The Strange Case of Billy Biswas

The intensely moving novel by Arun Joshi, a Sahitya Akademi recipient, that was published in 1971 is a commendable critique on the modern Urban Society which has become a Waste Land.

1. The Strange Case of Billy Biswas A Critique

2. Arun Joshi (1939-1993) A significant contemporary Indian Novelist. A Sahitya Akademy Award recipient for his novel The Last Labyrinth in 1982 His father A.C. Joshi is the erstwhile V.C. of Banaras Hindu University. His wife Rukmini Lal was the daughter of Shareholder. Was a recluse all his life and did not like publicity. Throughout his life he published with Orient Paperbacks, a publishing house in India although there were some multi-national publishers working in India like Penguin. The Foreigner (1968), The Strange Case of Billy Biswas (1971), The Apprentice (1974), The Last Labyrinth (1981) and The City and the River (1990) are the five novels to his credit.

3. Joshi’s perspective.. The modern novelist like Joshi, he withdraws himself from “the outer World” to “the inner world” in order to explore the “essence of human living.” He engages himself into exploring the “mysterious underworld which is the human soul.”

4. The Strange Case of Billy Biswas.. The novel is divided in three parts: New York, New Delhi and Chattisgarh . Focuses Joshi’s thematic concerns as well as his narrative techniques. It also reflects the psychological overtones. Most of his novels including one under study partake the qualities of existential humanism those were propounded and elucidated by Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre. The novel harps upon the Psychograph of an Alienated Protagonist Billy Biswas. Alienation thus is the major theme of the novel. It is also “a perpetual quest for reality” and “the most effective agent of the moral imagination The thematic aspect takes within its purview problems like maladjustment, crisis of consciousness, cultural and psychological deviancy and human predicament.

5. A Strange Case… The novel deals with the predicament of an alienated personality of the modern world. The novel revolves around the most futile cry of man is his impossible wish to be understood. Romi calls Billy’s passion to be understood by the smart society is an extraordinary obsession. Billy is quite rooted in a place and tradition. Billy’s is the split personality between “primitive” and “civilized.” “Billy feels something inside him, but he is not yert sure. Sometimes he is afraid of it and tried to suppress it… a great force, unkraft , a …a primitive force.(19)- opines Tuula Lindren (Swedish friend) who is taking advance training in psychiatric social work at Columbia Billy finds his identity lost in the so-called civilized society. On the contrary Joshi thinks it to be a recurring conflict of an “essentially Hindu Mind.”

6. Billy Biswas… He believes that his existence is powerless, normless and meaningless because he is living in the degenerating society. The civilized people are “dry as dust”. Billy leaves such world in search of a place where he won’t be treated as an outcast, not culturally uprooted, socially isolated and alienated and self-estranged. He reaches to the place where “Nobody…is interested in the prices of foodgrains or new seeds or roads or election (111)s…where friends “can die for each other” (110). Where lies “not Bilasia …but[his] future,indeed the very purpose of life.”(111) In US as well Billy tries to cling to his roots, though he could afford living in well-off places at US like Manhattan, he chooses to live in Harlem.

7. Life is a Waste Land for Billy Biswas The persistent quest for self-realization beckons him to live in primitive world. For not to loose his identity, he does study Anthropology, rejecting Engineering which his parents were desirous of, but Billy is not successful in preserving his identity. His way of living, eating and dressing gets hampered due to his quest for identity resulting in his weird behaviour . An anarchist, Billy feels culturally estranged even in New York, US. Romesh and Tuula fail in identifying the explanation. Even after returning back to India, he feels homeless. A Sense of nothingness pervades him, a sense of socio-cultural vacuum engulfs him and he realizes it when he listens to the temple aarati .

8. Billy feels uprooted and estranged… Billy’s antipathy is time and again reflected through his letters to Linda at different times. Who am I? Who are my parents? My wife? My child? (92-93) are some pertinent questions Billy finds no answer to. Materialistic civilization disappoints him. The readers find the overtones of Romantic poets in the character of Billy. His marriage with Meena is an utter failure as for Billy Meena is not a good partner as she is too much down to Earth. She is a product of money minded civilization. It is nothing but a sheer case of ‘uneven minds’ got married. Billy is a naturalist having a delicate heart and a mind of a mystic. Billy has strange hallucinations. Meena is no medicine on these. She is a snob, self-possessed woman. It’s like “Things fall apart, centre cannot hold”.

9. At last Billy responds to his other self… Civilized society treats him as a rogue, a rebel whereas Dhunia , a tribal chief and his tribe welcomes him calling him Mahaprasad . He cures Bilasia , Dhunia’s niece. Billy wipes out all his traces of Urban world getting rumored that he has been eaten by the man eater. He finds meaning on Maikala Hills. He tells Romi that in tribal life there is no scope for ambition : a root of all problems. He thus is being recognized as the king of that part of Chhattisgarh. People in the tribes believe that Chandtola started glowing because of the pious presence of Billy, they believe that he is endowed with many divine gifts. He can revive a dead man, tiger gets frightened due to his presence. In confusion a constable of Rele , the superintendent of Police kills Billy. His ‘search for truth’, a noble saga goes unheard. At last Billy takes refuge in the tribal civilization only when all the doors are shut on him. He finds himself ‘established’. He prefers death than going back to the same old, rotten, materialistic and selfish civilized world.