The World According to Hsü by Bharati Mukherjee
"The World According to Hsü" by Bharati Mukherjee explores the complexities of postcolonial existence through the experiences of Graeme and Ratna Clayton, who arrive in a recently independent island-nation amid political upheaval. The couple seeks a peaceful vacation but is confronted with the realities of a revolution that disrupts their romanticized notions of escape. Graeme is preoccupied with his career ambitions, hoping to persuade Ratna to move to Toronto, while Ratna grapples with her identity and anxieties about racism in Canada, feeling alienated and caught between cultures.
The narrative, primarily from Ratna's perspective, highlights themes of division—race, class, and nationality—set against a backdrop of chaos and violence. As the couple navigates their surroundings, their denial of the escalating conflict mirrors their personal struggles. Graeme's insensitivity to Ratna's fears creates a rift in their relationship, as he remains oblivious to the impact of their environment on her mental state.
The story culminates in a poignant reflection on the consequences of expatriation and the longing for belonging, as Ratna's internal conflict intensifies against a world that seems increasingly fragmented. Ultimately, the text prompts readers to consider the intersections of personal and political turmoil, and the search for identity in an unpredictable landscape.
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The World According to Hsü by Bharati Mukherjee
First published: 1983
Type of plot: Social realism
Time of work: 1978
Locale: An island-nation off the southeastern coast of Africa
Principal Characters:
Ratna Clayton , a thirty-three-year-old journalistGraeme , her husband, a thirty-five-year-old professor of psychology in MontrealCamille Lioon , the travel agent, a refugee from BeirutJustin , the taxi driver, a native of the island
The Story
From Montreal, the Claytons arrive in the wintry June of a recently independent island-nation—perhaps the Malagasy Republic but unnamed and thus serving as a symbol for postcolonial states where coups come with "seasonal regularity"—for what they hope will be a peaceful vacation. They are greeted by an unexpected, unreported revolution in progress; the vaguely leftist government downplays the insurgent "melancholy students and ungenerous bureaucrats" of the neocolonial movement, but the Claytons do not panic, presuming to remain aloof from the rioting, looting, and killing. Beneath their romantic illusions of an escape to an "old-fashioned" paradisiacal retreat, both of them harbor undisclosed motives in taking the trip. Graeme Clayton, while ostensibly wishing to view the Southern Cross, a constellation not visible in Canada, actually hopes to persuade his wife to move to Toronto so that he can accept the chair of the Personality Growth Department, an offer that he has already accepted. Ratna Clayton plans, instead of lolling on the beach, "to take stock" of her previously "manageably capricious" life before the six-month debate over the move.
The narrator, who reflects Ratna's point of view, shows a chaotic world, riddled with divisions of race, religion, class, nationality, and language in seemingly perpetual conflict. Considering Graeme's tendency to lecture at every opportunity, Ratna imagines his clinical account once they return to Montreal; she anticipates that Graeme's colleague, Freddie McLaren, will relate the coup to Catholic-Protestant fighting in Belfast, to religious and political factional strife in Beirut, and to the French separatist movement in Quebec. She recalls their travel agent Camille Lioon's warning against a stop in Saudi Arabia, because of Hindu-Muslim antipathies, and Lioon's accusation that the Saudis are insensitive, even though he is "no less an Arab than they." Ratna contemplates her fear of "Toronto racists," for whom she believes she is "not Canadian, not even Indian" but, in the derogatory "imported idiom of London, a Paki." With a Czech mother, she remembers that even her father's Indian family shunned her "as a 'white rat'" when she was "a pale, scrawny blonde" as a child: The "European strain had appeared and disappeared."
Bearing the anguish of expatriation, Ratna arrives at an intended "refuge" that becomes a "prison," mirroring her own inner turmoil. That turmoil is exacerbated by Graeme's need for "some definitive order." Ironically, as "an authority on a whole rainbow of dysfunctions" and anticipating his direction of studies in personality growth, Graeme maintains a distant perspective on the pain to which he is closest: Ratna's fear of living in Toronto. His marriage is clearly secondary to his career; when Ratna recounts horror stories of Toronto bigots attacking Indian immigrants, Graeme lies: "If you don't want to go to Toronto, we won't go." Further, he dismisses her fears, resenting "this habit she had of injecting bitterness into every new scene." Under Graeme's romantic inclinations for amateur astronomy and photography, there rest the seeds of fascism, a desire for scientifically ordering the chaos around him to suit his own interests: "In place of a heart he should have had a Nikon." Graeme is utterly incapable of understanding Ratna's anxiety as an expatriate.
Both the Claytons, however, deny the events of insurrection and martial law that surround them. They insist on staying at the Hotel Papillon, two blocks away from the center of rioting, against the protests of Justin, their taxi driver and tourist guide, who advises them to stay at the Hilton with other Europeans and Indians. Graeme rejects Justin's stereotyping of himself, accurate as it is, and Ratna, rejecting Justin's pleading that the wealthier Indians are safe there, announces arrogantly that she is a Canadian. The curfew and the closing of the museum, zoo, and school prevent sight-seeing and stargazing; entire sections of the city are sealed off. Paratroopers stop them on their way from the airport to the hotel, searching their luggage; nevertheless, the Claytons insist that Justin drive them through the marketplace.
Furthermore, even middle-class islanders deny the conflict. Justin arranges a bizarre tour to the king's palace, deserted in 1767 when the French deposed the king but still the site of daily recitals by the royal band, which awaits nostalgically the colonial holidays banned after the revolution. Madame Papillon, the proprietess who has remained within her hotel as a recluse for the last thirteen years, depends on Justin for news of the world outside. Indians, as a matter of habitual response, lock their assets in the Hilton's safe even as rioters burn and loot their shops. Ratna, in dwelling on her fears of racism in Toronto, begins to identify with African historical persecution of Indians—who are the Jews of Africa, as Madam Papillon remarks, not altogether innocently. Ratna's uncertainties open her to events around herself, but her focus is on her dilemma in moving to Toronto.
That evening, while the Claytons dine on bad food and good wine, they learn of yet another coup on nearby islands. Their waiter announces the assassination of an ambassador's wife, but the failure of the government-controlled media to report it suggests that the violence on the island is increasing. Graeme, apparently still isolated from the implications of danger, reads a geology article, written by Kenneth Hsü, from Scientific American—"his light reading." When Ratna objects to his habit of reading at the table, he replies, "'I'm not reading,' . . . meaning you're free to interrupt me, I'm not advancing my career." Continuing his reading aloud to her, he says, "According to Hsü . . . the last time the world was one must have been about six million years ago" and goes on to explain that the "island is just part of the debris," a result of the continental collision between Africa and Asia. Ratna, besieged by emotions as she reflects on the day almost past and identifying unconsciously with the island as part of the debris, decides that she can be comfortable among the dining guests.
Graeme, still bent on a glimpse of the Southern Cross, persuades the waiter to break curfew, taking him out the kitchen door to see the stars. Before he leaves, he tells Ratna of his decision to accept the job and of having already written to Toronto. He adds, "Don't worry, if anything happens to you there I promise we'll leave." He orders more wine, inviting her to renew the romantic purpose of the trip by seeing the constellation with him. Ratna refuses. After Graeme has left, she translates an entry in French from the menu for an American, numb to the "passionate consequences" of his "unilingualism."
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