Field Of Honor 1981

-Like filmmaker Jean Cocteau Murari believes every man has his reasons. This is a story of aristocratic cruelty and nobility, of ancient traditions meeting modern exigencies, told so swiftly and well. THE CHARLOTTE NEWS.

In an author’s note at the end of Gunboat Jack, Aleph’s reissue of a novel originally published under another title in 1981, author Timeri N. Murari recalls his childhood fascination with the black-American boxer who knocked around Bangalore in the 1950s-an exotic figure who wore cowboy boots and a Stetson. Knowing little of the fighter’s history and apprehensive about his ability to inhabit the soul of a black American of that era, he explains, he really only borrowed two aspects from the real man’s life for his character-his name and his curious exile in India, where his displacement allows him to float between the worlds of the British, the Anglo-Indians and the erstwhile royals, all newly unmoored by independence. His Gunboat Jack is a white man, trapped in Bangalore after his lover died and her travelling circus went belly up.

That makes an unusual backdrop for this excellent boxing novel, a subgenre with fairly rigid conventions. The main action centres around Gunboat’s efforts to train the young yuvaraj of Tandhapur to box so he can defeat the son of the raja’s scheming British housekeeper and paramour. A schoolboy boxer himself, Murari manages the stock elements of that story arc skillfully, evoking the old-time tough guy sentimentality of W.C. Heinz (The Professional), A.J. Liebling (The Sweet Science) and Leonard Gardner (Fat City-perhaps the greatest of all time). He also cleverly makes them his own. The fix is in, naturally, but it turns on an evil charm bought from a tantric. Sparring is complicated by the niceties of caste. And so on.

 Murari also tweaks the racial and socio-economic dynamics of the sport. Nataraj or ‘Nicky’ is a prince who is losing his status, rather than a poor underdog. And though his brown countrymen have recently upended the colonial power structure, neither his British opponent nor the larger community of colonial holdovers have much invested in the racial symbolism of the match. Rather, it is Gunboat Jack-recast as a white man in the novel-who sees the fight as his last chance to rise from poverty and thereby return home to the Bronx, and the villainous figure of the British housekeeper-cum-governess who has crammed her son into the mould of the ‘Great White Hope’.

She holds sway in Tandhapur by dint of her supposed social superiority, which is fading faster, even, than that of the royals in the wake of independence. If Nicky is able to prove in the ring that an Indian is as brave and skilled as her English son, she thinks, she will no longer be able to tolerate living with his family. The resolution is not so much predictable as inevitable-as is true of the detective novel, the romance, and all the enduring genres-but that does not reduce its charm. INDIA TODAY.

A post-1947 cosmopolitan Anglo-India boxes with nascent modernity in this engrossing novel

The immediate years after Independence threw up quite a few challenges for young India—uniting the nat­ion, bec­oming a republic, sta­ving off hunger and essentially finding its feet as a country.

It also had to shake off two kinds of hangover—the British influence on the Indian way of life and the princely lifestyle of hundreds of maharajas and their perceived control over their little fiefdoms, shorn of real power but basking in the trappings and comforts offered by privy purses and newly-found business interests.

Into this milieu Timeri N. Murari has thrown in an ambitious young (former) prince trained by an out-of-job and homesick American boxer in love with an Anglo-Indian dreaming about life in distant shores and a conspiratorial English governess- turned-lover of the maharaja. The result is a gripping tale of moves and counter-moves, climaxing in the boxing match between the prince and the boy of the governess. The duel outwardly appears for the control of the palace, but in essence also symbolises India still trying to shake the British bugbear off its back.

The book is suffused with the sights, sounds and smells of Bangalore from which Gunboat Jack wants to escape to his native Bronx in New York. Murari punctuates the novel with Jack’s yearnings through fleeting flashbacks, as the aged boxer relives his memories. Similarly, he describes with great scrutiny the identity crisis of the Anglo-Indians through Jack’s eyes:  “(the community) was, visually British, with all those familiar tics and mannerisms—European clothes, tea in the afternoon, the jolly slang and those haunting English names—but below, the souls of the Anglo-Indian were wholly Indian, for they could not escape the past or the colour of their skin.”

