Encounters

Hot Water Man is a story set in Karachi during Bhutto’s rule. But like most British writing on the subject of the jewel in the British crown, it is the story of a search for a lost kingdom—the Raj. And Bhutto figures only marginally, as does the real Pakistan. Where the authors of these works are not writing of the actual period, as Paul Scott did so successfully, they are trying to trace its remnants.

For a fringe western reader¬ship, this may be relevant and fascinating. But for the sub–continental who is going to be interested enough to read such literature, a literature which can best be classified as ‘Raj nostalgia’, it is a super¬ficial view from the outside, with no relationship to present reality, and for which he can feel only impatience.