Shattered is a diary of life in pieces, recorded with rare insights from hospital beds in different hospitals. Deprived of newpapers, music, and the rest of regular stuff, he had to stretch his imagination beyond uninteresting hospital beds and the bland walls. Although he had slowed down in life, then well into his late sixties, Kureishi has never found himself so busy. In the company of doctors and nurses, and peeping fellow patients, there was an odyssey of a medical system that he had to live through. Seeing little escape from it, he had to reinvent the writer in him. Unable to type or to hold a pen, he began to dictate the words formed in his head to his family members.
“People say when you’re about to die your life passes before your eyes, but for me it wasn’t the past but the future that I thought about”. The accident was a physical tragedy, but it had unique emotional outcomes worth sharing with others. It made him start over as a person, and as a writer, who began to take himself seriously. The conversational energy of his voice unburdens thoughts, lends no-hold barred tone a narrative that is both reflective and imaginative. Scattered is powerful and absorbing memoir that uses personal calamity to inspire others under similar condition.
The book is packed with pain and humor, confessions and revelations, as well as wit and wisdom. Kureishi hasn’t been shy on narrating ruminations on bodily functions and bowel movements. In equal measure one notices pity and sympathetic vibes from Gregor Samsa, and realize the presence of Franz Kafka in dealing with realism and absurdity. Shattered is an absorbing and engaging readings on Kureishi’s reflections on life and his interactions with fellow patients. An identity that is seemingly been redrawn.
What seems like a pause in routine life is also an opportunity to try something new, things one has never done before. "You may be afraid of presenting something personal to the world, but you can never anticipate how others will receive it.” Kureishi’s vulnerability is as evident as his courage to wriggle out of it through his writing. The aim of creative writing, reminiscences the author, is to give pleasure because the writing work is not a therapy but an entertainment for the reader. Quite right, writing finally wants to cheer up its readers.
Kureishi raises an old cliché: Why me? Rarely it ever gets a credible answer. Who would ever think of responding: Why not you? Why would you think it would not be you? Though we would like to be acknowledged for our exceptional qualities, it is our ordinariness that often gets noticed most of the times. If this is the case, then it favors ‘who else but not me’. Though we may be important to one another, according to Kafka we are not much more than nothing in the universe. Interrogating our character alone is crucial for self-determination.
Shattered is both imaginative and reflective, revisiting the past from a futuristic perspective. It helps give up the standardized view of the world for a more complex one, which includes hitherto unmet people. Much like writing, this calls for working on oneself every day. This is what Kureishi has been through in this difficulty journey towards an impossible life. That there is life amidst despair, is indeed a possibility.
A disabled life in an able-bodied world is definitely another matter, and a different world in itself. It makes one feel one’s identity slipping away, as if becoming someone else. In a world that has both shrunk and expanded, it calls for doing new things every day. Shattered will change the way one connects with life.
by Hanif Kureishi
Hamish Hamiltan, New Delhi
Extent: 327, Price: Rs. 999.
