Kumar, Manas

Shri Ramswaroop Memorial University,

Deva Road, Lucknow.

All About H. Hatterr – Desani’s ‘Novel Gesture’.

Abstract

The paper attempts to trace the contours of Indian Writing in English,

especially novels, and to scrutinize G. V. Desani’s single contribution to the genre,
namely All About H. Hatterr. Written during World War II and published several
times since its first appearance in 1948, this 278 page novel about a severely
marginalized Other with a postscript fictional defence of meticulously counted
eighty paragraphs anticipates and outdoes Bakhtin in its carnivalesque
heteroglossia, running riot with the language of the colonial masters in a manner
that even Salman Rushdie would be proud to equal.
Despite the linguistic and narrative revolution presaged by Hatterr, both his
author and his text have been relegated to relative oblivion in the annals of Indian
Writing in English. My article humbly endeavors to re-discover this wayward
maverick of Indian English of whom T. S. Eliot says, “In all my experience, I have
not met with anything like it.” 

Keywords :- Indian Writings and Approaches, Structure, Language.

Indian Writing in English

  Indian Writing in English is predominantly a twentieth century phenomenon
though South Asian English literature can be presumably traced back to Sake Dean
Mohamet’s publication of his Travels in 1794. The belief that ‘Indian Writing in
English’ is a consciously constructed epithet to distinguish between native English
authors and their colonial counterparts is strengthened when we note the absence
of such designations like the Polish or the Irish writing in English for authors like
Joseph Conrad or James Joyce. This distinctive categorization prevents the
assimilation of such products in mainstream English literature earmarking an
identifiable, separate space for its habitation, creation and circulation. However,
the label is not merely an imposition that we suffer silently but one we collude in
upholding for mutual benefit. English literature maintains its pure stock while an
international voyeuristic market is created for Indian Writing in English with
contract and sales figures that no regional author or publishing house can match.

Indian Fiction in English

Indian novels in English are generally categorized under two phases: in the
first phase authors like Ahmed Ali, through works like Twilight in Delhi (1940),
try to capture the true expression of Indo-Muslim culture by incorporating its
sounds and poetic images or stalwarts like Mulk Raj Anand, R. K. Narayan and
Raja Rao, attempt to forge a voice/ voices of their own as distinct from the British
in orientation and emphasis. The second group comprises the new breed of authors,
who can actually trace back their lineage to Desani: Arundhati Roy, Vikas Swarup,
Kiran Desai etc., with Rushdie leading the pack, who view themselves as writers
from the empire that struck back (Wallia, India Star).

Govindas Vishnudas Desani

Born on 8 July 1909 in Nairobi, Kenya, to Sindhi parents, Desani was
considered a naïve dreamer by his merchant-class family. “I like books,” he
insolently retorted when his father insisted, he join family business. “You like
books?” his father replied, “I’ll buy you a bookstore!” Reared and educated in
Sind, India, he was hailed as a child prodigy, but considered difficult by those
around him and was expelled from school at thirteen as ‘unteachable’. Years later,
he avenged himself with a short stint as headmaster at the same grammar school!
He ran away from home twice and was brought back. On his third attempt in 1927,
he landed virtually penniless in England in 1927. Since the late 1930s and
throughout World War II, Desani earned his living in England as an orator, a
journalist, a teacher at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, as a
BBC broadcaster, and also as a speaker on Oriental issues sponsored by the British
Ministry of Information. His most famous lecture series was titled “India Invites.”
Occasionally he assayed bit parts in films produced in U. K. to supplement his
income (Life of a Twentieth-Century Adventurer).
Desani’s Works
Desani’s published works are few and far between. All About H. Hatterr ,
written during World War II and published in 1948, earned the opprobrium of his
colleague at the British Ministry of Information, Eric Blair (George Orwell),who
chided him for such frivolity ‘amidst’ the war. Hali, a dramatic prose poem,
serialized in The Illustrated Weekly of India and published by The Writers
Workshop in a collection of modern poetry, was published as a single volume by
the London based Saturn Press in 1952 with a “Preface” by E. M. Forster. A
complementary opposite to All About H. Hatterr , Hali encodes the writer's vision
of cosmic creation and human destiny, marrying Hindu, Buddhist, Islamic and
other Indian religious traditions into a cathartic drama. It was adapted for the
London stage, broadcast over BBC radio, pirated three times and suppressed by the
author for twenty years until it was republished with twenty-three of Desani’s short
stories in 1991.

