‘A Passage to India’ is a novel set during the later days of British rule in India, and I had expected it to be yet another, perhaps a little less clichéd, description of Indians and the Indian way of life as seen by an Englishman writing from his country or at most, writing based on his visits to India. But I was in for a pleasant surprise. E. M. Forster describes, in a nuanced and sensitive manner, how Indians and Englishmen got along with and sometimes did not get along with each other, as they inevitably came into contact.

The plot  in ‘A Passage to India’ is far from vast. It can easily fit into a short story – Aziz, a widowed Muslim doctor, offers to take Adela Quested and her future mother-in-law Mrs. Moore on a trip to visit the well-known Marabar caves in Chandrapore. Inside one of the dark caves, Adela imagines that someone tried to attack her and assumes without doubt that her invisible attacker was Aziz. He is arrested and tried in court, but before the trial is over, Adela realizes that she was mistaken and withdraws her complaint. Yet, the damage is done and many lives have been affected irrevocably.

The author leaves unsaid, but makes amply clear, that while these are important events in the lives of a few Indians and Englishmen, they illustrate merely another instance of the impossibility of true and trusting relationships between two groups widely separated by not just geographical and cultural barriers, but also the more divisive chasm that distances the ruler from the ruled.

For instance, open-minded Englishmen such as Mr. Fielding (whom Aziz gradually starts to think of as simply Fielding) might become friendly with Indians, but their English wives can never really mentally get past the distance. For all their determination to see the “real India” and their friendly disposition towards Aziz, Adela and Mrs. Moore are never truly at home in India.

Indians in the book are not blameless either, for they hold stereotyped views of the Englishmen and English women. With the caveat that what comes out in the book is perhaps the English stereotype of what the Indian stereotype of the English is. (The book is nowhere as convoluted as the sentence you just read, so do not let my analysis dissuade you from reading it.) In short, ‘A Passage to India’ is an eminently readable story, one of the rare books that make me wish I had read them earlier.

What I like best about ‘A Passage to India’ is the way Forster narrates and implies, but never brings himself into the story. In comparison to the two other books that I happened to read recently, ‘A Case of Exploding Mangoes’ (a historical thriller based on the death of Pakistani President General Zia ul-Haq) and ‘The House of Blue Mangoes’ (a mostly lifeless account of the lives of three generations of a family based in South India), ‘A Passage to India’ is a refreshing piece of work. It is as a novel should be – the characters are so important to you that at least for the period you are with them, you fancy that you care for what happens in their lives, you want to know how things turn out for them. In this respect, the book reminded me of ‘The Mandelbaum Gate’ by Muriel Spark.

The book that I am currently reading is just as powerful. ‘The Finkler Question’ (Howard Jacobson’s Man Booker Prize winner that is witty and sympathetic in equal measure) brings up severe issues with a gravity that is as unbelievable as it is real. Because that’s often how life is, a curious mix of the comical and serious. Julian Treslove is just another guy next door till he is mugged one night on the way home, and a phrase uttered by his assailant (a phrase which he isn’t even sure he heard right) changes his outlook to life. From the outside, there is no break in the flow of his life, but mentally he is a changed man. Not impossible, I suppose.

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P.S.: With all this mention of books, it is very natural to wonder whether this consultant (yours truly) has been “on the beach” far too long. But the more pertinent question is whether this consultant has been on far too many flights…