
essence of a nation too must be sought beyond its geo-physical and temporal bounds. Raja
A shorter version of this article appeared in The Viswa-Bharati Quarterly, vol. 12 nos. 3&4 and vol. 13 nos. 1&2 (Dec. 2005)

A Reading of The Escapist

Rao once told Kathleen Raine, India is not a nation, like France or Italy or Germany: India is
a state of being (Raine 1). It necessarily follows that only in finding such a state of being can
the honour of being called an Indian be bestowed upon one. The necessity of seeking this
state becomes more of a sacred responsibility in the case of a writer, for speaking on behalf of
a people he needs speak from the depths of a larger, universal Self. His private, personal self
per se is irrelevant to literature. In a state of culture where, if we are to believe Paranjape,
every Indian is a sadhak or sadhika (94), the writer who aspires for a place in the great
Indian literary tradition must be no less than a Siddha, or a sage. Raja Raos assertion that
Indian civilization is the making of the Rishis (the sages) and the Western, of heroes and
prophets [] (114) is a clear pointer as to what the Indian writers essential dharma must
be. But how central and relevant is this search in the context of modern India? A hundred
years ago, we saw Tagores Gourmohan going into wilderness on a similar quest, and in
recent years we have witnessed Raja Rao aiming from abroad his magic wand eastward,
seeking the same effulgent Indian light.
Philosophy as fiction is how the renegades have shouted at Raos labour. Gora in his
orations and inner whirlpools went through analogous labour pains. Why do Indians talk so
much philosophy? Even a villager in some nondescript corner here is more puzzled about
maya and moksha than about earning his meagre livelihood. No wonder, Sisirkumar Ghose
saw it as part of our national psyche:
The Indian mind [...] is easily drawn towards the universal and the permanent
behind the fleeting and the illusory. If this involves a little metaphysics, that
cannot be helped. Here you cannot avoid it. It is part of the landscape, our
ethos, semantics, phenomenology and that higher dream whose other name is
a sense of values. (193)
Philosophy known to us as darshanam, a seeing vision is as central to Indian thought as is
the sex and man-woman relationship to the West. If it be hard to find a western novel, either
pulp or classic, without a man-woman drama thrown around everywhere, why shouldnt the
best of Indian fiction be for its part a serious and passionate engagement with its cultures
deep philosophical concerns? If the Indian mind could call its religion sanatan dharma,
shouldnt it demand a sanatan sahitya, a literature of eternity? Poets are hearers of Truth,
proclaim the Vedas. Those who do not have an ear for truth are the ones who trade in lies and
lead us to the realm of sorrow and death. The ancient prayer, asato ma sadgamaya remains
yet the most potent formulation of Indian aspiration. And in whatsoever measure, an
authentic Indian writing must lead us towards that. These are hints and suggestions for

A Reading of The Escapist

unravelling the mystery of that enigmatic thing called Indianness. For a more authentic
discovery we need turn to our creative talents, and Manoj Das is certainly one of these.
II
Manoj Das is not a modern novelist, for there is nothing modish about him. His is
the ancient Indian art of storytelling that speaks of eternal issues in a timeless voice. He
comes from the land of Panchatantra and Jataka with a bagful of tales about all the
monkeys around me masquerading as men (The Escapist 4). His fiction creates a vision of
reality which demands of its readers that they reconstruct their notions of realism. Perhaps the
author himself best defined his art when he called one of his collections Fables and Fantasies
for Adults (1978). All his works are fantasies of a heightened imagination and read like fables
for thoughtful adults. Those that still feed on country pleasures will not find anything here to
titillate their brainwaves or senses.
The Escapist (2001), the authors English rendering of his Oriya original, Akashara
Isara (1997), is the third of his novels in English. In its style and treatment of subject it is
clearly in the same vein as his earlier works, Cyclones (1987) and The Tiger at Twilight
(1991) which originally appeared in English. All the three are about India and all have a
deceptively contemporary canvas. While Cyclones unleashes the upheavals of the Partition
and The Tiger at Twilight laments the passing away of an age, The Escapist showcases the
chiaroscuro of a very contemporary postcolonial India. But behind the changing appearances
can be seen the slow but sure emergence of a nations Soul wearing as ever an enigmatic
smile that enchants as much as it invites us to share its treasure of unfathomable mysteries.
The Escapist, more of a fantastic fable than its brethren and thus also a greater escapist, is
perhaps the most powerful of Manoj Dass creations, because it alone succeeds fully in
capturing that essential secret soul of India for which the author has laboured all along.
As many of the questions and concerns of the earlier works come to maturity in The
Escapist, the authors narrative technique too achieves its perfection in a rising crescendo of
fulfilled laughter and irony. The plot is such a bizarre configuration of happenings that no
sane person even in their wildest imagination would find it believable. And yet, it is all so
true, so credible, almost a play of forces, obvious or hidden, seen operational in everyday life,
just like those strange figurines in an Indian temple. There is surely a trickster who joys in
creating in our lives a comedy that reads almost like the Upanishads. But who is he? In

