Buddha of
Suburbia is Karim Amir's history, English from birth
and son of an Indian of Muslim religion and of an Englishwoman. Karim lived in London in the seventies, involved with
literature and music. Karim lived in a peripheral
region of London, that he called suburbia.
The text is
in charge of enough of the conviviality of Karim with
his father's, marked at the same time by the affection and for the critical
estrangement. The mother was a chubby woman, of clear face and round and sweet
brown eyes. In good part of the narrative, we observed Karim
to render ironical his Muslim father's involvement with Buddhism, Confucionism and zen to win
money. The irony of the romance appears frequently when Karim
Amir tries the disjunction: among cultures, sexes and generations. The father
of Karim, Haroon, was a
British employee did already twenty years, he had arrived in England there were
already twenty years, but he still stopped strange in the streets to ask
information on places that were to two hundred meters of distance, in an area
where had lived for two decades.As a child, Karim dreamed in changing for London. In elapsing of his
narrative, he draws fine pictures of illustrations with which he links or
become friends: he dialogues with Eva, a friend impassioned by Rolling Stones,
that she suggested Karim to read Voltaire's Cāndido in the place of Keroauc
(that is not literature, is typing, she says her, repeating Truman's
destructive judgement) and she danced like Isadora
Duncan. On the other hand, Karim admires a youth
called rebellious English: a boy called Charlie that, like Karim,
wraps up with rock and with his charm, and he attracts boys and girls. The
father wraps up with Eva, while Karim approaches more
and more for Charlie, until being disappointed with him, after years of
friendship. Father and son entered in conflict: the son calls him a Muslim
renegade, said he proclaimed Christian blasphemies when supporting the
Buddhist, while the father, seeing his intimity with
Charlie, he complained of his homossexuality. The
book stops enough in the effort of Karim to adapt
England, without leaving of his identity and his inheritance. Without being
very religious, the boy speaks enough regarding the Indian food, that he
adores, among other plates, as the kebabs. Karim
narrated his drama as mestizo in the Empire of Her
Majesty, resisting a lot of times, as in his theatrical experience, in
representing the type of immigrant inadapted and that
she didn't get to speak English, in other words, a lot of times Karim felt forced to represent the stereotype wanted by the
English racists. Accompanying Charlie's career, going with him to New York, Karim saw with his irony search for the fashion: he made
friends with the punks, it followed the British musical fashion, passing of the
exaggerating Baroque to the furious garage, posing of rebellious youth,
spitting and insulting the media. Finally, Charlie turned his band, Mustn' t Grumble, one of the famous bands Punk and New
Wave. Charlie, according to the friend's critical observation, was magnificent
in his poison, his manufactured rage, his/her fury, his challenge. That power
he had, that admiration woke up, that he looks provoked in the girls. He was brilhant: it had gathered the right elements. It was a
trick, a wonderful disguise. The only flaw, said for Karim,
laughing, it was in the white teeth as milk, healthy. They denounced the whole farce.Karim finished disappointed with Charlie, that is
devoted to sadomasochistic rituals and it seems to him, from now on, senseless.
Karim began a writer career, and his glory was much
smaller than the one of Charlie, but he was more centered and more satisfied.
Going away of the world of the fashion, of the rock and roll, it returned to
London and it was met again with the parents and Eva.
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