The Elephanta Suite is a collection of three novellas that feature Westerners out of their league in India. As an American living in India, I suspect anyone who’s had this experience will recognize instances in which—for good, bad, or a mix of each—one is swallowed whole by some feature of India that one couldn’t possibly have anticipated. The novellas aren’t interconnected, except by way of the themes that run through them and Theroux’s trademark use of what I’ll call—for lack of a better term—cameo references. These aren’t his own cameo appearances in the book—as he’s also been known to do—but rather minor instances in which the lives of the characters in one story brush up against those in another. The first of the novellas is called “Monkey Hill,” and it features a tourist couple who are staying at an upscale resort that’s near a town with a large Hanuman temple. (Hanuman is the “monkey-god” of Hinduism, a popular deity with a monkey-like face and a man-like body who features prominently in the epic entitled Ramayana.) The resort grounds also have monkeys, and so there are two potential meanings to the title. Like many wealthy travelers to India, the couple isn’t really experiencing India—though, like the characters in the other stories, they end up doing so in a major way by the story’s end. Experiencing India in unexpected ways is a central theme across the three works. The couple’s only real experience of India comes through each of their respective dalliances with locals that are carried out unbeknownst to the other. (I would point out that characters who aren’t particularly high in moral fiber are another prevailing theme across these stories, but really such characters are a hallmark of Theroux’s writing in general.) “The Gateway of India,” as Bombay visitors might suspect, is set in that city and the waterfront attraction features prominently in the novel. The lead in this story is a business traveler who’s staying in the famous Taj Hotel in Mumbai. (The hotel overlooks the Gateway and was allegedly built by a pissed off J.N. Tata who was irate because, as a Parsi, he wasn’t allowed to stay in any of the upscale hotels because they exclusively catered to Westerners. As a “screw-you,” he built the most elegant hotel in the country at the time.) At the story’s beginning, our business traveler is a caricature of business travelers to India. He’s too scared to eat or drink anything that isn’t from a five-star hotel—and even then he’s wary. He’s filled with disgust whenever he rides through town or interacts with locals in the street. By turns, he’s transformed over the course of the story. Like the couple in “Monkey Hill” his introduction to the real India comes from a sexual liaison with a native. That said, this story features the most positive character transformation of the three stories. This is the one “feel-good” transformation of the three. The final novella, entitled “The Elephant God,” begins in Mumbai, but is largely set in Bangalore. This story features yet another class of traveler to India--the backpacker. This lead is a young woman who is traveling on a tight budget while staying at an ashram. Beginning the story in Mumbai allows the reader to see how the backpacker loses her traveling companion, an issue that will prove crucial to the story’s resolution. As one might expect of a backpacker, our protagonist has had a truer experience of India than the wealthy protagonists of the other stories. She knows a little of the indigenous culture and how real people behave faced with real world events. In fact, there’s an intriguing piece of the story line that involves a job she gets teaching English to employees of a call center for a multinational corporation. [It should strain credulity that she’d be able to get a job on the visa she would have, but this is India.] At any rate, she begins to realize that—by teaching the call-takers to speak to American customers in a way that will make Americans comfortable—she’s essentially turning them rude—all their endearing deferential mannerisms fade in the face of her teachings. She feels bad about this. The titular reference involves an elephant and its handler (mahout) that she befriends. (In two years living in Bangalore, I’ve not seen an elephant living inside the city, but I can’t say that I found this aspect of the story unbelievable. I have seen, for example, the equally improbable camel or two.) The elephant isn’t a major feature of the story until the climax, though visits do recur.I enjoyed these stories and would recommend The Elephanta Suite--particularly for any Westerners who have spent, or plan to spend, substantial time in India. The book may not surprise or inform such readers, but it’ll probably resonate with them.
