V. S. Naipaul's Short Story 'The Overcoat'

V. S. Naipaul rediscovers the land of his ancestors by travelling across the vast subcontinent which is known as India. He has recorded his experiences in his travelogue ‘An Area of Darkness’. Before coming to this country he knew very little about the land of his ancestors, and that too from the things in his house which were brought from India and the stories told by his grandparents. The first generation of Naipaul migrated to Trinidad as indentured farm hands to work in sugarcane fields. Naipaul expresses his feelings thus: “To me as a child the India around me was featureless, and I thought of time when the transference was made as a period of darkness, darkness which also extended to the land, as darkness surrounds a hut at evening,

His vain attempts to regain is confiscated liquor reminds us of Akaky Akakievich’s efforts to recover his overcoat in Nikolai Gogol’s short story “The Overcoat”2. The unplanned and overcrowded Bombay with huge crowds of people of all kinds with factories, Towers of Silence and red light areas were a part of this country. He noted that India survived by its ideals like “do thy duty, even if it be humble, rather than another’s even if it be great”. Herein lies the strict system of occupational roles. The clerk will not bring you a glass of water even if you faint because it is a peon’s job. The man who makes the dingy bed in a hotel room will be affronted if he is asked to sweep gritty floor. There are gradations upon gradations on the blocks of

He points out in an ironic manner he saw, “Help eradicate malaria daubed, in English, on the walls of illiterate Hindi-speaking villages.”
Naipaul peels off layer after layer of darkness to search out true India. Everything is topsy-turvy in the country. Even during Chinese invasion on NEFA and Ladakh speeches were made instead of serious fighting and planning for a victorious campaign. At that crucial period ‘independence was felt to be a creation of words’.
Naipaul’s observations are based upon first hand experiences; he has lived in two extremes of the world and discovered the diverse country like India for the very first time. He is shocked to see that in the birth place of so many great religions the great ideas and concepts of religions are wrongly ingrained into the society. He remembers the Sikh traveller who spoke derogatorily about South Indians. Though he displayed westernized mannerisms yet he was “an Indian to whom taboos of caste and sect are fundamental”. With a brilliant narrative of his yearlong sojourn in India he provides a spectacular revelation both of India and of himself: as a displaced entity he paradoxically possesses a stronger sense of place. His narrative web compels the readers to think for self-examination and