Further references to The Escapist are shown only by page numbers.

A Reading of The Escapist

response to the question, Is it Chance? the author quotes Anatole France: Chance was the
pseudonym of God which He used when He did not wish to put down His signature (5). And
thus begins the incredible adventure, both in body and soul, of Swami Padmanandas
rendezvous with God.
After showing in medias res how by a quirk of fate Padmalochan Pramanik, an
ordinary boy from an ordinary village named Govardhanpur, metamorphosed into Swami
Padmananda (11), the narrative moves back to trace the protagonists journey from a simple,
innocent village life to his more sophisticated and warped habitation in the city. There is
nothing heroic about his birth, upbringing or talents: a non-brahmin orphan, he has been
brought up by a poor old woman, a foster grandmother. It is the story of a commonplace
Indian villager, of an everyman, where no self-designed meticulous planning but Life itself
provides him with a mentor, whenever he needs one, and nurtures him along the pathways of
destiny.
Natbar Sir, the English teacher in the village school, is the first of Padmalochans
gurus who introduces him to the wide world of books and English and also to the one of
ambition, politics and supernatural.

The world is changing and Natbar Sir resigns his

teaching position to become a fulltime politician. The fellow must be possessed either by a
spook of wifelessness or the spook of politics! Whatever it be, in the events that follow,
the guru unwittingly succeeds in planting a living seed of ambition in the disciple. But the
village boy also inherits something more: an air of deep religiosity and faith, of transparent
trust, and from Nature the gifts of widespread silences and open skies. No wonder, the
longing for a Himalayan retreat is elder to the newly planted seed of ambition.
Trapped in the cul-de-sac of meaningless issues and petty politics, Padmalochan is
glad to escape at the first opportunity to the vaster horizons of the city life. The game is
bigger here, and the field more fertile for his learning and growth. Sharmaji, his new mentor,
has been a minister for years and is playing now for the position of the Chief Minister.
Strangely enough, even a politician is not untouched by that great Indian spirit of sadhana, as
can be seen in Sharmajis customary detached and ascetic way (5). Padmalochan makes
good use of his mentors library; and if the village had taught him English grammar, the city
helps him acquire the spoken skills. The little seed of ambition has also begun to sprout: not
just a chela, he now wants to be called [Sharmajis] personal secretary (33). In a farcical
twist of events, Sharmaji dies at the end of a usual politicians fast and poor Padmalochan
once again finds himself an orphan.

