Dom Moraes and his Travels’ Tales: 'Gone Away'

Dr. P. C. Singh writes an exhaustive review of 'Gone Away: An Indian Journal' by Dom Moraes. He deems his travels' tales - filled with interesting encounters and lesser known facts about lives of ‘good and greats’.

This travelogue is nothing but the first cousin of autobiography and memoire though it has altogether different genre and test. Megasthenes’ Indica, Marco Polo’s ‘The Travels of Marcopolo’, Al Biruni’s ‘Taqee1-e-Hind’ and Ibn Batuta’s ‘The Travels’ are very well known. The Chinese travellers Hiuen Tsang and Fa-Hien are familiar names to Indian students from the beginning. There have been many more. ‘Gone Away’ by Dom Moraes, published in the year 2020 is a travel account of our times and covers contemporary history. It is extremely illuminating and insightful as it tells us the story of his stay at Oxford in England, in a number of metropolis of India, Kathmandu and Sikkim. By revealing hitherto widely unknown facts of life related to a number of ‘good and greats’ of his time-ours too - he will compel you to accept his uniquely great literary style and you will feel like reading his other writings as well.

Dom Moraes has been a distinguished poet, an extraordinary journalist and essayist. Dom who was born in India – Mumbai - has been recipient of a prestigious Hawthornden prize meant for a work of imagination, established for the young writers under the age of forty-one. Internationally acclaimed writer like V.S Naipaul got this award much later. Addressed by his nick name Dommie at Oxford by his friends such as Ved Mehta, Dom was the son of the legendry editor, Frank Moraes. He got into Jesus college, Oxford with the help of his father in 1955 and became a Bachler of Arts of Oxford University in 1959. However, instead of getting the degree for his uncalled for activities, he would have been expelled - had he not been awarded with Howthornden Prize before well on time, that is, in 1958 when he was not even twenty. This great achievement compelled the authorities to change its attitude.

By the time he came back to Mumbai - the city of his birth, whom he calls ‘the worst place in the world - to pursue the work of writing’ in 1959, he had become big. However, feeling nostalgic about London, he wanted to meet someone. This someone was Mulk Raj Anand whom he knew from childhood as his father’s friend and had met in London on a couple of times. Mulk Raj Anand was the first Indian writer who was accepted and acknowledged in English circle and had earned the friendship of E.M. Forster and Virginia Woolf. While in Delhi he meets his old friend from Oxford, Ved Mehta. Mehta ‘has been completely blind since the age of three’ and was settled in USA where he wrote a memorable autobiography and would write for New Yorker quite regularly. When Mehta died last year, this internationally well-known magazine wrote an obituary entitled “Remembering the Longtime New Yorker Writer Ved Mehta”.

It is in Delhi where Dom hears the news-cum-allegation of the army and differences between then Defence Minister V.K. Krishna Menon and the commander in chief General Thimaayya. The Indian Army did not appreciate the way Menon was promoting his loyal leftist officers by-passing the seniors when the Chinese were threatening at the border. The poor Mr. Menon who earned name in London by organizing Indian Nationalists under ‘India League’, earned the permanent admiration of Nehru throughout his life was declared culprit for our humiliating defeat at the cross-border war with China in 1962 and following that he had to resign. Many would remember that Menon as secretary to then Home Minster Sardar Patel, played a crucial role in incorporating several tiny princely states including Hyderabad into the Union of India. However, the credit goes to Dom’s Gone Away for informing us that Menon in the company of Mulk Raj Anand, also happened to be the few Indians who participated in support of the Republicans in the Historic Spanish Civil War against Franco regime. Spanish Civil War had attracted a number of intellectual activists from different parts of the world such as George Orwell, Andre Malraux, Octivio Paz and Pablo Neruda who also wrote poems on the war.

