In 1903, Eric Blair was born in a bungalow in Motihari, India to a British father who worked in the colonial opium office in town and to a French-British mother. Years later Eric Blair would be known around the world as George Orwell. It’s his Indian roots, his birthplace in Motihari, that inspires Abdullah Khan’s second novel, A Man From Motihari, which is both a fun and creative look at literary India and a pensive examination of contemporary race relations and nationalism.
When the story begins in the mid-1970s, Aslam Khan is born on a stormy night as his parents are passing through Motihari after attending a funeral.
On one side of the road was an endless stretch of bamboo groves. On the other were five deserted bungalows, their walls covered with wild creepers. Darkness shrouded the sky, and there was no soul in sight. But then, Abba saw the form of a woman before one of the bungalows. He was surprised. Telling the bullock cart driver to stop, he jumped from the cart, grabbed the hurricane lamp, and walked over. Abba brought the light close to her and asked what she was doing in that old bungalow.
As it would turn out, the mysterious woman had been George Orwell’s nanny and was an experienced midwife. She assisted in Aslam’s birth, but his family felt something was off about her and warned Aslam when he was a boy that he was never to return to that spooky bungalow. There would be no story if he heeded their advice. When he later returns he not only learns more about this woman, who he calls the Lady in White, but also finds encouragement in her words to follow in Orwell’s footsteps and become a famous author.
The story becomes more Kafkaesque than Orwellian as an adult Aslam goes into banking and has an arranged marriage with a woman named Heba, also from a Muslim Indian family. The couple finds happiness and enjoys traveling together, but Heba cannot see value in Aslam’s dream of becoming an author. She thinks instead that he should devote his time to his banking career. But Aslam cannot help but sneak writing late into the night. He looks up to other writers like Amit Chaudhuri, Vikram Seth, and Arundhati Roy, among others. When he’s not writing his novel, he sends query letters to literary agents in the US and UK. Dozens of rejections ensue and Aslam starts to doubt himself as a writer. He soon finds himself in a toxic marriage, especially after he and Heba have a daughter named Kainat.
Aslam is a doting father, but Heba uses Kainat as a pawn in getting what she wants, namely that Aslam stop sending money home to his family and that he give up his writing aspirations once and for all. He doesn’t fight Heba on either matter and tries to become the husband she hopes for.
I regretted my behavior. Heba was justified in getting mad at me. Am I not running after a mirage? On what basis do I think I can be a bestselling writer like Arundhati Roy or Vikram Seth? I was born in the same house as George Orwell; but that didn’t mean I could be another Orwell.
Alas, nothing seems to improve their marriage and the two split up. One would think Aslam could then devote his free time to revising his novel, but he’s so distraught by his divorce that he cannot bring himself back to work on it. At this time, right-wing politics threaten the livelihood of Muslim Indians and Aslam worries for his safety and that of his friends. When he least expects it, he meets in Jaipur a young American actress named Jessica. She’s in India to film a Bollywood movie and the two go on to develop a close friendship. Unlike Heba, Jessica is fully supportive of Aslam’s writing aspirations.
This relationship continues in the US, where Aslam is posted by his bank. Jessica has been disowned by her Southern Baptist family in Texas for starting her acting career in the adult entertainment industry, while Aslam is afraid to tell his family back in India that he’s involved with a white woman. Yet the two feel more connected than ever, as each comes from a conservative, religious family. As Aslam learned back when he first started reading fiction, life is too short to be slowed down by such differences.