All About H. Hatterr – Publication and Impact

The first edition of All About H. Hatterr by Aldor in 1948 was acclaimed by
Edmund Wilson and Forster and expedited by T. S. Eliot who readily
acknowledged, “In all my experience, I have not met with anything quite like it”
(A Biographical Note). An instantaneous sensation, it was rapidly reissued by the
Saturn Press in 1950 (UK) followed by a revised edition for the American readers
in 1951 by Farrar, Straus & Young. Quite dramatically, by the end of1951, the
previously enthusiastic West relegated Hatterr to “just a little savoury from the
colonies” forcing it out of print only to reincarnate it as “a modern classic” with
Anthony Burgess’s introductory endorsement in 1970. It sank again into obscurity
till Salman Rushdie, after receiving the 1981 Booker prize for Midnight's Children
finally, though breezily, acknowledged Desani’s debt and brought Hatterr back
under the spotlight.

The subterranean method in madness, mentioned earlier, becomes more

pronounced as we encounter the making of fiction. Despite his numerous
disclaimers, Desani’s novel-gesture (as I shall persist in calling it) has a rigorous
structure: the two epigraphs labelled “Warning!”, and the production account
followed by a “Mutual Introduction” of the inscribed author (Hatterr), serve as a
kind of combined prologue for the seven chapters recounting Hatterr’s encounter
with the seven sages. The rear is brought up by an epilogue labelled “An
Afterthought”
supposedly penned by another fictional character in the work, a lawyer who, as me
ntioned previously, prefixes the pompous title of “504 SrimanVairagi, Paribrajaka, 
Vanaprasthi, Acharya” to his more simple but nevertheless comic name “Yati
Rambeli” (gigantic belly) to suit the lofty task of providing a worthy defence for
the hapless Hatterr. Apart from undermining the very defence it intends to uphold,
the ‘naming ceremony’ is a dig at the aristocrats’ and god-men’s tendency to
legitimize and iterate their political/ religious status by claiming a long line of
descent from royal/ holy for bears. Seven chapters form the main stay of the book
where Hatterr, seeking lucre, lust and illumination, encounters seven sages across
India who take on increasingly presumptuous names as the work progresses –
sages of Calcutta, Rangoon (now resident in India), Madras, Bombay, “right
Honorable sage of Delhi,” “wholly worshipful of Mogalsarai-Varanasi” and
“naked Holiness number One, the Sage of All India himself!” – matching the
ludicrousness of the ‘life experience’ encountered and the lesson learned thereof.
Save for one, where he
gain princely sum of Rs 1000/- (Chapter IV), all the escapades conclude in inevitab
le disaster with Hatterr, very much the modern prototype of the ‘gull’ in classical
drama, barely escaping by the skin of his teeth. Each of the seven chapters is given
an intriguing and often half-finished title – Chapter I. “The Sage, He Spake...,”
Chapter II. “...Versus the Impressario,” Chapter III. “Archbishop Walrus versus
Neophyte the Bitter-One,” Chapter IV. “Apropos Supernatural Agent...,” Chapter
V. “Assault below the Belt,” Chapter VI. “...Salute the ‘ Kismet ’” and, Chapter
VII. “Punchumand Another, with Contempt” – that literalise the ensuing content.
For instance, Chapter V. “Assault below the Belt,” is literally an assault on
Hatterr’s loincloth by a demented Nagasanyasi to relieve Hatter of his hidden stash
of money so as to release him from the clutches of “Evil-Triumphant” green
monster (223)! 

