The Strange case of Billy Biswas by Arun Joshi - Book Report/Review Example

The Strange Case of Billy Biswas The Strange case of Billy Biswas was one of Arun Joshi’s primal works, almost three years after his literary debut. It is also probably one of his most famous books and he has analyzed the impossibility of the merge between the East and the West. Arun Joshi is one of the postcolonial novelists who has made his point very clear with his book that the civilized is pretty much against the primitive and always will be. He has addressed the topic of polarization in this second novel of his, which of course he has done in a brilliant manner. He has taken one of the World’s largest democracies as his forte, India- to prove his point that the concept of India will always be split and irreconcilable. The differences that he has portrayed in his novel are pretty stark and they can hardly be taken in as ignorable. The story of The Strange case of Billy Biswas revolves around the narration of a friend of the protagonist and the intermittent peep into the strange life that is led by Billy Biswas, that is utterly so strange that finally leads top the disappearance of the protagonist without a trace. The story is entirely from the point of view of the friend who is a part of the Indian Civil Service and Billy Biswas being the Anthropologist who is obsessed with the unknown from the beginning of the book where he leads and active life in New York City. From the beginning it is shown that Billy Biswas has the ability and the inclination to be interested in places and people out of the ordinary; a trait that is not appreciated by his affluent father and the society that Billy hails from. This is the reason why even after his marriage to a so-called prospective and a very educated girl, Billy seems not to be satisfied since his solace lies in excursions to the forests where he seems to be searching for something out of his whim. There comes a time when Billy has lost all interest in Anthropology or any of his excursions save one-the last excursion that he undertakes- after having promised his wife not to yield to any more excursions for the rest of his life. It after this excursion that Billy never returns and is supposedly dead for the outside world. It is almost after a period of ten years when his friend finds him, completely altered in his appearance in one of the tribal areas of India. Having found him, Billy narrates to him and introduces to his friend a world completely unique and out of the world of the ordinary. Billy also explains the reasons for which he sacrificed his life in the civilized city in the first place. Billy claims to have the interest in the primitive people and their life, he also has a family in this place who is a woman utterly natural and supportive of him and ‘One’ with him and his dreams. Billy also has a son with his tribal wife. The story of Billy Biswas ends tragically with his father and wife in the civilized city getting to know of his whereabouts and with Billy accidentally being shot by one of his searchers. The story of Billy Biswas has many parameters of understanding if one has to analyze the depth in the story given. Existentialism is thus the key not in which The Strange Case of Billy Biswas revolves around. Keeping this is mind that Existentialism is basically a very modern concept which only stresses on the knowledge of the self, the analysis is basically based on the fact that man is a victim of ignorance and his innate tenderness of morality becomes selfish, which leads to a sense of blankness over the spirit that makes the world a waste and a vain show. The novelist has explored the possibilities of boundaries binding a man with existentialist qualities and boundaries like a brialliant academic career also does not stop him. Billy belongs to the creamy upper crust of Indian Elite Society. He also hold a strong primitive urge to probe into the inner decay and sterility of modernism, materialism and non-abeyance with Nature, the greatest teacher of all. The Strange Case of Billy Biswas opens with a rather unusual opening at New York with the introduction of Billy as a character of observance. There are many instances within the first chapter that shows and lures the reader into knowing more and more about the protagonist. For example; the place where Billy stays in the beginning of the novel. New York Urbane life is hardly of any importance to Billy. However, Billy stays in a rather rural area of New York and holds a lot of resistance to the urban life of New York. He says “the life in New York is rather methodical for me”. From the beginning of the novel the readers are aware that something strange is happening with the character. Billy finds Harlem, the home of the Black Americans to be an oasis of humanity in the desert of civilization of white American society. He prefers to be “human”, by which he suggests the need to live life at a more subcutaneous level. His identification with Harlem symbolizes his courage and conviction in choosing to be isolated from the common run of humanity of the civilized society where “man is drawn into the world of objects and has lost or is continuously losing“. Billy nurses his preference for jazz music which is symbolic of his tribal aspiration for freedom and liberalization from shackling tendencies imposed by the civilized society. He has always been critical of the so-called civilized society for possessing “the social orders difficult know nothing until we are in them”. Billy Marriage suffers consequently due to the failing relationship between Billy and his wife Meena, mainly because his individuality is being infringed upon. Meena is a typical Indian wife who does not indulge in risk-taking nor does she believe in anything that is closely primitive and is unconcerned about the world but her own. Billy soon realizes that Meena has not much to offer him just like he has not much to offer to Meena. Thus declaring his marriage as a sham. Meena believes that the sanctity as well as the respectability of her marriage must be keep high at all costs. Billy finds that Meena is of a different temperament and so is he. His marriage soon falls apart very painstakingly especially since he believes that his heroic Individuality is being cast upon. Billy search for his existence is the main reason why is led to be his estrangement from society and this can be seen by the beginning of the fifth chapter to the book. The society is shown to not understand the forces of his nature and thus casting him out although not entirely, it is yet for Billy to cast the net and cut his ties with the existing society. Thus the hero emerges as a prophet figure who goes beyond his time and place on the strength of his convictions. Billy records his contempt for civilization whose raison d' etre is making and spending of money. In this dispensation, he is to feel that he is “swiftly losing grip on life” (98). Deep in the forests, life for Billy is more authentic without the affectation of order, sophistication and decorum. The tribal are people who live a life where there is no schism between the precepts and the practice of life. The forest which is the antithesis of civilization, by appearing to have its own order, an essence, and a purpose, becomes for Billy his destination where he will make his tryst with destiny. His waiting for Bilasia, a tribal girl “a dark