View of PORTRAYAL OF TRIBES AND MODERNITY IN THE STRANGE CASE OF BILLY BISWAS BY ARUN JOSHI

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Vol. 05,Special Issue 02, (IC-IRSHEM-2020) February 2020, Available Online: www.ajeee.co.in/index.php/AJEEE

PORTRAYAL OF TRIBES AND MODERNITY IN THE STRANGE CASE OF BILLY BISWAS BY ARUN JOSHI

Monika, Ph.D, Research Scholar, SKD University, Hanumangarh, (Rajasthan)

Abstract:- Arun Joshi reveals conflicts between two different societies through his fiction.

One society is full of worldly ambition, glamour and miles away from Nature while the other is live in the lap of the Nature; that is considered at the bottom in the hierarchy of the modern society. First is driven by the modernistic apparatus like officers, police, courts, etc.

Tribal societies have been driven by their own people like- Dhunia and other tribal people.

They give respect to their chief person. They are exploited from the materialistic people.

They worship Natural resources like their God and Goddess, on the other hand, urban materialistic world thinks Nature as a resource to be exploited. Here we can see the wide difference between thinking of the modern and tribal. All tribal, convinces that they are the pupil of mother „Nature.‟ The Natural resources are costless for them. Although modern are assailant to them. This paper focuses on the the strangeness of Billy Biswas, the central character of the novel. He faces the socio-cultural milieu of conflicting realities.

Keywords:- Conflicts, Ambition, Apparatus, Tribal, Urban, Worship, Assailant.

1. INTRODUCTION

Arun Joshi (1939-1993) a well-known Indian name in Indo –English fiction is known for his novels The Strange Case of Billy Biswas and The Apprentice. He won the Sahitya Akademi Award for his novel The Last Labyrinth in 1982. His novels bear contemporary characters those are urban, English speaking and disturbed by their own or social conflict. Through his novels, Joshi tries to depict the conflicted structure of the human mind and soul. It will help in better understanding of the world and also of the individual. The conflict between the human soul and his environment becomes a problem for the existence; here we can see the clash between various cultures and social values primitive, modern, tribal and man himself also etc.

In the maiden novel, The Foreigner (1968), Joshi outlines the story of a young man, Surinder Oberoi, after having spent a decade in an alien environment like America, London, Boston, Nairobi, Kenya etc. being away from home and native culture, across many difficulties. The difficulties change just as their nature, from general to cultural, material to official; all difficulties emerged due to a lack of entrance and basically target on discrimination. Here Sindi faces various types of modern problems like-identity crisis and cultural conflict also, he feels rootless or homeless and alienated from everywhere. Joshi portrays the young and sensitive mind that is regularly tortured by his rootlessness, conflict and cultural values.

Sindi presents the modern man of the twentieth century who is confronting psychological and cultural problems. A man who sees himself as a stranger wherever he lives or goes, in Kenya, in England, USA and in India where he finally settles

The novels of Arun Joshi depict modern man as hanging between melancholy and fantasy.

The characters in his novels are apt to display the emptiness and worthlessness of modern civilized society. The novelist presents the real picture of the modern civilized society that is full of emptiness, exaggeration and arrogance. The hollowness, worthlessness, vacantness, loneliness, alienation and fragmentation are the salient features of modern humanity.

Joshi‟s novels are dominant inscription of complex, artificial, cynical and cultivated modern society. Here human have no respect for Nature and its sources.

The Strange Case of Billy Biswas (1971) the second novel of Joshi express the anguish of sensitive individuals continually tortured by their spiritual up rootedness, clash and confusion of values generated by the materialistic, self-centered and corrupt society. He combines the normal and the abnormal, the ordinary and the extraordinary, illusion and reality, resignation and desire which friction shoulders with one another. This novel gives attention on close knowledge of natural history and its alliance with the modernity and tribal culture.