Dom and Ved together visit Khushwant Singh whom they find enjoying India unlike Mulk Raj Anand who had complaints about Mumbai where it was difficult for a writer to live in the absence of good company of writers which was rare. The writer recalls his meeting with the great scholar of classical Indian dance and music Narayana Menon at his home where at the insistence of his little daughter daughter Mala, father and great mastero played Veena. Those who don’t know much about Menon may be referred to a detailed profile of his in Open Magazine entitled “The Wisdom and Passion of V.K. Narayanan Menon”(10 June/2020). Their discussion included ‘Tension at India-China border’ and associated news and rumours related to Krishna Menon , Nehru and gossip of Army and expected dropping of tented minister in Nehru’s cabinet. The talk also turned to the author of Autobiograohy of An Unknown Indian. Nirad C. Chaudhuri was in news those days for his recently published book A passage to England ‘which were getting excellent reviews in English press’. The little Bengali babu who settled and died in Oxford had never visited England before and was well-known as a great admirer of superior and sophisticated English way of life, somewhat understood as biased and lopsided by many at home. That is why one of the reviewer is reported to have remarked “Chaudhuri was like a dog trained to wag its tail when his master said ‘England’”(p.39) and finally after lots of hazards, Dom and Ved meet Chaudhuri at his Delhi residence near Kashmiri Gate where Nirad babu ridicules and dismisses E.M. Forster's A passage to India by calling ‘his worst novel’.

At a drink with Narayanan at his home, where the intellectual host tells Domy the revealing story of M.F. Husain who was staying with him those days “Husain came to Bombay as a young man. He was penniless and had to sleep in the street: to earn a little money he painted people’s names on suitcases and umbrellas.” Gone Away also comes up with their unbelievable story of what happened in Nepal where the host left no stone unturned to entertain them and make them feel happy. After heavily boozed at night when the author and his friend Ved came back to their room and were about to go to bed Dommie heard Ved” struggling to through the mosquito-curtain and then came a yell of horror” and when the light was put on, they found two naked pretty girls, one each on their bed. When enquired, they were told that it was meant for their entertainment. Is it not amazing?

In Kolkata of today which Dom preferred to term spider city, he enjoyed the company of a couples of poets led by Budhadeva Bose for whom as for every bong Tagore is the end of the world who “was a great man. He invented new meters, he refurnished the language and he was Bengali litterateur while he lived. There was Tagore: then there was nothing” Tagore is next to God for everyone, from Amartya Sen to a common Bengali fellow, Tagore photo and Ravindra Sangeet is a household name in Bengal. Commenting upon all-encompassing Tagore, the great Satyajit Ray has remarked “When after graduation I did go to Shantiniketan, it was out of deference to my mother’s wish, and much against my own inclination. I think my mother believed that proximity to Rabindranath would have a therapeutic effect on me.”(see Ray ‘s article in Rudranshu Mukherjee) The Great speeches of Modern India. Apart from Tagore, there are other common features among Bengalis which are not visible elsewhere as collectively and prominently as among them. Their love and admiration for literature and art, fish and sweets and particularly sandesh and of course Durga Pooja are well known. Ghalib was not wrong when he said that Bengalis are 100 years behind and 100 years ahead at the same time. What struck the vision of the great Urdu shayar comes to mind when through this book you come across the meeting of Dom Moraes with the great painter of India who was also a Bengali, Mr. Jamini Roy. The encounter is amazing. Read the book, you will nod.

The travels’ tales that constantly keeps you floating in the recent past also states encounters of Dom Moraes with Prime Minister Nehru facing border crisis with China, Dalai Lama who had fled to Delhi following Chinese incursion into Tibet and Jaiprakash Narayan, more popularly known as JP. Unfortunately, the author does not tell us much about his legendry father and an ultimate gentle editor except few remarks of regular gathering at home of top reporters and journalists of the world to meet and discuss with him. This travelogue introduced to the reader by Jerry Pinto has been called by author himself as An Indian Journal. So far judgement about book is concerned it is up to the readers, as rightly suggested by Pinto whether it may be called precursor of V.S. Naipaul’s India: A Wounded Civilization?