unresisting energy” (Chingre 156) to return from the forest is epiphanic moment when he is able to see clearly the synthesis emerging out of the intellectual evaluation of the civilized society and the tribal society. When Billy meets Bilasia and becomes the possessor of “the essence of life [which] …can be communicated only in the language of visions” (142), his metamorphosis becomes complete. One of the most important dialectical operations in the novel is the opposition between the “civilized” city and the “uncivilized” jungle. What such a dialectical argument foregrounds towards the end of the novel is the subject of fertility. Regeneration, perpetuation of the generation and the transmission of vital elements through a continuous flow of life are defining aspects of life in the jungle. The Savage society of the jungle privileges fertility over the functional convenience of the city. Billy, as the City-Dweller, is experiencing the first intimations of real fertility through his contact with the forest, of which Bilasia is an essential representative and the element itself. He makes an observation about seeing in the darkness. Naturally, he sees nothing. Billy realizes the vacuousness of the city-lights which have offered him only phantoms and shadows. In contrast, the darkness of the forest, appearing to show nothing, lights up the vacancy of his heart. Thus Joshi's novel The Strange Case of Billy Biswas, which Mathur and Rai observe, represents “the universal myth of the primitive in the heart of man ever alienating him from the superficial and polished qualities of modern civilization. The quality of involvement takes a spiritual and metaphysical dimension from the merely social. The novel confirms Joshi's place among the Indian novelists through the journey of Billy Biswas. There are various reasons that Joshi portrays in this novel to bring about the notion of existentialism in the character of Billy Biswas. His basic claim being that although there may be a binary on which society functions, however, primitivism needn’t be the subversive binary. Joshi has certainly made this point clear in this novel in a very diligent and lucid manner. The technique that he uses in this particular novel is that of conversations and internal monologues. This occurs usually between Billy and his friend or with his friend himself. In fact the friend makes it very clear somewhere in the middle of the novel that this story is about Billy Biswas and his not about him, especially since Billy was getting sidelined in the novel. The friend has maintained a very close call and a intimate relationship with Billy and in most cases uses the technique of foretelling events to increase the curiosity of the reader in the novel. Billy’s quest for individualism ends when he meets his kith and kin in one of his excursions that last him a decade. The metamorphosis of Billy is linchpin to his characteristics; in fact they are rather subtle yet strong especially since the readers too are kept away from his life for almost for a period of ten years. The transformation involves loss of weight, the need to eat what is available. Carefreeness that comes over like a typhoon over Billy and that which is almost natural to him without a doubt. While the rest of the world thinks that Billy is dead, his transformation over a period of five days as he left for his excursion is shown with a lot of graphics and a considerable amount of maturity. This book by Arun Joshi is certainly epitomic when it comes to understanding the nitty-gritties of a person’s personal and individual thought process. The book is certainly out of the ordinary and hardly carries and jargon or stylistic reviews as in the case of most theoretical books. It is a simple novel that revolves around the being of a man, a man who thrives for seclusion, simplicity and learning throughout his life. There are times when he has to compromise on this kind of a lifestyle and continue living the way society wants him to. Billy even does what is required of him, just to give happiness to the people around him. People like his wife father and mother and society on the whole. Consequently, he puts on weight and loses all interest in life and becomes an ordinary professor of anthropology and lives his life like that. The change occurs in him when he sets out for his last excursion as he had promised to his wife and the book is entirely about this transformation that Billy sees in himself and the price that he has to pay for it towards the end of the book. Billy is finally shot by one of the policemen who are hired to look for him and to trace him in his jungle where he lives. These policemen re-hired by his father who on finding about Billy’s whereabouts is unable to contain himself and immediately sends a search squad without once considering as to whether Billy wants to be found or not. Hence, during the struggle to run away and also the fear to go back to a society which he has to wriggle himself free off, finds Billy dead towards the end of the Novel. The Strange Case of Billy Biswas creates an understanding in the general understanding of how the sense of ‘hyper individualism’ works and brings about a development in the study of the human and his mind. The most remarkable feature of the novel is that although this novel is completely narrated in the third person the intervention of the first person is almost negligible. This is the reason why it is a good post colonial book to read and increase the concept of man with relation to himself. The fact that Billy could choose the environment that he was to spend the rest of his life in was remarkable. Usually we are prone to adjusting to the kind of environment that we are born in and consequently die in. in the case of Billy this was not so, he seems like a rather radical at the same time a very understanding person to know what is right and wrong for him. He was patient with his wife and father to give him space but when that space was infringed upon he wasted no time in giving it all up for the sake of his own sanity and look towards building a new home, and life. On reading Billy Biswas one is face with a couple of questions, to what extent does one call oneself individualistic and how much can one do to preserve it. Billy Biswas’s story is merely and analogy to a larger picture. It is a parody to the society we live in. it is an opposition to structure and categories. It is a rebellion of the sensibilities as opposed to herd-mentality. This is the reason why most of the book takes place in the forests of India, making us come in terms with the realities of the fight for survival rather than the show and jazz of the Cosmopolitan. Most of the characters that are introduced in the book are the tribal of India and are completely unheard of. Some of the mannerisms seem peculiar but they are completely in tune to Billy’s senses, since he is the one who has accepted and imbibed them perfectly. References 1. Joshi, Arun. The Foreigner. New Delhi: Orient Paperbacks, 1993. 2. The Strange Case of Billy Biswas. New Delhi: Orient Paperbacks, 1971. 3. Krishnamurti.J. Talks and Dialogues J.Krishnamurti. New York: Avon Books, 1970. 4. Piciucco, Pier Paolo. "The Strange Case of Billy Biswas". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 05 February 2004 [http://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=14902, accessed 08 August 2011.] Read More