Thus Mr. Naipaul is regarded as the outsider with inside information, the man who betrays. Lonely then, but unassailable, Mr. Naipaul gazes into every shadowy corner of the society, giving us a picture that is both harsh and beautiful, familiar and strange. I have only one major reservation. Because Mr. Naipaul's portraits are careful and illuminating, I was disappointed that there were so few of women, and only one of these was other than cursory. The interview with Mallika, wife of the Dalit Panther poet Namdeo Dhasal, is superb.
Women find quite a pleasure in boosting it. . . .
I do not believe that for anybody called Namdeo I should surrender my entire life. Mr. Naipaul talks with Mallika about her book, her life, her husband, in a vivid extended conversation. Of course, it is inordinately difficult for an unrelated male to converse at all with a woman in India. But even in instances where such a discussion was clearly possible, for example, with Arati, the wife of Dipanjan, a physicist, Mr. Naipaul never really presents her directly. From her husband, we know that Arati, who also teaches physics, cried for days when the couple returned to India from his study leave abroad.