Frederick Forsyth's The Day of the Jackal: A rite of passage for the yesteryear readers of Madras
It has been a fortnight when words paused and two authors died. On May 28, African legend Ngugi wa Thiong'o passed away, and on Monday (June 9), Frederick Forsyth became part of the mists of time. And an essential part of growing up in Madras for an entire generation.
If the former was the classical purveyor of the hard-hitting story, the latter was all about the quickening of the pulse, thanks to his fast-paced books. One common thread, however, was that both writers mined their material from reality.
Relatively, Forsyth was the more popular of the two, dabbling in thrillers linked to the world of espionage, now fashionably called the deep state. A terrain that John le Carre too dabbled in.
For many readers in the Madras of the past, an essential rite of passage was to read Forsyth's masterpiece The Day of the Jackal. It was akin to watching Pretty Woman at Casino, another growing up ritual. The historical fiction that looked into an assassination attempt on the then French President Charles de Gaulle has aged well just like one of his subsequent books, The Odessa File.
Back then, it was a book you picked at Higginbothams, that is if the pocket money allowed this indulgence. Else you had to be prepared to haggle with second-hand book dealers on the pavement adjoining the General Post Office on Mount Road or rush to Moore Market and look for a dog-eared version or a pirated copy.
For anyone moving from Nancy Drew, Famous Five and Hardy Boys, it was a step up from jam tarts and grisly murders. Forsyth, or for that matter, Harold Robbins, Irving Wallace and much later Jeffrey Archer and Sidney Sheldon were deemed the real deal, portraying a world slipping into crime and envy, and one with a harried sleuth on hot pursuit.
Forsyth led the way and other commercial authors followed. His style of fiction, marinated in current events, proved to be a template for men like Leon Uris, whose novels centred around Jewish characters, and exposed us to traditions like Yom Kippur. Be it Uris or Erich Segal, whose Love Story was another essential read, there was always a Jewish or Israeli element in their tales.
Whether it was the celebrated Forsyth or a James Hadley Chase, the booksellers at Moore Market, were clued in and reeled out titles that were deemed must-reads. Bargaining and stealing a deal, it would be then time to leaf through the pages while waiting to board a suburban train either at Central or Park, while sipping an HPMC apple juice. It surely was a Madras of a gentle pace and a lingering word.
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