A Reading of The Escapist

Looking for employment and driven by one bizarre event after another symbolising
perhaps the unimaginable in life Padmalochan lands up at the house of the business tycoon,
Jayant Thakore. When asked to sit in a non-existent chair Padmalochan ridiculously assumes
the posture of utkatasana, Ranjita Devi, Thakores wife, seeing him thus seated, takes no
time to divine that he must be a great yogi with immense supernatural powers. That she could
be the hostess to such a great Mahatman was indeed the fructification of her religious merit
and aspiration! She would brook no argument to her divination, and Padmalochan without
any desire or design of his own is irrevocably transformed into Swami Padmananda.
It is the questioning of this metamorphosis that becomes the centre of the narrative
henceforth. Is it merely a play of Chance, a fortuitous fate that makes us what we are? Or is
there a deeper design by which the soul, unknown to us, struggles to regain its primal motive
and thus gives a lie to the intellect by wearing the dark robe of destiny? What then is
appearance and what is Reality? And how inadequate or misleading are our perceptions that
perforce can be nothing but subjective? Who is right in this play of a trickster: the rational,
successful man of the world, Jayant Thakore, who sees in Padmalochan an impostor or at best
a philosopher, or Ranjita Devi who discovers in Swami Padmananda the holy man of
her imagination (9) her guru and door to deliverance?
The outer is a field that forces us to look for the inner creator of that field. When life
makes Padmananda don the holy robes, it also pushes him to discover the holy within. He
tries to escape into a false pretence of askesis, and what follows is a harrowing agony of inner
conflict and tensions, a real askesis. Life is ironical and appearances misleading. The guru
discovers in the disciple his own mentor:
It was the face of the dedicated serene with faith and tender with gratitude.
For a moment she was a vision for me, at once a vast blue horizon and a
goddess who stood there to impart benedictions, to teach [] that ones faith,
when total, never failed one. (55)
In educating Ranjita Devi, Padmananda undertakes his own spiritual education. In playing the
guru, he discovers in himself a deep well of compassion coming to the fore. He grows to love
his disciple-daughter who with her faith can keep even death at bay until she desires
otherwise. He realizes the true nature of prayer and finds a first rudimentary communion with
the Divine Mother. Reflecting for hours in his self-chosen confinement he achieves a
transcendence of guilt and comes to see that the way of living I had come to embrace could
not have been my doing. I could not have managed this with lies and manipulations. Things

A Reading of The Escapist

had happened in spite of me (64). At the same time, he has also become acutely aware of his
limitations and his inability to achieve any measure of inner silence and peace.
Padmananda must exhaust many of his karmas, must fast confined in purgatorial fires
in Jayant Thakores mansion before being allowed the final escape. He needs to live
through the experience of attachment to a woman and witness the farce that is mans world.
Sushobhana, or Sushie for short, is the most beautiful woman he has ever seen in real life.
She looked to me like a mode of music, a ragini, personified (43), and herein lay the seed
of his attachment raag. But, unknown to him, the nymph comes to give him his
deliverance, not bondage. She sings a Mira-bhajan, and Padmananda is at once transported to
the sublime plane at which the song and the singer had become inextricably one (45).
Obviously, she is not of this world: hers is the charm and beauty that spring from soul and
even if she sends to turmoil Padmanandas grosser being there is nothing of the gross in her.
Tied to a mentally and emotionally invalid husband, she has borne her life with a radiant
calm. She has touched that plane where pain is just another face of Bliss. She is so much
greater than him that Padmananda simply fears her. Even his attraction for her encompasses
other dimensions: Her dignified gait, her dutifulness accompanied by a serene detachment,
last but not the least, her dazzling beauty bereft of jewellery and cosmetics, were simply
irresistible (65). Mastered by her superior being and wisdom, he realises that the real
Sushie was a phenomenon quite distant from the Sushie of my imagination (142). She is the
last of his mentors from this world who finally unties the most intricate knot of his bondage:
How far can one escape and with whom? Maybe for a few months or a few
years. What after that? When the enabling moment arrives each person has to
follow his own escape-route. [] The fire-flies of our ego and anger, passions
and attractions are likely to make the darkness at the crossing even more
dense. (141)
Padmanandas ambition for fame and limelight, for being somebody his original
sin is made to exhaust itself through another route. He is granted the status of a celebrityguru and paraded through the loud theatre of human ego. The visitors that gather around him
seeking his blessings and guidance represent a humanity trapped in petty nets of desire and
tossing up in the vast sea of half imaginary, half real misery. Padmananda provides them with
a mirror of spiritual calm wherein they can see with clarity their individual maladies in
pronounced contours. Ranjita Devis comment, Outwardly I have everything, but I feel like
a beggar (53), is a neat summation of this hollow mans world. Not only the characters the
list includes politicians, businessmen, academicians, an actor and a music director, a poet, a