The ‘seven cities-seven sages’ syndrome draws our attention to the

numerological significance of the number ‘7’ in all aspects of life across all
religions and cultures. The Biblical Book of Genesis mentions seven days of
creation, the number of ayats in surat al-Fatiha are seven, Hindu marriage is
synonymous with ‘saat paake bandha’ and all three religions –Christian, Islam,
Hindu – envisage seven heavens. Music has seven basic notes, Ingmar Bergman’s
famous film is titled Seventh Seal, James Bond is Agent 007, and the Potter series
virtually revels in foregrounding the number – Harry Potter is born in July, the
seventh month of the year; Hogwarts offers seven years’ of schooling, each
Quidditch team has seven players while Voldemort’s seven horcruxes can prove
apocalyptical. The list could be infinite. Given Desani’s in-depth knowledge of
several religions, scriptures, Oriental and Occidental philosophy, his choice of
seven chapters and seven sages cannot be dismissed as mere coincidence. It brings
to the fore a niggling question regarding the ambivalent nature of Desani’s
authorial intent – is he challenging and/ or debunking all knowledge and belief
systems that sustain human civilisation, thereby predicting a holocaustic future for
mankind or is “the great comedy of intellectual blunders, a subtle defence of Indian
metaphysics” (Slade) through the strategy of paradoxical reversal? The doubt
deepens when we consider some of the major stylistic features of the text.

The most consistent source of ambiguity and hilarity however, is the

language deployed in this novel gesture. The incessant heteroglossia and plurality
of voices invoke the Bakhtinian notion of dialogic exchange that privileges
“neither a live-and-let-live relativism nor a settle-it-once-and-for-all
authoritarianism but a strenuous and open-ended dialogism” that allows all voices
to “talk...to themselves and to one another, discovering their affinities without
resting in them and clarifying their differences without resolving them” (Don
Bialostosky, qtd. In Chakrabarti 67-68).

Desani’s decolonizing agenda advances beyond words and punctuation to

challenge the pedagogic imposition of Western systems of culture and
knowledge with hysteric, in appropriate mishmash of quotes and allusions from
Shakespeare to Freud; The Bible to Darwin. A single instance of an agitated
Banerrji’s recourse to the entire Shakespeare canon to urge Hatterr to defend
himself against legal summons, will suffice: “The Bard has said, Who steals my
purse, steals trash! Nevertheless, Mr. H. Hatterr, ahead of us is Double, double, toil
and
trouble;fire burn and cauldron bubble! I am not a sobsister, but, excuse me, the situ
ation reminds me of Hamlet. To be! But firstly, let us be calm, honest Iago...”
(112). Desani’s novel gesture attempts an answer in his signature style –chaotic,
befuddling, antithetical – by producing a manifesto of subversion: The trump card
of us Balaamite fellers is the mumbo-jumbo talk: the priestcraft obscurantism and
subtlety: (...Wherefore, pious brethren, by confessing I lie, yoiks! I tell the truth,
sort of top holy trumpeting-it, by the Pharisee G. V. Desani: see the feller’s tract
All About ..., publisher, the same publishing company): a language deliberately
designed to mystify the majority, tempt’em to start guessing, and interpreting our
real drift, and allegory, what the hell we mean: pursue our meaning on the sthula
(gross), the  sukshama (subtle) and para (supreme) plains, and levels, and still miss
the issue and dash their heads against the crazy-paved rock of confusion.

Reference

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Desani, G. V. Hali and Collected Stories.4th ed. London:McPherson & Company, 1991.

http://www.believermag.com/issues/200806/?read=review_desani.
 http://www.desani.org/talking-points.
http://www.dooyoo.co.uk/user/319051.html.