• Home

Long, lost America

America is slip-sliding into political change in 2008 with Barack Obama’s presidency on the horizon. The economy has tanked, thanks to the profligacy of the rich, powerful, middle-class and everyone in between. Perhaps not a good time to go ‘Looking for America’, a country in decline, never mind the Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel song by the same name.

The world’s beacon of democracy is busy fighting the demons of mounting debt and looming social upheaval, which is all encompassing. You can feel the sombre mood on the streets, in trains and buses, inside dank, ghostly buildings rotting in the shadows of far-flung towns like Gary, Indiana where the late pop icon Michael Jackson once lived before he beat it for Los Angeles to become rich and famous. There’s a sense of dread almost everywhere and a black Presidential candidate offers the only hope for the once free-spending nation now wallowing in despair. The soul has gone out of America, so has the rhythm; what’s left are the blues.

This reviewer wondered at the start of the book if the author, Avirook Sen, was in the wrong place at the wrong time. The thought was soon banished with Sen dishing out a delightful, 
honest and contemporary narrative laced with profound wisdom, a shot of vigour and topped with nicely-timed humour.

You can’t miss the cynicism when the author gets into the skin of his role as a traveller, meeting varied people across the colour spectrum, and visiting places you never knew existed. Wielding tonnes of research, the writer gives perspective to history without slipping into prosaic analysis.

However, Sen, a journalist and writer of 20 years standing, cannot keep his political leanings to himself. So he mocks the Republicans and contemplates contempt for a lark, and lays ... well almost, all the blame for the tumultuous period at the doorstep of the Grand Old Party. He picks on then Republican vice-presidential hopeful, Sarah Palin, chosen from snowy obscurity in Alaska by John McCain. She is painted as dumb and hauled over the coals and her religious beliefs are questioned. The lady is easy fodder for the writer who doesn’t give her a quote in defence.

The author tries his best to make you believe he’s a liberal, therefore a natural Democrat, who never fails to flay the so-called Christian excesses of George W Bush and his ilk. Like a true Indian, he’s secular, democratic and socialist.

Bias apart, the author often tends to lose himself in prose. Sure, words can work wonders, but Sen gets carried away by the sound of his ramblings when he brings up the past for context.

He is a master of description though, with his background as a hack holding him in good stead. Here’s a gem the reviewer cannot resist quoting from the book about the unforgiving Midwestern cold in Fargo (remember the movie): “I got my first taste of the nut-freezing cold the moment I got off the train. It is a malevolent, white cold. It takes over the town. Licks your face wickedly with a numbing tongue. Treacherously lays transparent sheets of ice on the roads and makes the sane pavements of summer foam at the mouth in November.”

Sen’s journeys take him to some 20 of the 50 states in the vast country. He criss-crosses the wide expanse by train or road and collects facts, meets people while unearthing some startling discoveries about a nation losing touch with its roots and its citizens inthe unrelenting race to prosperity. The American Dream has turned into unpalatable pie.

Yes, he meets Indians, both Red and brown, one dispossessed by white settlers centuries ago, while the other lot prefers to leave it all back home for the emptiness of the future.

Overall, it’s a fair appraisal of America in distress, where the past and present collide in a potpourri of racial and religious tensions.

Curry western, anyone?

allan@khaleejtimes.com

• UAE