A Reading of The Escapist

lover, and a psychiatrist but even their pursuits and vocations stand condemned to a
vaporous meaningless nothing. The professor, for example, is seen as surrounded by several
rackfuls of books, to none of which he had keys. And he licked with great relish the glasspanes on the racks (126). The psychiatrist, equally blind, is getting mad because she cannot
handle her own emotional tangle.
As Padmananda walks through this purgatorial land he meets the reflection of his own
hidden traps of desire. The mirror of consciousness shines both ways. In prescribing the
antidote of death to the lover, he faces a tremendous revelation:
Should I come face to face with death right now and should death ask me to
follow it how willing would I be to do so? I wondered. Probably I would cry
out: Pardon me, but I cannot leave Sushie in the condition she is and escape!
And I woke to the absurdity of my state of mind. Who appointed me as
Sushies saviour? I realised that very moment that all our attachments were
nothing but a poor, desperate and vain effort to resist death. (124)
Padmanandas experiences therefore, however wide, are not enough to bring him liberation.
Man must face and, in the process, transcend the primal fear of Death, before he can be
granted the final escape. Padmananda escapes from the mansion only to meet Thakores
hired thugs yamadoots, perhaps who in a methodically prolonged agony hammer out his
consciousness to a near-death point. As he receives the torrent of blows, his tormentor
appears to him like a benevolent physician, vaidyaraj (146), and as if in a vision he watches
all his attachments dying, one after another. Yama, also called Dharmaraja, is the great
Teacher of the Kathopanishad. By yet another act of Chance, Padmananda is saved from
death by two strangers. Thus he meets his real Guru and his lifelong desire of a hermitage in
the Himalayas is fulfilled at last.
He returns after 20 years to revisit his bodhi tree, the Thakores Mansion, and to
conclude the chain of his narrative. The Epilogue, in the true Indian tradition of storytelling,
gathers all actors in their desired or just end. But the crown of fulfilment must go to Jayant
Thakore, the selfishly immoral sceptic and successful giant now reduced to a dilapidated
house and an invalid body:
Thakore tried to sit up, but failed. On the wall before him hung a solitary
picture of Ranjita Devi. Invisible worms were eating into it.
He rambled out something, trying to draw my attention to the picture. He
says your daughter, Vimal interpreted. (154)

A Reading of The Escapist

For some who still suffer the thraldom of their beloved spooks, like Natbar Sir who dreams of
getting a ministerial berth in the state cabinet this time, the circus of Maya goes on.
III
Manoj Das, the master story teller, has once again given us an intriguing tale full of
suspense, drama, comedy, humour and satire, and told it in a well-paced, gripping narrative in
his vintage inimitable style. But The Escapist is much more than a merely entertaining story.
It is a serious text, and to term it a philosophical novel would be an understatement. It is the
mystics vision of human predicament which at the same time suggests an escape route from
the confines of a meaningless, sorrowful existence. From near to the far, it is a serious
exploration of the nature of reality. The protagonists journey from a small Indian village to
the wide expanse of the Himalayas and all through connected by the silent promptings from
the unfailing infinity of a blue sky is a symbolic tale of mans spiritual adventure and growth.
Not only is the landscape Indian, but the very manner of exploration is steeped deep into the
timeless musings of Indian psyche.
Man is a social animal, well said some old mole, and so is also begotten the first of
human bondage. To break free from his primal chains, man needs to understand the nature of
society unto which he is born and assimilation and growth under whose flanks seem the
labour of his whole endeavour. It is a rotten, monstrous society which man has created and
into which we try to fit ourselves by joining its ranks. Media, that loud mouthpiece of mans
world, for example, in its obsession with politics, economy and entertainment blatantly
reveals the sordid structures of society. This obsession with power, riches and sex is also at
the centre of egoistic human existence. The Escapist showcases a naked parade of politicians
of all hues and shades Natbar Sir, Sharmaji, Sudarshan Roy the Chief Minister, and
Swadesh Gaurav the Chief Minister in making. They are followed by industrialists,
businessmen and their goons Jayant Thakore, Seth Lalchand, the contractor, Mohan Rakshit
the lawyer, the M.A., M. Phil., and Rohit Pandey. The last in the list of expos is the
entertainment industry with a much wider net than the obvious. It includes Jasmine the
highest paid personal secretary in the state who is seen by some as no better than a beautiful
prostitute, a film actress who goes on changing lovers, a music director who wishes his rival a
heart stroke to steal a deal from some producer. The professor with his research scholars
churning out Ph.D. theses on Bergson, Nietzsche et al, the lecturer analysing the mysticism of
Bhaktiyoga for his thesis, Elements of Sex in the Sentimental Lyrics of the Middle Ages,
the poet who is sorely disappointed on repeatedly missing the state awards, and the