On the other hand, the central character of the novel Billy Biswas hears the voice of his soul; he doesn‟t like modern double faced people and their modern manners of standard living. He wants to live in the lap of Nature, return to tribes and live with them. He thinks

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that nature is the perfect reachable option for human beings, if authentic harmony and closeness is to be wanted. Billy loves the Nature and natural people who live in tribes with their only face not fake. Tribal people have no falseness, double faced, arrogance and hypocrisy etc like modernity. Modernity affects his life much and it becomes very difficult for him.

Billy Biswas intensively wishes that he live with his real identity in the most innocent primitive tribal environment. Billy fails to accept the modern paradigm of life. It is very essential that we understand the real and right perspective in life. Life of human being is like a babble and if once we astray from our path, it leads us towards decay and we have to pay a heavy price for it.It is Joshi‟s experimentation with the moments of the critical situations of human life to study the human predicament. Joshi has recorded modern man‟s miseries and agonies in his writings. He portrayed the condition of contemporary society, and framed the collapse of old values, absurd world and meaninglessness of life. He noticed contemporary man in search of a path which leads towards a meaningful life.

Today‟s man is alone while he always covers with people; actually his soul is alone and alienated. He hears only the voice of his false and worldly ambition rather than soul;

which always craves for peace and satisfaction. He tries to find comfort in MONEY and fake friends and more worldly things. This type of happiness is hollow and empty; but he always tries to earn more and more money from any type. He ignores the real voice of his soul and hears the worldly people; those are thinking always about money. In the modern society,

„money‟ becomes the status symbol; there is no need of peace and satisfaction which are real necessities of any human. It is ironical, that men has completely forgotten the authentic needs of his soul, and always remember the necessities of his body.

On the other hand, tribal people give preference to the peace and satisfaction, which are real necessities of human. Tribes have no believe in artificiality and other worldly ambition. They try to satisfy their wishes and needs in the criteria of Nature and its contents. They have limited needs not like modern people those always cry for money. Most of they used natural things to eat and wear. If they love anyone; with whole heart and help him without selfishness and hesitation. While the modern man full of selfishness, he loves only with money not any human, but they pretend very well to show that they are well wisher but in the real situation they becomes happy if they see anyone is in grief or pain.

In the modern society man without money has no existence. He is considered useless and idle by the money made people. There is only chaos, confusion anarchy in social life. Men do not realize their duty and responsibility towards others. This notion reflects in all his novels. His invented creation is unveiling a world where today‟s man is confronted by the self and raises the questions of his survival. Joshi sensitively carve the modern man‟s inside dispute like- quest for self-identity restlessness, alienation, detachment and, existential dilemma, in the present modern and selfish world.

His novels are manifestation of modernity and individual‟s perplexity (difficult situation) the in detached and ambiguous world. Modernity is full of illusion, hypocrisy and here one principle is used- Pragmatism (uses and throw). Joshi was worried to see the turbulent conditions of the society. Through the struggles of his protagonists Joshi aims to present a solution to the society to rescue from the dangerous circle of rapid industrialization and to get a worth and valuable society. The modern world is dominated by-mistrust, hoodwink, and exploitation etc. The central character, Bimal Biswas widely recognized as Billy.

He always feels wretched from a sense of indifference and remoteness about the people around him. He wants to get diversion from the modernity. Billy had completed his PhD in anthropology from America. When he is in America, he alienated from the materialistic modern culture and civilized society. From his innermost, he likes to live with the tribal people in their primitive culture and tribes. Romi Sahai; the collector friend of Billy is also the describer of the story. The novel presents a strong bond of two Indian students in a foreign. Romi meets Billy while he fiercely searching for a room. Billy offers him to share his lodging with Romi, the living area is one of the worst slums of the New York City.

Romi wonders when he saw upper class Billy living in Harlem which is much too civilized for him more than modernity. In the initiation, of the novel Romi tells about Billy who belongs to the upper class of Indian society. Here Joshi portrayed Billy as a hero who always aware about his innermost and real self in the atmosphere of modernity and western

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culture. His awareness towards inside makes his personality strange and different from the surfacial realityof life. He presents the predicament of strange personality; who never accept his home in the modern materialistic society. Here we can see the severe journey of Billy from modern to tribal, alienation to affirmation and detachment to attachment.