Gunboat Jack, the protagonist, is modelled on a real-life Black boxer who actually lived in Bangalore in the 1950s. With ‘timerity’, Murari converts Jack into a White American—the skin colour makes it easier for him to court an Anglo-Indian girl and also frees the writer from the inner battles of another oppressed race. Gunboat Jack grows on you as a likeable fellow—he shares the services of a soothsayer swamiji with the maharaja, resists a bribe from the White governess and readily collaborates with her opponents to derail her des­igns. And sile­ntly, one roots for him and his princely student Nicky as they train for the final bout.

The boxing portion makes for racy reading, even though one rightly ant­icipates the dark Indian prince defeating the English boy. Murari’s story telling is uncomplicated—even the push and shove between the governess and the maharaja’s family is not marked by any acrimony. The women—the maharaja’s mother-in-law, his daughters, Gunboat’s girlfriend and the governess, are etched sensitively as each battles their own ghosts.

His oblique reference to Chennai-based racehorse owner M.A.M. Ramaswamy as NAN, who fixes races, is a cheeky aside that cannot be mis­sed. Gunboat Jack—the very title ent­ices you, and the novel that follows simply engrosses. OUTLOOK.

Seasoned writer and novelist Timeri N Murari sure knows how to pack a wallop. His latest work of fiction, Gunboat Jack, is set in the early years after India won her independence, loosely based on a real-life boxer from the annals of Bengaluru’s history. The British may have departed and monarchy done away with, but India was still trying to find its footing while ridding itself of the demons from the past which persisted in dying hard. The country was still trying to forge ahead into a brave new future shorn of the evils plaguing the present. 

It was in these trying times that Gunboat Jack, an American, homesick for the shores he left far behind, struggling to make enough for the passage back home both for himself and his Anglo-Indian lover, finds himself talked into coaching former Prince Natraj aka Nicky, who wants to take on a formidable English opponent to prove to himself and others that his is not an inferior race.

Nicky’s adversary also happens to be the son of the English governess, Miss Hobbs, who has inveighed herself into the Raja’s favour and is not above conspiring to put the lowly Indians in their place while doing all in her power to enrich herself. 

A simple enough tale with a rather predictable climax, but in Murari’s hands, it is hugely engrossing with sparse, elegant prose that makes it easy to savour and delight in. Seen through Gunboat’s unflinching eyes, the still prevalent British influences even after the empire has breathed its last are readily apparent. Also, the cushy lifestyles of the petty Maharajahs, who have been shorn of real power but nevertheless enjoy the perks of generous privy purses and business dealings which allow them to wield considerable power and influence over their fiefdoms, are laid bare.

As is the plight of the Anglo-Indian community whom he refers to as the ‘lost people’ who are too English and Indian to ever be either. Gunboat cannot look away from the grinding poverty and servility too many Indians have been reduced to, even if all around people insist on turning a Nelson’s eye to the suffering of the downtrodden playing out under their noses. 

Even as the reader is drawn along with Gunboat, Nicky and the assorted characters in their lives for a thoroughly engaging ride, the marked editorial snafus ranging from an unforgivably tiny font, spelling, grammatical and factual errors like the one about the location of Tirupati are a definite grievance. But that aside, Gunboat Jack is a first-rate yarn that yanks one back in time to a transitional period, where two pugilists slugged it out in a ring to make sense of themselves and their differences.NEW INDIAN EXPRESS

Gunboat Jack tells the story of an American boxer who lived in India. He has an intriguing back story (was accused in a murder case) and ekes out a living fighting occasional bouts for entertainment. His love interest Gertrude is a lively, young man and he wishes to save money and return to his homeland.

Like most sportpersons well past their prime, he spends his time drinking or gambling. His monotonous life is interrupted by an interesting business opportunity.

