PXylem

By Rishikesh Sinha

Life can become full of experiments with all possible hits and trials, especially if it is involve one-year stay in the US. This is the central theme of Anurag Mathur’s humorous novel ‘The Inscrutable Americans’. The story in the book is a life spent in the US by an Indian student and his trials and tribulations in the new world.

Gopal whose identification in India is that he belongs to the small town called ‘the Paris of Madhya Pradesh’ and his family is in the hair-oil business, staying in America comes as a learning curve in his life.

His English is comical (I am hoping all is well and wealth…I am fine at my end. Hoping your end is fine too) and his Indian perspective about America, and about American people is bizarre (I think Americans are hating vegetarians…They are playing game which they are calling football in which they are beating each other without any mercies for no reason…I am feeling that they should do more beating each other then at least they are not beating rest of world), like many of the Indians have about America.

Especially the 4-letters (which shortens in its length with his long stay) that he wrote to his brother describing his feelings comes as a creamy froth in the whole novel. The letters written by him are as such that it will surely trickle a person with no funny bones. I would say the letters are gems in the whole book.

Leafing through the book, readers would find that they are discovering America not limited to the jovial but embarrassing experiences that any person of Indian DNA would have, but parallel to it they would be unfolding America in a different perspective. They do have problems; there are parts in the country which doesn’t look like America, “there is so much dirt” and “it is too poor”.

About the book ‘The Inscrutable Americans’ written by Anurag Mathur, I would share the same thought that the Times of India wrote about it, “There is no self-contempt or post-colonial anguish in it (‘The Inscrutable Americans’), instead there is a boisterous, if comical celebration of both India and America ”.

Please SUBSCRIBE to the blog.