Billy confronts the difficulty of the emptyness, desert and modern complex society and tries to find the harmony in the lap of the Nature. According to him modern people are money minded, they are always thinking about earning and spending money. This money mindedness of the modern people paves the way to their decay and due to this; Billy doesn‟t want to accept the false value of modernity. He wants to live a lively not phony and monotonous life. So, he decides to desert the phony and barren society. The life of tribes always attracts him; the life of hills, vallays, mountains is ideal world for him and he reminds his tour of Bhuwneshwer when he was child.

A look inward into his character gives the impression that he is fond of the primitive world since his early childhood. He visited Bhubaneswar and Konark at the age of fourteen.

His inner urge to live like a primitive man in a primitive world is made evident at fourteen years, when he talks about getting intimations of his primitive self from the moment he emerged from the railway station: “It was as though a slumbering part of me had suddenly come awake” (89). He admits that at that time he could not analyze his feelings properly: “I could not figure out what excited or troubled me unless it was a sudden interest in my own identity.

Who was I? Where had I come from? Where was I going?”(89) He rejects the hollow and hypocrite society of metropolitan cities like- Delhi. The very epigraph of the novel is derived from Arnold‟s Thyrsis, It irked him to be here, he could not rest (Line no 41) depicts the essence of the novel. Here Billy is similar Arnold‟s Scholar Gipsy, who wants real peace and seeks shelter in tribes, near the Nature. The first part of the novel implants the character of Billy his deprivation and vain neighbouring, making his escape trusty and valid. So, his determination to leave the hollow materialistic civilized world is not a decision of a single moment. He is from the “upper crust Indian society” (9) makes him lonely and strange.

His grandfather had been the Prime minister of the well known Princely state in Orissa, his father is a Judge in the Supreme Court. Yet, he dislikes the life of civilized culture and modern society, his case becomes strange because he is torn between the tribal and modern. Billy thinks that modernity is full of emptiness and egocentric, “What got me

… the sense of values. I don‟t think I have ever met a more pompous, a more mixed-up lot of people. Artistically, they were dry as dust. Intellectually, they could not better than mechanically mouth ideas …” (128). So, in this type of environment, Billy finds himself outsider and misfit in civilized society and tries to find out the place where he could fit in and feel like at home.

Due to this mystical urge, he finds himself itching to be back in India. He has completed his PhD in Anthropology and joins as a lecturer at Delhi University. Billy returns to India and he saw that the people are the same everywhere- hypocrite, intellectually barren and artistically dry. Periodically Billy laments on deceitfulness and dishonesty of the world. He has no power to suppress the voice of his soul but he does not tolerate the saying of his friend once in a picnic party he say that, “the banjaras are thieves and their wives are whores” (121). This remark of his friend moves his faith and he prepares to marry Meena.

Meena Chaterjee is modern, money minded girl; who always run behind the glamorous and worldly things.

She doesn‟t try to understand the feeling of Billy, she never agrees on his any point and always talks about money. She wife doesn‟t want anything except money and status and never provides him comfort in his search for inner. On the other hand, Billy is totally indifferent towards earning and spending money, he never minds the value of money and for Meena money is the essence of the world and all types of happiness. She can‟t imagine of her existence without money. So, their thinking is not combined and they never agree from one another. Soon, Billy realizes that this marriage is his blunder mistake and it totally paves the way to his complete detachment and isolation from his family and his own self.

He is completely fed-up from this modernity, his hatred attitude towards modern civilized world can be seen in the letters that he wrote to his Swedish friend Tuula some fragments of his letters are brought light on his thoughts that he has towards the modern,

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cultured and civilized people: I see a room full of finely dressed men and women seated on dowry sofas and while I am looking at them under my very nose, they turn into a kennel of dogs yawning (their large teeth showing) or snuggling against each other or holding whiskey glasses in their furred paws (69). Billy is not satisfied and happy with his family because he dislikes commercial people who always talks about wealth.

