The Temple-Goers - Aatish Taseer

Although it does deal to some extent with the profound changes in Indian society and their reflection in the national and individual psyche, Aatish Taseer writes in a way that is very different from the familiar writing from India of epic coming-of-age stories. The modernism in Taseer’s writing is appropriate then, because The Temple-Goers depicts a post-colonial society that has other new challenges to face in the modern age, and there’s an unsettling clash between this modernism and old attitudes towards tradition, class, religion and caste that is reflected in the figure of the narrator himself - called Aatish Taseer - a writer who has returned to Delhi having lived abroad for a number of years to revise a novel he is working on.

The values, in relationships, career prospects and even body image - where even the traditional Gods are now depicted with slimmed-down forms and six-packs that can only be achieved from extensive gym training - are now more recognisably those of the western society familiar to English educated Taseer, than the world of his father, a famous Urdu poet, whose work Taseer can’t even read. Like the attempt to impose bus-lanes on the chaos of the Delhi road system however, it’s a match that doesn’t fit too comfortably. The clash is personified more significantly (and with a great deal more complexity) in the person of Aakash, Aatish’s personal trainer at the Junglee gym. An uneasy and unusual friendship is struck up between the two men, both of them clearly of different backgrounds that would have made their friendship unlikely in former times, but Aakash - “this flowering of physical beauty, people rehabilitated” - represents the new, altered and conflicted society that Aatish, as an outsider, is looking for a way to return to.

When money, status and looks are no longer any indication of status then, it becomes harder then to know one’s place, and for Aatish (everything is filtered through his view of the world) every action confers or takes away from one’s power over another - and in this new society, as much as in the past, it’s an important distinction to have understood. The power game that develops then in the relationship between Aatish and his personal trainer takes some rather sinister and troubling turns after a trip to visit some temples in Aakash’s home region, the recalling a similar one between Ballard and Vaughan in J.G. Ballard’s Crash, but there are many other incidental issues relating to their respective partners and family backgrounds that cloud the picture and the balance of power between them.

If Ballard is not the best analogy, it’s perhaps better than the Brett Easton Ellis comparison offered by the publisher, giving at least some indication of the unpredictable and deeply personal nature of Aatish Taseer’s work here in its attempt to cut through conventional literary trappings to dissect more truthfully the impulses and neuroses of the individual in reaction to profound social upheaval around him. For an outsider, it’s not always easy to follow the subtle distinctions in class, caste, religious background and social standing between the characters (Taseer is to some extent an outsider here also) nor is it always possible to make easy assumptions about the author’s personal purpose and intent in how he chooses to depict them. Indeed, the inward looking nature of The Temple-Goers may perhaps say more about the author than it does about contemporary Indian society, but it’s a distinctive viewpoint nonetheless on a fascinating, rich and complex subject.