Word: rai
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Indian and a good chunk of the book takes place there. The first third of the book is a dense, atmospheric and compelling look at India during the beginning of British decolonization. The novel's featured three-some, beautiful Vina Apsara, musically gifted Ormus Cama and the narrator, Rai, are united early through friendships and tragedy. Vina, relocated to India from America after the murder of her family is adopted by Rai's parents, the Merchants. Soon, Vina meets Ormus Cama, the son of the Merchants' good friends; the three begin an epic love triangle that will continue...
...America, Rai becomes a photographer, while Vina and Ormus become full-blown celebrities through the success of their band, VTO (or V-2--The bands' name a fitting homage to Rushdie's real-life inspiration...
That "all of it, every last detail" seems a tad superfluous; readers who haul this hefty novel onto their lap will already have guessed that they're in for a long trek. And for quite a while the journey seems enchanting indeed. Rai's account of his and Ormus' Bombay childhood becomes a pageant of Dickensian, subcontinent eccentrics, particularly the boys' diversely obsessed parents...
...ganja, my friend, is growing in the tin; the ganja is growing in the tin"), but no one doubts that he possesses a peculiar gift, least of all Vina Apsara, who meets Ormus in a record store and realizes that the two of them will make beautiful music together. Rai explains: "For she is--will be--Dionysiac, divine, and so is--so will...
Bombay is obviously too small to hold these two myth-destined figures, and Rai decides to get out as well. ("Disorientation: loss of the East," as he notes several times.) But this exodus considerably saps the narrative vigor of Rushdie's novel. On their arc toward pop immortality, Ormus and Vina must inevitably pass through London in the mid-'60s and Manhattan in the '70s, already over-storied places and times about which Rai (and Rushdie) can find little new or interesting to add. When fictionalized versions of Rudolf Nureyev and Andy Warhol start popping up, an inspired fiction dwindles...