Although Theroux paints a very negative picture of India, it is a very well written book and it kept me attentive all the way to the finish- 345 pages! I think that is why I gave it 5 stars. Paul Theroux, in dealing with his impressions of India, is also dealing with a very complex, troubled and elusive India: an India that cannot be summed up in a few lines or the scope of a novel, one that is beyond good and evil, but possibly negative and tragic. Its true nature always eluding the Westerner,especially the American, in trying to figure out India after being attracted by its many lures, will only find out that it is a smelly, monstrous, possibly dangerous, and ultimately a grotesque parody of a English speaking nation like the USA or Britain. Indians were not only poor and full of guile, but also disingenuous and relentless in their bids to exploit the white man! Sincerity, friendliness and a selfless manner of conducting oneself, was beyond an Indian individual. The Indians will always try to take advantage of you if you happen to be white and American- "People offering favors in India always were in need of greater favors. No charity ever, there was only salesmanship", Theroux blurts out at some point. A great many observations are perhaps true, not only of India, but also generally of the Indian sub-continent (Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri-Lanka). Poverty, ages of colonial rule, sharply pronounced class divisions and corruption have left the people without self-respect, obsequious, opportunistic, corrupt and often thoroughly hypocritical. What makes all these rather funny is the excessive optimism and fool-hardy confidence that educated citizens of these countries often exhibit- results of uneven economic growth, commercial success stories and a small number of rich oligarchs who exhibit their new found wealth in the languages of confidence, conspicuous consumption and media presence.
What do You think about The Elephanta Suite (2007)?
The Elephanta Suite is a triptych of three lightly interrelated novellas that riff on the theme of the foreign visitor--in this case American--overwhelmed and transformed (not always for the better) by the experience of visiting, living in, and traveling in India. It's a very fine collection, written with strength, insight,and humor..Thematically, of course, this is a very old trope: it's culture shock, it's 'India is older and wiser than we are,' it's the freedom to descend into one's one primitive nature, unobserved by friends and relatives. But Theroux applies this trope expertly. Each novella moves at the pace of a longer work,slowly, sometimes to the point of repetition (India is clamorous, the dust is choking and fiery, the smells overwhelm, the native cunning undermines all foreign judgment) but achieving a full sense of the principal characters, if not always their Indian antagonists (or friends, in one case.)One amusing motif is the occasional reference to how different India seems to the visitor than it is portrayed in the many-layered, comforting, family portraits offered by Indian writers in vogue in "the West" today. Hard to know who is right, but having lived abroad in many countries, I would attribute this discrepancy to the hard shell of culture seldom penetrated by the non-native...and to the self-love of the world's diverse peoples celebrating themselves in their art. The only place I've ever visited where the people consider their cuisine defective, for example, is Catalunya in Spain. "We eat badly," one Barcelona journalist told me once. And a politician said that the paella for which Catalunya is well-known around the world is really a dreadful mishmash that shouldn't be served in decent restaurants. Otherwise, people will tell you that their questionable food, miserable weather, and peculiar family customs (dinner together every Sunday for decades, to be released only by death) are just wonderful...the best. And so we receive the account Indian writers give of themselves: a Merchant-Ivory version of a reality that clearly fascinates Theroux, but with reservations.I first read Theroux when I lived in Guayaquil, Ecuador in 1980. Sometimes being right about a situation (he was appalled by Guayaquil for good reason) is enough to turn a reader (me) against you. He described perfectly the rotted hell of the place, to which I added a few miserable details: the frigate birds wheeling menacingly over the Guaymas river, the iguanas scuttling in the patches of scruffy garden along the Malecon (Guayaquil's dismal promenade). After that, I didn't want to read Theroux much. Brought up bad memories.Now I'm glad he has a mellower view of India than of Ecuador (probably deserved, but I have never been to India, so I don't know) and that I picked up this new volume of novellas. It's good; I'd recommend it to just about anyone.
—Robert
I am left a little confused after finishing this book because it does different things to me. The portrayal of the characters is cliched yet it is reveals a lot about us as people. The people seem real yet seem very distant and unbelievable. Each story made me feel sad, made me feel the exaggeration that the West typically portrays in Indians, of India as a whole. Yet, the things said are all true. We lie and deceive but we also treat people as they should be treated and that is not always necessarily bad. The writing is tight and solid but a little too flowery for my mind. It's a good book and I liked it but it is still asking questions in my mind and I am not too sure the answers are very flattering.
—Ranjan Atreya
All three stories are a bit disturbing, the first two left me feeling a bit "what was that about?" The people in them weren't very interesting or likable, and I found the ending unsatisfying . I liked the third story best, Alice's experiences with her travel-mate, at the ashram and her relationship with the elephant who avenges her made for interesting reading, even if they ending was as dark as the others.Some of his descriptions are very good, but with few exceptions (the Jain, the mahout and his wife) the Indians that appear are rather unpleasant if not downright conniving and manipulative - which irritated me. Overall a dark and somewhat depressing book that I can't really say I enjoyed reading.
—Phredric
