Arun JoshiExistentialism in Arun Joshi's The Last Labyrinthby Dr. Arvind M. Nawale |
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The Last Labyrinth (1981), Arun Joshi's fourth and Sahitya Akademi Award winning novel, is considered as "a new landmark in the tradition of existentialism in Indian Literature" (Pandey 2000:123). It represents an extension of the theme of his earlier novels The Foreigner, The Strange Case of Billy Biswas and The Apprentice. According to Hari Mohan Prasad it is an "articulation of the contemporary phase of dilemma of modern man who is essentially turbulent, groping through the labyrinth of life, existence and reality." (1985:85).
Before embarking upon an investigation of the existential predicament of Som Bhasker, the protagonist of The Last Labyrinth, let us first define what constitutes an existential predicament or 'existentialism'. As a modern philosophic movement, 'existentialism' deals with man's disillusionment and despair. It originated in the philosophical and literary writing of Jean Paul Sartre and Albert Camus. M. H. Abrams, in his A Glossary of Literary Terms defines it as:
a tendency to view each man as an isolated being who is cast ignominiously into an alien universe, to conceive the universe as possessing no inherent human truth, value or meaning and to represent man's life, as it moves from the nothingness which is both anguished and absurd. (1985: 86).
Existentialism, in due course, developed into a powerful revolt against reason, rationality, positivism and the traditional ways in which earlier philosophers portrayed man. Man's autonomy, assertion of his subjective self, his flouting of reason and rationality, his denial of traditional values, institutions and philosophy, his exercise of will and freedom, and his experience of the absurdity and the nothingness of life are some of the themes reflected in the writings of the exponents of existentialism.
Som Bhasker carries with him a sense of alienation, loneliness and pessimism, perceiving himself to be in a hostile world. The novel probes his turbulent inner world as a modern Hamlet whose problem is whether to become materialistic or spiritualistic.
Som, an industrialist, becomes a millionaire at the age of thirty. He is married "to an extra ordinary woman" (11) of his choice, who has borne him two children. Yet he "goofed it all up" (40) and is relentlessly driven by an indefinite hunger, as well as hunger for money, hunger for fame, hunger of the body and a hunger for some spiritual sublimity. He lives in a make-believe world of his own, alienated from the society about him.
At the beginning of the novel Som realizes that he has "become a nuisance" (10), and has been fooling around "like a clown performing before a looking glass" (10). A roaring hollowness inside his soul and "boredom and the fed-up-ness" (21) torment him constantly. At the age of thirty-five he has become "a worn-out weary man incapable of spontaneous feeling" (14). The base of Som's problem is that he is constantly chased by undefined hunger. He is always haunted by mysterious voices:
audible only to my ear, a gray cry threshed the night air. I want. I want. I want. Through the light of my days and the blackness of my nights and the disquiet of those sleepless hours beside my wife, within reach of the tranquillizers, I had sung the same strident song: I want. I want. I want. I want. (11)
All his life he has sung this song and been troubled. His trouble is multiplied not only because of "the terrible loneliness" (23) of his heart but also because of his awareness of the lack of meaning in his life. Dr Birendra Pandey observes, "He is torn by the inner contradictions and his consciousness wanders in a maze of opposite impulses. He suffers from an intense feeling of inadequacy, a feeling of rootlessness and a feeling of rudderless boat being tossed on turbulent waves." (2000:124).
Even in his school days he was upset by the futile activities of life and begged the Headmaster's wife "to explain the meaning of it all" (24). Later he becomes even more convinced that life is full of complications, "labyrinth within the labyrinth" (29), like the lanes of Banaras. He calls life "vanity of vanities" (32) which can be compared only to "meaningless flights of stairs" (34) or "a fisherman's net" (37). To him, in life "Nothing was straight forward. One was always running a hurdles race." (133).
With such a grim experience of life, he develops "a new loathing for the squalid world" (46). He is disgusted with himself and other people. He says, "It is the voids of the world, more than its objects that bother me. The voids and the empty spaces, within and without." (47). He is suffocated by such voids
His way of being engaged in keeping the minute book signifies his confrontation with the self, and helps, up to the threat of madness. Furthermore, the minute book, like his life, is unorganized and inconclusive, ending where it has begun.
Som rushes about in search of happiness and meaningfulness. "How happy I must be" he explains, "to have no problem in life" (98). But life is teeming with troubles and pains, which are all the more keenly felt by sensitive people.
The question about life and death haunts Som throughout his life. Like his father, he is vexed by the thought of death. "there was nothing I loathed more than I loathed the sight of death" (15). He wants to know it's secret.
The novel centers on Som's confrontation with the darkness of death and the void in Lal-Haveli where he has gone to buy Aftab's shares. Lal Haveli is as mysterious as the mythical world of Bhills encountered by Billy Biswas in The Strange Case of Billy Biswas.
