Victory City by Salman Rushdie

"...the lesson every creator must learn, even God himself. Once you had created your characters, you had to be bound by their choices. You were no longer free to remake them according to your own desires. They were what they were and they would do what they would do” (98-99).

Victory City by Salman Rushdie

It has been a while since I read Salman Rushdie’s Victory City. I have been meaning to write this for a while and finally, yay, I did. This is not a review as such. I am trying here to put into words what I felt or thought about the novel (as I remember now). 

Victory City is about the rise and fall of Vijaya Nagar (Victory City) Empire. All I have ever known about the empire was through the stories of witty Tenali Rama, the minister of the king Krishna Deva Raya outsmarting almost everyone. I remember a story where he meets Goddess Kali who admired Tenali’s wisdom and named him “Vikatakavi” (a palindrome in Tamil). That was a funny story but I remember being thrilled reading it when I was young. But interestingly, Rusdie’s retelling of the history of Vijaya Nagar Empire (or Bisnaga as the book calls it) ignores Tenali almost completely. Tenali was mentioned only once when Rushdie lists the names of all the ministers in the court of Krishna Deva Raya. Victory City tells the history of the empire spanning for over 200 years from its inception (growing out of vegetable seeds) to the ruin of it and Mr Rama who had been the whole story of Vijaya Nagar Empire to me had not even a word to say. 

The story centers Pampa Kampana who lived for 247 years. This is the very first line of the novel. 

“On the last day of her life, when she was two hundred and forty seven years old, the blind poet, miracle worker, and prophetess Pampa Kampana completed her immense narrative poem about Bisnaga and buried it in a clay pot sealed with wax in the heart of the ruined Royal Enclosure, as a message to the future” (8). 

Knowing nothing about the novel, I thought this novel was going to be about some Tamil king because, you know… I thought 247 years means something; like an allusion to the number of letters in Tamil. Probably it was just a coincidence. 

Rushdie language was easy to follow and it flowed like a cascade. But travelling with a character that lived for 247 years was a little exhausting. The novel, obviously, employs magic realism and it is a historical meta-fiction. This story is narrated by a narrator who does that after having read Pampa’s autobiographical historical account of the empire. 

Spanning over some 200 years, this story portrays a diverse range of characters though Pampa overshadows almost everyone. She appears narcissistic sometimes. Her language is defensive (the narrator is sceptic about what she says, sometimes but mostly very faithful). She is the protofeminist belonging to a far away time period. I like some of her ideas which were way ahead of her time. Her unapologetic and free-spirited self undoubtedly inspired me. 

Pampa was everything in the story. She was the story - Pampa as a lost child, Pampa as a victim of abuse, Pampa as a creator, Pampa as a whisperer, Pampa as a young woman who can seduce anyone, Pampa who exercised sexual freedom, Pampa as a warrior, Pampa as a mother, Pampa as a queen regent, Pampa as a Goddess or a representative of Gods, Pampa as a preacher, Pampa as a blind poet, Pampa as a potter, Pampa in the prison, in the Enchanted Forest, in the sky, in the palace and in the mutt. Victory City was hers. The story and everything. 

I found an interesting parallelism in the story – King Bukka Raya I, Pampa's second official husband is very much like Prince Hal from Shakespeare’s Henry IV Part I. Prince Hal drinking with commoners, making friends with them, pretending to be as careless a prince could be but becoming the best king after ascending the throne, that’s more or less how Bukka Raya I was represented here. And moreover, Prince Hal makes friends with Falstaff and Bukka makes friends with Haleya Kote. Falstaff and Haleya are parallel characters as well. Even the description of Shakespeare’s Falstaff and Rushdie’s Haleya are similar. 

“Thou art so fat-witted, with drinking of old sack…” (Henry IV part I, Act I, Scene II).

“… Haleya Kote, who was dismissed by everyone as an overweight and washed-up old soak” (Victory City 60).

Was this intentional allusion, I do not know.

Pampa was very sure about one thing throughout the novel. Even after having received the grace of the Divine Providence and having built an empire out of seeds, she still believed that religion and politics should stay away from each other. The scenes that highlighted this idea are very much a satire on the present politics. Bisnaga might be a creation of magic and divinity but that shouldn't mean Bisnaga should be ruled by sages. Right? 

The religion that the people of Bisnaga practiced and the festivals they celebrated, they were purely and cleverly constructed by Pampa. Pampa gave them a history, a story to hold on to. She whispered them their memories. Their lives. Isn't this the case with all our practices? The grand narratives that we believe as reality are created by people in power like Pampa, aren't they?

There was also a hint of imperialism in the story. Deconstructing the scenes from the novel gives very interesting perspectives. I wish I wrote this soon after I read the book. Maybe I could’ve talked a little more in detail. 

Finally, I recommend this book to whoever read this piece of my blog. If you do, let me know. We shall discuss. See ya! 

Some lines I liked:

• Maybe anything is possible in this world, and we can really be great men, although we will need to have great thoughts as well

• Life is a ball that we hold in our hands. It is for us to decide what game to play with it.

• When one has been in the shadows for an eternity, the sunlight feels too bright to bear.

• In the jungle the past is swallowed up, and only the present moment exists

• Maybe this is what human history was: the brief illusion of happy victories set in a long continuum of bitter, disillusioning defeats

• You know what they say about poets. They are in mourning from the day they are born, and they all die of sadness, because nobody can ever love them enough to satisfy them. 

• The miraculous and the everyday are two halves of a single whole, and that we ourselves are the gods we seek to worship, and capable of mighty deeds. 

• Only one kind of social class matters: that of the victor. 

• While they lived, they were victors, or vanquished, or both. Now they are neither. Words are the only victors.