V.S Naipaul R.I.P

A penniless widow and her three children are waiting to board a ship to be repatriated. The smallest of the three children- V.S Naipaul's father- is smart. He somehow senses that Trinidad is a better place for poor Hindus than Mother Ind. He hides till the ship departs.

Of course, this is just a story. The truth is that the dead Pundit's son had displayed a merely atavistic horror of crossing the black water and thus losing caste and getting cut off from the religion of his ancestors.  Trinidad was Jambudvipa. It was both karmabhumi and bhogabhumi. We all now know the lad was right. Trinidad, even when transmuted into the Literature of a lean, unlovely, Language, prospered more than by just Petroleum and proved richer, if that is possible, than its Rum.

Naipaul too did some hiding-

When Naipaul stopped hiding he could write the great stories of Trinidad- like the harrowing tale of the Pirate and Mass Murderer, Boysie Singh, which belongs, alongside that of Lazarus Morrell, in the annals of a Universal History of Infamy.

The half-caste girl had said 'Massa me be yo picanniny'- Boysie shuddered at the thought. A half smile of disdain flickered across his thin lips. Outside, his new race horse flourished its hooves in impatience. Boysie recalled Pundit Callicharan quoting Marcus Aurelius to his father. “Our life is what our thoughts make it.” He quickly smashed the rib cage of the little girl, pulled out her heart, and went to polish the hooves of his race horse with that dripping piece of offal. Outside the barn, the fireflies were drowning in a sudden tropical shower. Boysie looked up at the framed picture of the Queen Mother which his cat had lovingly cut out of a page in Time Magazine it had found lining its litter box. 'Dulce et decorum' he said to himself in the singsong Bhojupuri accent which, despite his many acts of mass murder, condemned him to obscurity and littleness. Suddenly, the rain ceased. Now there was nothing but darkness.

It is for masterpieces such as this- which he didn't write- that we should remember our Laureate.