A Reading of The Escapist

psychiatrist who misuses her profession to her personal advantage are all part of the same
entertainment circus. Such is the nature of idols that society sets before its youth as goals to
be pursued. Kumar, the madcap who goes abroad to buy a can-opener and insanely attempts
to possess his fathers mistress, is the direct offshoot of this society.
The question that immediately follows is what should be our relationship to this far
from honourable inheritance. A calm indifference with an uncompromising clarity of vision
and purpose is the attitude suggested by Sushie, Vishnuji, Ranjita Devi, Mrs Maheshwari and
Vimal. At peace with oneself with a profound calm, even if in the background as in the case
of Padmananda, one escapes the snares of society which sometime may loom large like a
sorcerers net and can with abandon laugh at the human circus which is far more incongruous
and entertaining than any monkeys. The path is the way of Tao, flowing with the current
neither desiring nor resisting, the song of the kite surrendered to the breeze for guidance and
inspiration. Once this central attitude happens as it does to Padmananda in the very first
chapter of the novel the quest, the sadhana begins. The Ganga descends and flows on
drowning all rocks and boulders on the way. All man made questions rising from the mind in
ignorance how to separate desire from aspiration, truth from lie, right from wrong and all
the various knotty attachments of the ego are met one by one and discarded as meaningless
nothings on the wayside. An insight beckons Sushie to the mystery of past births preparing
her for a quiet leap into the future. A power becomes operational in Ranjita Devi that changes
forever a groping Padmananda:
[...] her gaze fixed on my eyes. Her sight or something with which her sight
was charged blasted its way into me, like an intense yet cool ray, in the
process putting layer after layer of my consciousness into a state of
tranquillity, and touching deep within me a sphere which I did not know
existed. (75)
A benevolent guidance uses Padmananda to make a phone call to Swadesh Gauravs wife
with far-reaching consequences for the couple. Chance, chance, chance didnt the author
warn at the start? An incredible story. But who says the Ramayana is any less incredible?
Beyond all our doubt, anxiety and fear, at the centre of them all and as their source
lies the primal fear of Death. No serious Indian text remember Nachiketas and Savitri can
ever fall shy of questioning the nature and reality of death. Such an inquiry is at the heart of
all important works of Manoj Das, so much so that his memoir, Chasing the Rainbow opens
with a single sentence paragraph:

