The Buddha of Suburbia by Hanif Kureishi

As always, for you who are already familiar with my blog, you must have noticed that I have this strange fascination with opening line. I would write this long narrative about things that struck in my mind – and it is after that then I would start entering the core of my topic. I realized that some might like it, while others might hate it. Especially when I do it in an information-related posts. But that’s just who I am. Sometime I like to be direct. Other time I like to be wondering around first, talking about day and night, in order to get to the core of the topic.

As for today, I would like to open up with how bad I was for neglecting my old habit to write and post something that I call – post-reading reaction. It’s an article containing my reaction towards books that I’ve read. Not only that, I seem to have stopped giving myself a treat. Normally during the semester I would seperate between books that I read because I was assigned to read it and books that I read for joy. This semester, however, I just read books that I was assigned to. None of them I read for pleasure reason. But as it goes it turns out that the book that I was assigned to read also gives me a sense of joy. This one that I am about to talk is one of them.

That being said, this post is a kind of beginning to relive the old good habit of mine. Shall we start?

THE BUDDHA OF SUBURBIA

The Buddha of Suburbia is a coming of age (bidungsroman) novel that centers around the life of Karim who acts both as character and narrator – this makes this novel a first-person narrative novel. Karim was born out of mix-race/nationalities-marriage. His mother is a British woman, while his father is an Indian man. This novel, therefore, centers around Karim’s life as a person who has to deal with identity crisis as he seems to be having a lack of sense of belonging. Personally he thinks of himself a British, as he was born and raised in England. But people surrounding him think the opposite, they always think of Karim as an immigrant’s child because of his skin color. When he tried to think of himself as an Indian – he finds some rejection coming from himself because he knows nothing whatsoever about Indian culture and language. In fact he has never been to India. And this theme is extensively used throughout the novel. 

The novel starts with Karim expressing how bored he is to live in the suburban. And, how ready he is to escape to London. His father, Haroon, is engaged in a new advanture as a Buddist guru. It is his meeting with Eva that brings back his fascination with eastern mysticism that he once had during his earlier arival in England. Haroon was born a muslim. But when he arrives in England he leaves all his religion, culture and even accent behind. He lives his like a westerner. Now, however, he tries to bring back his accent because it’s considered exotic and beautiful - in a racist way.

As time goes, Haroon and Eva fall in love. Haroon even ready to leave his old wife. Interestingly, Karim is also okay with it. Yes he criticises his father for leaving his good but boring mother. But he also reveals how fun he has around Eva. Arguably, it’s because Karim is in love with Eva’s son Charlie. Yes, not only Karim confuses about his racial and national identity, he’s also confused about sexual identity. He both loves man and woman. Also when the father and the mother split Karim decided to live with his father than his mother. 

Fastforwad to the time when Eva, Karim and Haroon move to London (to the city), Karim decided not to continue school. His father is furious about it. Like all asian fathers do, Haroon wants his son to be a doctor. Karim, on the other hand, wants to become an actor. In London, through Eva, Karim gets to know a play director and thus get to explore things that he likes – acting. But his involvement in theatre also brings this novel to other issues such as racism. Karim was asked to play a character of Indian man. Since his skin is not dark enough, he is made to have himself painted and also he is asked to have fake Indian accent.

Eva is kind of interesting character too. She constantly changing herself. She lives her life according to what is considered fashionable. In the suburb she is into eastern mysticism. As in the city she is into art. But she is not an evil character. She’s just plastic in that way.

Spoiler alert – there seems to be no resolution in this novel. Karim keeps wondering what he wants to be and want to do. The only rosolution is to the father and the mother. The father will end up marrying Eva (although at this point he seems to have a slight regret for leaving his wife). The mother also has a new relationship with a younger man – a British man too. As for Karim he ends up doing a soap opera – although he doesn’t feel happy about it. He does it just to prove to the father that he can make something out of his life.

There are other interesting characters such as Jameela. She is Karim’s friend since childhood. Unlike Karim, both of Jameela’s parents are Indian. Jamila is a stonger character than Karim in a sense that she has clear-cut moral and political values. She is a feminist and she’s very vocal about racist treatment against non-white people. She’s also against marriage – let alone arranged marriage. But she is forced to marry Changez as her father threaten to kill himself out of hanger. Jameela ends up marrying Changez but does not consume their marriage. Instead of with his legal husband, Jamila has it with other man such as Karim. And later, other man in the communal place where Jamila lives and with whom she has a baby.

I think those are enough for a starter. I will not summarize the novel from page 1 to end. I am here just to give my opinion about the novel. So, I leave the sami-summary there. I hope it interests you all. Because I really love this novel.

Here are some of the things that maket his novel a great novel to read:

1.     It deals with relevant issue of our time

Immigration has been a vocal issue lately. We all know that european countries are indifferent to some of the immigrants because they see them as part of problem. Not to mention about refugee crisis. European countries accept less refugees from Syria than other countries such as Canada. But also we have to criticise how pasive arab countries too on this issue. What are those rich countries such as Qatar, etc do. Sit on their gold-made chairs? So reading this novel not only gives us a way to contemplate recent issues but also reflect on the old one such as how are those immigrants live? Do they live happily in that foreign countris. If they face racist treatment – how is it affect their personalities?

2.      It deals with topics that all people face in their everyday lives – In search of Identity

All of us try to search our true self which is for Lacan a waste of time. For him we loss “the real” once we entered language – so no matter hard we try we never gonna get there. Also this novel shows an untraditional version of identity. THis novel shows that identity is performative. It’s shown through characters such as Eva, Charlie, Haroon and even Karim himself. These people perform themselves in certain way. They do it either to please others or to make themselves feel good about themselves.

3.       Racism

Well, as a foreigner living abroad I am so well-acquinted about this term. Setime we are seen as problem in the country due to some foreigners. And it’s so easy to generalise foreigner for every wrong-doing taking place in society. And foreigners tend to be made a scapegoat to make them feel them good about themselves

4.      Pop Culture

For those who like to relive the old fantasy about Funk music, this novel will make you giggle once it brings up the old music that you used to listen. Also the hair style and outfit of the time.

For now, those are the thing that I can list. I am sure there are more to add. I highly recommend you read this novel. I would give 7 out of 10 for this novel.