Probing human desire called belonging

Remarkable writers articulate internal tempests into lucid ‘universal truths’, a string of personal experiences polished to become mirrors for the society. The mirror of VS Naipaul’s oeuvre reflects true for those who feel out of place, are made to feel so while fighting the basic human urge to have a home.

Consider his House for Mr Biswas (1961). The novel follows Mohun Biswas, born under an unlucky star in rural Trinidad. From childhood, everything goes wrong for him. His father drowns, his family loses their home, and he becomes a wanderer with nowhere to belong. When he marries into the powerful Tulsi family, he gains shelter but loses freedom, trapped in their imposing Hanuman House where he feels like a prisoner rather than a family member. It seems, Naipaul is mustering a story about his own father. Like Mr Biswas, Naipaul’s father was born into an Indian family in Trinidad, married into a powerful extended family, struggled as a journalist, and spent years trying to find independence and dignity. The house here is more than just bricks and mortar; it represents identity and the right to exist on your own terms. Every time Mr Biswas fails to build or buy a proper home, one feels the angst.

When Naipaul left Trinidad for Oxford, he too became what he later called a “rootless wanderer” — someone caught between cultures, never fully belonging anywhere. He came from a family of Indian indentured labourers, people brought to Trinidad to work on sugar plantations after slavery ended. This background created what may be called “cultural displacement” — being physically in one place while emotionally tied to another. Mr Biswas represents all the people who feel like strangers in their own ‘homeland’. Naipaul recognised this story as the story of colonialism itself. Mr Biswas struggles between his Indian heritage and Western influences, just as Naipaul himself moved between Trinidad, India and England. The various houses where Mr Biswas lives — from the oppressive Hanuman House to his final shabby home — mirror the different identities that colonised people had to navigate. The character of Anand, Mr Biswas’s talented son who shows promise as a writer, represents Naipaul himself. This creates a fascinating reflective element — Naipaul writing about his father writing, using his own success to honour his father’s unrealised dreams.

Mr Biswas’s constant movement from house to house reflects the inner restlessness that Naipaul knew from his own life. The novel shows how colonialism didn’t just control people’s politics — it damaged their ability to feel at home anywhere. Here’s remembering a post-colonial existentialist’s sisyphean scrapping of colonialism’s mould that still infests many houses.

Lovneet Bhatt

Features