I have read 100 Years of Solitude again. It could be the 5th or the 6th time I have read the novel. Jose Arcadio Buendia takes Colonel Aureliano Buendia to see ice. Years later when he stands facing the firing squad, Colonel Buendia remembers the day the gypsies had brought this invention to Macando.100 Years of Solitude is a riveting novel. It blasts the consciousness and transports the reader into a world both real and magical. Perhaps this going somewhere new for the first time has an indelible imprint for everyone. I remember the day my Dad took me to the Madras Central station. We alighted the train and walked into the parking space opposite Central. It was a dazzling sight. There were a number of buses, cars and autos plying. There was a crowd of people thronging the bus stops. In front of me there was the Madras General Hospital and to my left I could see the majestic towers of the Southern Railway Headquarters. (My dad’s office room was here) The smell of disinfectants and jasmines floated in the air. More than any image this picture of a bustling station and the endless stream of vehicles rushing in all directions is my image of Madras.
It was A.V.Thampan, my batch mate in PGDES at CIEFL who introduced me to the novels of Marquez. I think the introduction was typical. Thampan had all the bearings of a left wing intellectual from Kerala. During a casual discussion which was occasioned when our teacher mentioned the novel, The Magic Mountain in the class, Thampan spoke about 100 Years of Solitude. He had been extremely impressed my Marquez’s magical realism and effusive in his praise. He urged me to read it and gave me his copy. He waited upon me to finish the novel which I did in a span of 36 hours. When I had finished I could make out what inspired writing is all about. I was dazed and I had to grope for words to describe my feelings. Thampan had that misty look in his eyes which said I told you so! I was stunned by the anarchic, barbarous nature of the novel (which was very unlike what I had read before) It was disturbing but laced with humaneness. It was disturbing in a philosophical or literary sense and not in an emotional or moral sense. The lawlessness and ecstatic revelry of the novel is also marked by an endearing nostalgia and sympathy for its people.
Thampan was my next room mate too in the hostel. Whenever we met after that, the discussion veered towards Marquez, the literary trends in Malayalam literature and Cinema. He spoke about the other Marquez novels, especially his subtle attack against fascism in his novels like “The Autumn of the Patriarch” After I read Marquez my notions about what shapes fiction underwent a shift. My referential points for novels till then, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy, Mark Twain, Tolstoy, Gorky, Chekov, Turgenev, Gogol, Dostoyevsky, Sholokhov and Narayan had to yield some space to this writer from a continent of wonder and magic. (To be continued)