A Reading of The Escapist

10

One takes living for granted until a moment when one wakes up to the
phenomenon of death. (1)
What is it that dies at the moment of death? The physical organism comes to an end that is
obvious; but there is surely more to the mystery of death than this apparent fact. The ego
which blabbers, plans and fantasizes in order to maintain the fiction its eternal continuity too
must come to an end that is quite logical and rational. This brings us face to face with the
nature of the little self:
Each one lived in ones own private world made of ones dreams and
impressions, ones knowledge and ignorance, desires and disappointments, a
world very different from the similar little invisible worlds of all the others
around. Did that world dissolve along with ones death? (77)
Isnt there more to man than his superficial self? What is it that wills Ranjita Devi to choose
her moment of death? Her determined desire to see you at the termination of your vow of
silence has been the single greatest factor in her pulling through, the nurse attending Ranjita
Devi tells Padmananda. This very same entity which can keep death waiting can also with
equal ease decide to leave this world: grant me that I depart at the earliest (75). Surely such
an attitude is not in the egos nature. It is in Sushie who has risen above the loud theatre of
ego that we meet the epitome of Indian equanimity which can laugh away even the greatest of
material losses implied in the act of dying: So? Even so the sun shall rise in the morning, the
date in the calendar shall change, many shall die and more shall be born! (140). Three weeks
later, she is able to leave her body in the same room sanctified by Ranjita Devis death.
All this and more in The Escapist cannot be mere intellectual cogitation of a fanciful
fashionable writer of the moment. It surely springs from the calm depths of a mystics vision,
which pervades throughout the novel much like Padmalochans all-encompassing sky. The
author who gave us a hundred Tales Told by Mystics knows the tradition well and has added
one more of his own to the lore.
IV
At a time when there is no dearth of India-baiters, Manoj Das shows an extraordinary
courage in making a fake godman his hero. Using a rare insight into the nature of Reality, he
then goes on to tear the veil of appearances and shows how behind the so-called spiritual
fakery of which India is accused are seen the sure footsteps of a divine guidance. In a land
where people from every vocation and of all persuasions flock around a devotee of God, true

A Reading of The Escapist

11

or false, and honour him with the title of Maharaj, a lord greater than any terrestrial ruler, the
passion of spiritual flight must indeed be deemed the most central of its aspirations. The rest
politics and business is no more than a monkeys circus. On the plane of social realism
the author gives us the whole of this circus and raises quite a few issues that shall be the
fodder for any postcolonial critic. But all this, as they say, lies beyond the scope of this
paper. Suffice to reiterate that here is a full-blooded, all-encompassing exploration of our
national Self. To determine whether all this is mere fantasy or has its grounding in some solid
reality, the reader must refer to Dass Chasing the Rainbow (2004) which is part memoir, part
social history of a vanishing ethos.
Everything about The Escapist has an irony of a magician who hides his true face
behind a mask and drowns everything in a peal of laughter. Even the title, in its exact English
sense, is quite misleading. Does it address itself, then, to the unjust accusation of Indians
being escapists and fatalists? Here is an escape from a lesser to a greater Reality, or more
pointedly, from the darkness of a prison house to the open skies of infinity and freedom.
Indian fatalism, on the other hand, is a total, unquestioning surrender of a leaf to the breeze of
guidance from those open skies Akashara Isara. And as for the enigma of Chance and
Gods pseudo-signatures, here is a key from Sri Aurobindos Savitri:
But who shall pierce into the cryptic gulf
And learn what deep necessity of the soul
Determined casual deed and consequence? (52)

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12
Works Cited

Aurobindo, Sri. Savitri. 4th rev. ed. Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1993.
Das, Manoj. Chasing the Rainbow: Growing up in an Indian village. New Delhi: Oxford University
Press, 2004.
- - -. Cyclones. New Delhi: Sterling Publishers Private Limited, 1987.
- - -. Fables and Fantasies for Adults. New Delhi: Orient Paperbacks, 1978.
- - -. Tales Told by Mystics. New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 2001.
- - -. The Escapist. Chennai: Macmillan India Limited, 2001.
- - -. The Tiger at Twilight. New Delhi: Penguin Books India, 1991.
Ghose, Sisirkumar. Modern and Otherwise. New Delhi: D. K. Publishing House, 1974.
King, Stephen. The Dark Tower I: The Gunslinger. London: New English Library Hodder and
Stoughton, 2003.
Paranjape, Makarand. Is India Civilized?: A Commentary. Sri Aurobindo and the New Age. Ed. K
D Sethna and Nirodbaran. Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education,
1997. 90-105.
Raine, Kathleen. Raja Rao: A Personal Tribute. Word as Mantra: The Art of Raja Rao. Ed. Robert
L Hardgrave, Jr. New Delhi: Katha (in association with the Centre for Asian Studies, the
University of Texas at Austin), 1998. 1-5.
Rao, Raja. The Writer and the Word. The Best of Raja Rao. Ed. Makarand Paranjape. New Delhi:
Katha, 1998. 113-115.

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