palimpsest india: my impressions of "the moor's last sigh"

#Reading Rushdie's "the moor's last sigh" brought me face to face with what he calls the "other" india... india minus the majority hindu population and the "majorest" minority... the india of jews, parsis, catholics..very often relegated to the back ground..he wonders aloud that how would reader take his family history which isn't about hindus and muslims...

#the protagonist's personal history as in rushdie's other novels, is the history of not only india but also takes us to the moorish spain...he takes us back and forth in time.. combining the events in his life with that of the nation.. strutting from spice garden kerela to mumbai of mob wars...then again to a dali-esque labyrinth...this two times faster growing and wasting Moraes who becomes the confidant of the hapless reader :-)

#the recent rapid depletion of tolerance for "the other" also has been more than hinted in the antics of "the croaking frog" and uninhibited censure that "in the end would come a battering ram, knocking at our doors"... the fear of the minorities and the non-marathi population are almost as relevant today as were during the time this book was written...

#using a device called "ekphrasis" in which the writer uses the description of art to describe things, rushdie has also made the strongest metaphor of the book...ie. of a palimpsest...how india like the paintings of moor's mothers were palimpsested with the previous impressions that can't be wiped out completely...and how the acceptance of these various impressions without trying to wipe off the past completely in order to write a new chapter today will probably make this kaleidoscopic india survive...