Routes to UTOPIA

Delhi: In the far horizons of hope, beyond the veil of rationale, is a perfect land. In the geography of imagination, the topography of primal desire. A world where death does not cast its shadow, sin does not sink its fangs. No darkness, ugliness, fears, pain. A land of perfect beauty, harmony, eternal spring, ultimate bliss… The yearning of all, home to none — Utopia.

The illusion of utopia is rooted in reality — a construct of perfection contrasting with the imperfections of this world. From disenchantment with existing truths springs the fascination for an enchanting ideal. A fantasy world — impossible to reach and inhabit, but possible to envision and create. And many a traveller on this road, following the compass of his dreams and atlas of imagination, has mapped his own route to his own version of utopia.

Imaginary worlds created by authors are not absolute ideal realms. But a certain perfection is the axis on which they rotate. The primordial innocence of Eden, the simple joys of Malgudi. The perfect harmony of Ram Rajya, the ideal society of Republic. From mythology to science fiction, epics to comics — it is a galaxy of alternate worlds, beating to one pulse.

Desire & lament

All stories are either about yearning for a utopia or a lament about its loss, says Anand Neelakantan, author of Asura: Tale of the Vanquished and Ajaya: Epic of the Kaurava Clan. “Whether it is the paradise lost for Adam and Eve in Semitic epics or as in our Puranas, the progressive fall of virtues from the Satya yuga where everything was perfect to Kaliyuga where everything is flawed, the same yearning and lament can be seen. We speak of Ram Rajya or in the South India about the age of king Mahabali where everything was ideal and perfect. All these stories show that our mind is yet to come in terms with the randomness of life. We hate unpredictability and what could be more unpredictable than life and its abrupt end, death? We find solace in the concept of God, Swarga, Rebirth, Judgement Day and Utopias. That is how we try to beat death and cheat life.”

Spiritual yearning

Spiritually, the desire for an ideal realm is also a stirring of soul memory — the perfection the soul remembers having come from, and where it longs to return. And all through life, amid phases tough or smooth, there are times one feels a subtle inexplicable restlessness — in the journey of life these are the soul’s moments of missing home.

“The concept of utopia is our search for heaven,” says Amish, author of The Immortals of Meluha, The Secret of the Nagas and The Oath of the Vayuputras. “And heaven is defined by which land the religion has emerged from. If it is a desert land, heaven would have no shortage of water. There would be great gardens, date trees, lakes… Looking at it spiritually, the desire for utopia is our desire for liberation — a return to nothing. Because heaven is impossible to explain. There is one moment of creation and one moment of destruction. And the fallacy is the belief that the two are different. Both are the same — nothing…  which is everything.”

Bridging extremes

Utopia is a wistful dream, dystopia a shuddering dread. And between the sparkling heaven and grim hell, there is a vast terrain that is fertile ground for wondrous tales — on man and life, values and conscience, philosophy and statecraft, wisdom and cunning, emotions and passions, battle strategies and peace paradigms, social orders and economic systems…

Mirroring the thousands of shades and shadows of human existence, the imaginary lands in literature stretch beyond the boundaries of utopia to embrace flaws and failings, conflict and disorder. These are not just lands of lofty ideals and beatific happiness, but also worlds that delight, intrigue, thrill and amaze. Pleasure-drenched Indralok, riches of El Dorado. Talking beasts in Narnia, the scale of tininess in Lilliput. Gritty crimescape of Gotham City, knightly valour in Camelot. The continent of Atlantis, the empire of Meluha. Hogwarts school, Sherlock Holmes’ apartment. Middle-earth and Wonderland, Xanadu and Oz.

“In spite of the concept of the Satyug and the subsequent decline in the yugas, Indian myth is rarely utopian — as even the gods and immortals have their follies and fatal flaws. Utopias and dystopias both display extremes of expectation and disappointment. The human spirit and human fallibility together add up to the roller coaster of life as we know it,” says Namita Gokhale, author and founder-director of the Jaipur Literature Festival.