Gunboat Jack receives a proposition from a young royal, Nicky who wishes to hire him as a coach and learn the sport of boxing. They have a month for training but Gunboat Jack takes up the offer. Up to this point, the novel simply develops the back story and is a bit harrowing but it really takes off after this and becomes way too interesting.

Timeri N. Murari writes well, he has a strong grasp on language and never falters. The characters are developed well and each gets enough space in the novel. Gertrude’s vivaciousness serves as a strong contrast to the older, somber persona of Gunboat Jack.

The climax could have been better in my opinion. I am reminded of a similar climax in a book I read a long time back-Third Best. It tells a similar story where a schoolboy prepares for a boxing match but the climax was done in a far better manner.

The palace of the erstwhile Rajah (Nicky’s father) is not without intrigues either. Gunboat Jack finds himself embroiled in between the housekeeper (who has some shallow interests) and his promise to Nicky. Will Gunboat Jack train Nicky in record time but there are many demons that Nicky must encounter first.

The surrounding plot involving Nicky’s sisters and his grandmother has been told very well. It tells the story of the declining fortunes of the Rajah’s family in post-independent India. This is perhaps why this novel is so good- it is a layered story and plots unravel at the right time.

Will Nicky be able to win inspite of the odds stacked against him? Will Gunboat Jack find his way back home in the end?  NEW ASIAN WRITING

At the time when India gained independence from the British yoke, there was another major movement taking place — the assimilation of princely states into the Indian union; some with consent, others with marked reluctance. It is in one such state, Tandhapur, where the major action of seasoned author Timeri N. Murari’s novel Gunboat Jack takes place. 

While the title invites curiosity, it turns out to be the name of the protagonist, an American boxer ‘stuck’ in India; someone who forever ‘dreamed of America’ and his return. The character has been culled out from a real-life persona, who existed in Bangalore; someone the author had heard a lot about, but never could meet — ‘he was dark, not ‘black’ or ‘African’ or ‘Negro’, Murari writes in the Afterword.    

A drifter, brawler, bordering on hedonism, Gunboat, who has a ‘strong, not particularly, handsome face’, stays with the Anglo-Indian community and his lady love, Gertrude. He has one talent though, which is a veritable key to a future he dreams of — Gunboat is a more-than-able boxer; boxing is his ‘raison d’etre’.

At the very outset, Gunboat and Gertrude visit a sadhu, whose words become prophetic for the narrative; he tells Gunboat that a woman ‘holds his destiny’ and a prince will ‘change his life’. During the next three-hundred-odd pages, that is precisely what occurs. 

As it were to happen, Gunboat meets Natraj aka Nicky, a prince with ‘Western education, Indian roots’, who wants to learn boxing to settle an issue of two races — Indian and European.  Nicky comes across as a ‘cold and self-contained’ youngster, who is out to make his family proud, with a fight that could prove fatal for him. However, in Nicky, Gunboat witnesses his future — money and freedom. 

The action shifts to the regal palace at Tandhapur, where Gunboat starts coaching Nicky, knowing well that his European opponent is much stronger. So, Gunboat even goes to the extent of teaching ‘cheat’ moves that would help Nicky win. 

It turns out that the fight is with the son of the housekeeper Ms Hobbs, who badly wants Nicky to lose and his family to bear the burden of shame. She claims, ‘I’m a pure European’; is a woman of devious ambition and pride in her roots, so much so that Gunboat, who stays away from her, is forced to praise her ‘right instinct: killer’.

The final fight pans out in the last few pages, where the author’s knowledge of the art of boxing comes to the fore, as he narrates each move with the eye of an expert. A clash of civilisations, inside a ring where blood oozes, bones break! 

The author’s lingual gift stands out with each line. He sets the scenes with consummate ease, yet with a surgeon’s precision. Barring the length, which sometimes thwarts the borders of concentration, all is well in place.  THE TRIBUNE