The Buddha of Suburbia

by Pa Rock
Reader

Having recently come across the 1990's film, "My Beautiful Laundrette"  streaming on a subscription channel a few weeks ago, I was inspired to delve back into other writing's by the movie's screenwriter, Hanif Kureishi.   That connected me with another of his excellent works, the novel "The Buddha of Suburbia" which I had originally read not long after it was first published in 1990.  I ordered the book, reread it, and was perhaps more impressed this time than I was with the first reading all those years ago.

The central character of his novel is Karim Amir, a young man who is just finishing his public schooling and whose parents hope that he is headed toward enrolling in a university.  Karim is an English youth living in the suburbs of London with his English mother, "Mum," a plump, unassuming woman who manages the house and takes care of the needs of Karim and his younger brother, Ali, and their father, Haroon.  Mum also works part-time at a shoe store to help supplement the family income.  Karim and Ali have never been to India, the birthplace of their father, but they have dark skin and Indian features and are  home in the British Indian community.

Haroon, Karim's father, is the title character of the novel.  He was born in Bombay as one of the younger children of a wealthy doctor, and emigrated to Britain on his own as a teen.  Haroon, who grew up privileged with a full assortment of servants, found work in England as a paper-pusher in a government office, but when he is home he is content to relax and let Mum wait on him hand-and foot.  As the story opens, Haroon has been studying the teachings of the Buddha and has been attending upscale parties hosted by his new friend, Eva, and ambitious social-climber.   Haroon sits on the floor at these parties and, in the character of the Buddha, begins imparting Indian and Buddhist pholosophies on the entranced guests.

Karim, who has a habit of falling enthusiastically in love with women or men, as long as they are interesting and attractive, is in love with his old schoolmate, Charlie, who is Eva's son.  Charlie is a singer with his own band - and he has dreams of becoming a rock star on the order of David Bowie.  One evening after Karim and Charlie have had a close, but not quite overtly sexual, encounter in Charlie's room in his mother's attic, and while Haroon has been doing his Buddha thing for Eva's guests downstairs, Karim goes outside for a solitary walk in Eva's garden.  It is there that he sees Haroon and Eva having sex on a garden bench, and it is there that Karim realizes that his life will soon change forever.

"The Buddha of Suburbia" is a beautifully written story that explores life and love in Great Britain as the country is slipping from it Victorian grandeur into the graffiti-sprayed world of modern times.  It explores the suburban existence, immigrant communities, life in London and New York,  youth culture, the theatre scene, rock culture, communal living,  the drug culture, and life in "squats."  But perhaps more than anything else, "The Buddha of Suburbia" is a treatise on race and classs written at a time when walls appeared to be crumbling.

Hanif Kureishi is an amazing writer.  You will not be disappointed in any of his works.