He longs for permanent peace and contentment, but it is not possible in the neighbouring in which he lives. The letters shows the glimpse of his mental agonies that always confronting with himself and his longing for tribal or primitive world where he realizes the real meaning of life. He wants mental relief and get rid from the miseries of the upper class society. So, sometimes he takes anthropological expeditions to the several parts of India with his students. He takes this type of expedition to the tribal and wild areas because this gives him some relief physically and mentally.

Once he takes his student to tribal areas of Satpura Hills in Madhya Pradesh and,

“His quest for identity originates here in search of which he bids farewell to the civilization”

(Saxena 73) A remarkable change occurs in him when he reaches at Dhunia‟s hut and sees Bilasia. She gives the glimpse to him the rhythmic life of Nature not like- Meena and Rima Kaul. He thinks that she is the right creation for him to content his innermost. Now there is a conflict arise between his modernity and his soul‟s longing for, “to live with tribes and return to Nature” (self quoted).

Billy seems to explore the hidden treasure of life. He searches for his own bearings of life and death, sorrow and joy. All the elements of the Nature like flora and founa appear to be watching for him and addressing him to accompany them: Come to our primitive world that will sooner or later overcome the works of man. Come. We have waited for you…come, come, come. Why to you want to go back?...This is all there is on earth…. You thought that New York was real. You thought that New Delhi was your destination. How mistaken you have been! Mistaken and misled. Come now, come (88).

During a little time, when he seated on a rock, he feels that he undergoes a deep change. He stars compare the life of Delhi urbane society and the life of tribes of the Maikala forest. The simple life of tribes attracts Billy more than artificial environment of Delhi. As Hari Mohan Prasad says: The novel articulates…human craving for the primordial….In retreat of Mr. Billy Biswas from the modern wasteland of Delhi to the ancient Garden of Eden in Maikaka Jungle, from the smothering clutch of Meena to the primeval possessiveness of Bilasia, Purush meets Prakriti serving the two ends of evolution, outlined by sankhya, enjoyment (Bhoga) and liberation or Sansara as well as Kaivalvya (Prasad 46).

Billy thinks that real peace and pleasure he can be found only in the natural tribes rather than modernity. He gives preference to tribes and his shows his act of disappearance from the home and modernity. We can see Billy‟s motives in living with tribes in these lines:

A strange woman keeps crossing my dreams. I have seen her on the streets of Delhi, ….I have seen her buying bangles at a fair. I have seen her shadow at a tribal dance, and I have seen her, pensive and inviolable, her clothes clinging to her wet body…her face strangely luminous in the twilight….Yes, this woman keeps causing in me a fearful disturbance, the full meaning of which I have yet to understand (97).

Billy‟s mystical urge, and a compulsion which makes him to go away. C.N. Srinath observes that his, “...exit remind one in a minor way of Siddhartha‟s renunciation of wife and children in search of Enlightenment. To Billy it is movement from darkness to light”

(Srinath 122). Billy wants to spend remaining life with tribes. Bilasia and her people seem to him without any ego and they have limited needs, living very simple life. They do not bother about the time changing like modern people.

They believe in, “dancing and drinking and…love making ….”(118). They have, “no ambition none at all….” (148) and money for them like a, “ whole lot of paper”(177). Now Billy begins to play a new role as a tribal man like- priest, magician, healer; who cares tribes‟ worldly problems and spiritually troubles. Among the tribal people Billy is worshipped as God-man, he appears for them, “like rain on the parched lands, like balm on a wound” (59). After a gap of ten years Billy meets Romi in the jungle and justifies his mysterious disappearance to the irresistible urge to become a part of the primitive people.

