In an extremely perceptive review of V S Naipaul's An Area of Darkness, Nissim Ezekiel had clearly demonstrated that his own vision of India was not one that appealed to the West, but the India to which he truly belonged. Confronting Naipaul's "condemnatory judgements," Ezekiel acknowledges without hesitation the existence of "all the darkness Mr Naipaul has discovered" but emphatically states: "India is simply my environment. A man can do something for and in his environment by being fully what he is, by not withdrawing from it. I have not withdrawn from India...I believe in anger, compassion and contempt...They are not without value. I believe in acceptance that incorporates all three, makes use of them. I am incurably critical and skeptical. That is what I am in relation to India also." Taking cue from Ezekiel's essay, the author describes the grounds of his own fascination for both the man and the poet and goes on to explore and examine how Nissim Ezekiel strives, in both life and poetry, for "a human balance humanly acquired" to unite poetry and living, his avocation and vocation that reflect his living awareness of India as his only home. Ezekiel's Indian sensibility through which he has learnt to recognize and resolve the dilemma of double consciousness could serve as a precedent for creative writers, critics and academics who find it difficult to overcome the anxiety of colonial influence in projecting an authentic image for India.

Twenty years ago, in the July 5-11, 1987 issue of the Illustrated Weekly of India, Pritish Nandy, the then editor of the Weekly, had hailed V S Naipaul as `the world's greatest living author'. Irked by what seemed to me to be an unqualified lavish praise, I had unhesitatingly dispatched a letter to Pritish, which he, very sportingly, published in the August 2-8 issue of the Weekly. In the letter I had drawn the editor's attention to the spirit behind Hamlet's advice to Polonius: "Use every man after his desert and who shall `scape whipping? Use them after your own honor and dignity-the less they deserve, the more merit is in your bounty". I had pointed out that it was "gracious indeed that such praise be heaped on a writer of Indian origin whose myopic vision observes nothing in this vast and complex country except the ruins of a `wounded civilization' shaded by an `area of darkness'. He has unblinkingly described the country of his origin as a `decaying civilization, where the only hope lies in further decay'". I pointed out how Naipaul's discovery of India had revealed to him only pathetic creatures incapable of understanding his simplest problems. I could discern the rather inhumanistic trends in Naipaul's writings. His disgust for the `South Indians' was occasioned by the way they "lap up their liquidized food". His notion of the `Bengalis' as "insufferably arrogant and lazy" derived from his brief encounter with a `Paan seller' in Calcutta. His obsession with the theme of `public defecation' seemed to deprive him of the ability to see his country in human or historic terms.

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