An Anthology for Winter

The Best of Quest (2011), Edited by Laeeq Fatehally, Achal Prabhala & Arshia Sattar, Tranquebar, Chennai, pp. 660

There are many ways to end a year and cozying up with an anthology is the best of them! The sweeter the nostalgia for times gone, if the said anthology is from the alcove of lost time. The Best of Quest is one such tome that compiles English writing from and about India during the period 1955-1976.

It was the height of the Cold War and an international enterprise called ‘The Congress for Cultural Freedom’ was set up to spread liberal ideas of freedom through literary endeavors. Covertly funded by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), this endeavor took various forms through the launching of classical ‘little’ magazines such as Encounter in the UK and Quest in India. So much for the thrilling background story of who-dunnit!

In India, fresh from British colonial rule, Quest must have represented the niche space of liberal cultural ethos expressed in the colonist’s language (For archives: http://www.freedomfirst.in/quest/quest-archives.aspx). The diversity of the literature spanning essays, fiction and poetry were deliciously served by those who went on to build new India such as Kamala Das, Nissim Ezekiel (poet and its first editor), Adil Jussawalla, Dilip Chitre, Ashis Nandy, A.K. Ramanujan and so many more. The subject of the discourse was also delightfully diverse from the portrait of historical figures to those of historical institutions, from the pleasures of commercial cinema to the gravitas of ancient paintings, from breezy travelogues to political arguments for gender rights. The housing of the pedantic with the pedestrian, polemic with the anti-puritanical signals the firm ascendance of modern, liberal view of the world that a part of India hoped to achieve.

Evocative Journey

From the vantage point of contemporaneity, reading these perspectives evoke a multitude of emotions. The first is nostalgia at the loss of the punctuated leisure that these pieces present. I believe this quality has been lost along the way through the onslaught of neoliberal consumerism. Today, we do not read with such relish. To my generation, it is a loss of inheritance.

The second is envy at the ease of writing, the style of the language and the strength of the argument, no matter the subject. Such candor requires confidence in the self and its place in the scheme of things. With the way we are today with ourselves and our social media, something of such integrated self is lost. We can share kink, but not erotica; viewpoint, but not argument in under 30 seconds.

Finally, there is pathos, the moving portrait of what once was and what dreams have become. I believe this is the biggest loss. The ability to not only say most of what you think, but to be politically incorrect, to be funny and unabashedly self-deprecatingly so, to use irony to drive home a million home truths- the loss of such powers hurt a bit more in this age of extremism.

I think it is for the feeling of what Quest represents than what it contains that you must revisit the Best of Quest. Besides, the volume comes with an exquisite cover art and vintage Quest post cards. Certainly, a collector’s delight and a great way to wind up the year!