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After this Billy keeps on visiting Romi again and again and in the meantime cures Romi‟s wife Situ‟s migraine with some herb. Romi tries to understand the mystery of the hills and admits, “Beyond the strip of land lay the jungle a dark mysterious shadow whose mystery very few Collectors had unraveled since the race of Collectors began” (77).

Lamentably, Billy‟s quest remains unfulfilled, “He has been disposed of in the only manner that a humdrum society knowing of disposing its rebels, its seers, its true lovers” (240).

Billy‟s death is also symbolic, it happens due to his contact making with the mainstream society. His first appearance is for the tribal and he is their representative, and prevents any kind of turbulence against tribes.

It is ironical, that D.C. who is in-charge of all welfare measures did not know about the tribes in his area. Billy tries to help Romi, Billy‟s disappearance is hidden until he cures Romi‟s wife disease of migraine. But the arrogance of Romi‟s wife prove very futile and dangerous for Billy, she unveils the mysterious death of Billy saying that he is live with tribal and cures her migraine; this revealed to his wife Meena and his father. They are influential people; they emphasize and pressurize the government to search out their son (Billy) in the forest.

During the search operation, unfortunately Billy is shot down by, “irresponsible fools and common criminals” (231). Romi knows the fact that Billy took the risk for tribes.

He says, “…what we had killed not a man, not even the son of a „Governor‟ but someone for whom our civilized world had no equivalent…we had killed one of the numerous man-gods of the primitive pantheon” (236). His last and dying words against his friend, “You bustards” (233), is the most remarkable remark against the modernity of the innocent tribal.

2. CONCLUSION

In the end of the novel, Billy‟s death is shows the hollow mentality of the modern people. He wants to live his life according to his wish but it was not accepted by his own family, however they accept his death normally. The statement, “I came a thousand miles to see your face, O Mountain. A thousand miles did I come to see your face” (7), declare a strong note in the very opening of the novel. It signifies nature in a state not polluted by civilization. Nature in its purity is what Billy was searching for: He leaves the smart society because he finds his affirmation of the essence of human existence in the primitive life and makes a concerted effort to join another world away from this civilization (Dwivedi, 57).

Joshi points to the modern man the materialistic urge to gain wealth, which had lead man to forget his own heritage.

The primitive people living in the hills and forests sustain their life without spoiling the flora and fauna he created such strange natured Billy to reveal the power of nature. So, this novel gives the beautiful glimpse of the tribes. It celebrates the attractive simplicity and an authentic life of tribes. Billy‟s second life or tribal life is described by himself; it is remarkable and gives a rare original touch to life of tribes. Person versus society and person versus nature hold a deep foothold in this novel. Tribal‟s life make the novel forceful voice that force the reader to look at the lives of tribes and their philosophy of life leave behind the modernity and only materialistic progress. In the concluding lines, we can say that Joshi beautifully portrays the life modernity and tribes on his fictional canvas.

WORKS CITED

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2. Dhawan, R.K. The Fictional World of Arun Joshi. New Delhi: Classical Publishing Company, 1986. Print.

3. Dwivedi, Vachaspati. The Fictional art of Arun Joshi: An Existential Perspective. New Delhi: Atlantic Publishers and Distibuters, 2004. Print.

4. Joshi, Arun. The Foreigner. New Delhi: Orient Paperbacks,2015. Print.

5. Joshi, Arun. The Strange Case of Billy Biswas. New Delhi:Orient Paperbacks,1997. Print.

6. Kumar, Lokesh. Arun Joshi‟s Novels: His Vision of Life. New Delhi: Sarup & Sons, 2004. Print.

7. Prasad, Hari Mohan. Arun Joshi. New Delhi: Arnold Heinemann, 1985.Print.

8. Saxena, O.P. edi. Glimpse of Indo- English Fiction. Vol. lll. New Delhi: Jainous Publication, 1985. Print.

9. Srinath C.N. “The Fiction of Arun Joshi”. The Litrary Criterion 12 (1976): 2-3. 1976. Print.