Hitting the ball out of the park with Zadie Smith

To respond to the ideal writer takes an ideal reader, the type of reader who is open enough to allow into their own mind a picture of human consciousness so radically different from their own as to be almost offensive to reason. The ideal reader steps up to the plate of the writer's style so that together writer and reader might hit the ball out of the park.

Fail better, Zadie Smith, January 13, 2007, The Guardian

So, for once, I think I did achieve sorta the laudatory title of the ideal reader. The Ideal Reader. It would look good as a pin, like the one I had in school which said something as silly as Deputy Secretary, Cultural Affairs. Ugh.

But nonetheless, the reason why I self-award is because I like Kiki. From the first chapter, my discomfort with her was her discomfort with infidelity - her grand scale judgment on something human. The one line explanation for Howard's act, that so late in life, he just wanted to switch tracks (from a black woman to a white woman, from a 200 pound woman to a woman who exposed bones through her thin dress at the age of 50). His gentle powerful words..its not like she was a student, she's older than you and me..that sent Kiki into a rage, made me stop and reconsider his act, outside of some narrow logic of fidelity and what it demands of us.

But fidelity makes fools of all of us – that much I will say easily. It makes a demanding servile idiot of me, when I expect it. When I do it, I'm resentful, angry and rattling inside a cage of stifling monogamy. When I don't do it, it reduces me to a nervous wreck; I imagine the sudden collapse of my house around me like in a dramatic episode of Buffy. It wouldn't surprise me, in those moments, if there was a war declared and counter nuclear strikes launched, a tsunami that reached into land-locked Bangalore... and all of them would feel linked to my act of seemingly innocuous betrayal.

My only moment of possible ease while rattling between the two possibilities is the precise one moment after infidelity. There is the buzz of having crossed the line, emerged unscathed. When I'm unmoved emotionally by the new lover and not yet gripped by a Christian confession fantasy. And ofcourse moved tremendously by the excitement of a new body, and a new body is forgiven ineptness or even lack of style. Everything looks good on a new body, even habits of turning pages with wet fingers like an accountant. The new penis is given the choice of tasting as it feels, and is not locked within a known familiar taste

But.. I can't leave Zadie Smith holding the ball for so long.. have to get back to hitting it out with her. Kiki does something for me, inspite of my disagreement with her absoluteness marked by every beautiful gesture like throwing her heavy plait over her shoulders, slapping the floor with her open palms, her post-yoga body slumped into a very expensive chair. Those palms are something I almost see, their deep dark lines etched into the tight, fairer skin on the inside of her palm. Kiki and I stand at opposites. I'm not Claire. I'm not Carlene Kipps. And I would never judge like Kiki. If ever I admonished infidelity or betrayal, it has been with laughter, with the acknowledgement that ofcourse... I have no right to expect fidelity or any such form of ridiculous unwavering loyalty. I'm not a queen like her, not deeply black like her, not as absolute or brilliant as her, not a nurse like her, not a mother of three beautiful children like her. Her hurt lasted a year, mine would (and did) last only a day.

But the book makes me be her inspite of this gulf. To dress up in her thoughts, to believe with her that she had built a life and it had fallen apart.
And I have to admit, that I wrote this just to have that beautiful photograph up there.