Alternate realities

The alternate worlds have alternate realities. Where earthly impossibles become possible. Characters fly, vanish, shape-change. There are oracles and talismans, sorcerers and angels, winged horses and flying carpets, boy wizards and caped crusaders. It is a free license to fantasise. Yet, even when the fantasy runs wild, the core story remains believable, relatable.

“Fantasy is arguably the oldest genre of all. The reason it has outlasted every other kind of story is simple: a good fantasy, no matter how wild, still addresses human dilemmas, concerns, challenges,” says Ashok Banker, author of crime thrillers, fiction and mythological retellings. “Even Mahabharata, the greatest epic in the world, whether you call it itihasa or epic fantasy, is about the people and their conflict — all the fantastical things that happen only seem wondrous when placed against the very real, intense, believable human situations.”

All fiction posits an alternate reality, says Banker, adding. “No matter how realistic a novel, it’s not actual fact. Our fascination comes from reading about lives that are not ours, but are still relatable — when posited against a magical world or mind-blowing hard science fiction, it’s that much more fun. There’s a rule of thumb about appreciating good fantasy: The more fantastical the world, the more intelligent you have to be to truly enjoy it.”

Craft of creation

Creating a whole new world is both a stiff challenge and a heady freedom for a writer. And if the blueprint is of a near perfect world, it has its additional demands.

“The fun part is, it’s possible to create utopia. Perfection can exist in fiction, but not in real life. Many literary concepts draw inspiration from reality, but even the experiments of Plato proved that utopia is not possible in real life,” says Amish. “The difficult part of the task is to let go of control and let the concept come to you. The author is better able to create by surrendering to that flow. One needs to be mindful about detaching one’s personal likes and dislikes and ensuring one’s biases do not enter that creation. Heaven exists in a parallel universe. And in the task of creating it, one needs to write as a witness, not a creator. The imagination flows through you and you write it down.”

The crafting of a utopian world is also the creating of a template — the author’s prototype of an ideal society and system, a perfect order, a balanced coexistence. “Every author tells his or her version of the ideal world and their idea of what is wrong with the present world and what could be done to correct the flaws. These ideas need not be same and may also sometimes contradict each other. But all are true to the authors who write that,” says Neelakantan. “Some cultures talk about paradise for believers where women and wine are plenty, some others talk about being in the divine presence of God as the ultimate Moksha or salvation. Some ideologies talk about a world of equality and domination of the erstwhile oppressed class over their oppressors as the ultimate utopia. We define the flaws in our society as we interpret it, dream up the perfections required to iron out such flaws and aspire for such utopias. Author’s imagination is like a mirror that reflects the society in which he or she lives, but whether it gives a true reflection depends on the contours and surface of that mirror.”

There’s a serpent in every Eden. And he gets the story rolling. Perfection as a concept is an abstraction, as a state static. If everyone   is flawless and everything ideal, where’s the story? The dynamics of drama come into play when the serene stasis of perfection is disturbed by the exciting energy of opposing forces. It’s the eternal dance and duel of duals — the contrary yet complementing principles of life. Good and evil, light and dark, day and night, life and death… While perfection is barren in the context of existence, the concept of correlated contrast and complementary opposition is ripe with the drama of life, the action of fiction.

“There’s a price to perfection,” says Amish. “It ties in to the ancient belief that God is in the balance — good is a natural corollary of evil, one is necessary for the other to exist.”

In literary worlds, as in life, there are no absolutes. The greatest of heroes have their weaknesses, the most daunting of anti-heroes have admirable qualities. And every bright world has its share of shadows, eclipses and fading of the light.

“There is no absolute darkness or light. It all depends on from which angle you hold the torch. If you shift the angle from which you shine the light, what was dark earlier may become bright or grey and what was shining earlier may become dark. What is good or evil will change according to the angle of the torch,” says Neelakantan. “A completely dark world or bright world will be dull and boring. Like day and night, the cycle continues. Saying that right always wins is like saying day always wins over night. Both day and night exist and both are natural. Depending on whether you are the prey or the predator, the definition of whether the night is good or the day is evil changes.”