Som is endowed with a highly intellectual and scientific mind, which is constantly caught up in a maelstrom of ideas, values, issues of philosophy and metaphysics and is troubled by it. Indira Bhutt and Suja Alexander states, "Som is like Abhimanyu in The Mahabharta who is not able to come out of "chakravyuva". Bhaskar loses himself in the chakravyuva of life and death, reality and truth, doubt and faith." (2001:70).
He finds himself groping through the labyrinth of life and death. According to Usha Bande, "Like T.S. Eliot's hollow man, Som is afraid to face reality, whether of life or death. The situation is like that of Dante's Limbo the realm of nothingness where he is trapped." (1997:156).
Som cannot find any satisfactory answer to his questions, doubts and inner voices. He "gets mentally shattered, morally degenerated and physically exhausted with dreams and insomnia" (Narasimhaiah 1981:81).
His quest for life's secret becomes hopelessly complicated because of his yearning to have the best of both the worlds - the world of matter and of spirit. His desires know no satisfaction. He says, "What I needed, perhaps, was something, somebody, somewhere in which the two worlds combined" (82).
He is "afraid of death" (74) and tries in vain to escape his fear through sex in the arms of Anuradha, Aftab's mistress. He seems to hear only the language of sex, and in each of the women he encounters he finds a different quality to meet a different need.
In his wife Geeta he finds a trust - "if discontent is my trade-mark, trust is Geeta's" (63) - that is reassuring, and in Leela Sabnis, a philosophy professor, a fusion of his urge for freedom. Leela, with her analytical mind, tries to reason with him and make him face up to reality. He enjoys her chatter, revels in it, but her prescription does not seem to help him as it implies the separation of the world of matter from that of the spirit. So he turns to Anuradha, his "Shaktis" (24), but she, too, fails to understand him. She tells him: "You don't know what you want. You don't know what is wrong and you don't know what you want." (106)
Frustrated by his failure to win Anuradha, Som goes to Europe with his wife Geeta, hoping to overcome his obsession. He is, however, unable to forget Anuradha and his mounting passion for her makes him impotent, making Geeta miserable. He cuts short his holiday and rushes back to India. K. M. Chander points out Som's discontented state of mind. According to him, "Som was a kind of modern 'Trishanku' belonging neither here nor there." (1987:58)
Som's approach to life is somewhere close to the scientific methods of experimentation and validation. With this approach, however, he does not get anywhere near the secret of life. In his depression he even plans to visit temples every evening. He begins, ultimately, to nurture self-pity, and like one who has been completely vanquished by life, utters the terrible death wish. "A peaceful death" (164) that is all he wants for he is mercilessly torn apart by his doubts.
Som is eaten up by his own "strange mad thoughts" (223) and incapable of paying adequate heed to the world and its normal demands. His flourishing business is reduced to "a big mess" (223).
Finally, he tries to commit suicide. "His unbridled sensuality and individual pride lead him only to despair and meaninglessness in life, and hence to the impulsive decision to commit suicide" (Verma 2001:209). When he tries to kill himself, he is stopped by Geeta. We are given to believe that the unquestioning trust of his intelligent and understanding wife will restore peace to his life.
The Last Labyrinth, thus, delineates the existential despair in the psyche of its neurotic protagonist Som Bhasker.
Endnotes and references
Abram, M. H. 1985. A Glossary of Literary Terms. Delhi: Macmillan India Ltd.
Bande, Usha. 1997. "Symbolism in Arun Joshi's The Last Labyrinth". In Srivastava: 150-162.
Bhatt, Indira and Alexander, Suja. 2001. Arun Joshi's Fiction: A Critique. New Delhi: Creative Books.
Chadar, K. M. 1987. "The Quest For Faith In Arun Joshi's The Last Labyrinth". In Sinha and Sinha: 56-62.
Joshi, Arun. 1971. The Strange Case of Billy Biswas. New Delhi: Orient Paperbacks.
___. 1981. The Last Labyrinth. New Delhi: Orient Paperbacks.
Narasimhaiah, Sanjay. 1981. "Arun Joshi: The Last Labyrinth." The Literacy Criterion XVI (November): 81-89.
Pandey, Birendra. 2000. The Novels of Arun Joshi: A Critical Evaluation: New Delhi: Atlantic Publishers and Distributors.
Prasad, Hari Mohan. 1985. Arun Joshi. New Delhi: Arnold Heinemann.
Sinha, Ravi Nandan and Sinha, R. K. 1987. Editors. The Indian Novel in English: Essays in Criticism. Ranchi: Ankrit Publishers.
Srivastava, Ramesh K. 1997. Symbolism in Indian Fiction in English. Jalandhar: ABS Publications.
Verma, K. D. 2001a. The Indian Imagination; Critical Essays on Indian Writing in English. Delhi: Macmillan India Ltd.
© Dr. Arvind M. Nawale, March 2009
Head, Dept. of English, Shivaji College, Udgir, Dist: Latur (M.S.), India
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