That being the case, one might rightly ask why he chose the subcontinent as his muse in the first place? The answer: he picked up an atlas, flicked through it, and randomly chanced upon a map of India. From such moments of serendipity are legends born.
The novel that Keating subsequently wrote was published in 1964 and entitled The Perfect Murder. It featured Inspector Ganesh Ghote (pronounced Goh-té) of what was then known as the Bombay crime branch, a detective of considerable resourcefulness and tenacity. Ghote is not your typical western policeman. There is little of the maverick about him, no melodrama, no bitter divorces in his past (he is dedicated to his wife Protima), no hard-charging, hard-drinking machismo. He is a minor cog within a vast engine of bureaucracy and at the same time accepts this and chafes against it. He is set above the common man – by virtue of his uniform – and yet condemned to forever belong to the lower echelons of that vast stratified populace that gives India such colour and depth. Time and again in these immensely readable novels we see Ghote at the mercy of bombastic senior officers, villainous landlords and wealthy industrialists. In the face of abuse, obstacles and evil machinations, Ghote remains undeterred, finding his way to resolution in every case through a combination of understated intellect and quiet bloody-mindedness. When asked about the genesis of his seminal character, Keating would later reply, ‘Inspector Ghote came to me in a single flash: I pictured him exactly as he was, transposed as it were by some magic arc from Bombay to London. It was a tremendous piece of luck really, because I don’t think Inspector Ghote will now ever die. At least he’ll live as long as I do.’
Prophetic words. The Perfect Murder has met with enduring success. Upon publication it won the Crime Writers’ Association’s Gold Dagger in the UK and claimed an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America. Keating was on his way. And after twenty-five wonderful books and a short story collection, Inspector Ghote has joined the pantheon of great sleuths: Holmes, Poirot, Maigret. In his own way, Ghote has that shimmering of Golden Age stardust about him.
The first Ghote arrived more than half a century ago. The world has changed since then and literary sensibilities have moved with the times. Today, controversies abound under the banner of ‘cultural appropriation’, some justified, others perhaps trumpeted beyond the merits of the case by vested interests. Seasoned literary commentators and social media trolls alike are quick to pronounce judgment on writers they feel have not earned the right to depict a particular lived experience. No doubt they would make much of the fact that H.R.F. Keating, by his own admission, knew very little about India when he began researching these novels. His portrayals of India and Indians might offend some, an example of what they might term post-colonial hubris.
I think this is missing the point. That was a different era, with different dynamics at work. Yes, there will be some who find offence merely in the fact that a middle-aged white man who had never been to India should achieve literary acclaim for novels set in the country. Personally, I believe that writers must have the licence to write that which inspires them. Whilst diversity and cultural authenticity in publishing is something I fervently believe in – for obvious reasons – I will also stand by the right of authors to be authors, that is, to journey on those fantastical oceans of the imagination that make writing such an enjoyable endeavour. For me the key to all such quasi-moral quandaries is whether or not an author has treated his subject matter with respect and empathy. And in his treatment of the subcontinent and its people Keating did more than simply create a series of intriguing crime novels. He brought the India of that time – in all its grit and glory – to the attention of the wider world.
We only have to look at how appreciative Indian readers themselves were of his portrayal.
In a 1981 article for India Today (updated in 2014), Sunil Sethi tells the story of Keating’s third visit to Bombay. He is mildly astonished when a young woman, a fan of his books, approaches him to express her admiration. Keating, Sethi tells us, can’t quite believe the reception he received in India: ‘There you are quietly writing away at your desk, and you produce this little book. Your wife likes it, but she’s an interested party. Your agent approves, but he’s also an interested party. Then you come 5,000 miles from home, and people stop you on street-corners to tell you how much they love reading your books. Isn’t it wonderful?’
Of course, the country has changed dramatically since then. I wonder what Keating would make of this modern India? And what would modern Indians make of him and his work? More importantly, how would Ghote fare? I have a feeling that the inspector, a beacon of decency in a sometimes indecent world, would find himself quite at home as India continues its struggle to undo millennia of entrenched social attitudes: corruption, inequality, nepotism, and the debilitating effects of the caste system.
Ultimately, as a lifelong crime reader and now a relatively seasoned writer in the genre, I believe that there is nothing so likeable in the annals of crime fiction as an honourable detective. And in Ghote we find just such a man, a man for the times in which we live.
Vaseem Khan
London, 2020
AUTHOR’S NOTE
His Life and Crimes
Inspector Ghote came to life one day in 1963. I was sitting in my study, in the red armchair by the window – I have told this story so many times that some of it must be true – reading a geography book. I had decided that my next detective novel was to take place in India, a country I had never set foot in, and I was hard at work mugging up some facts.
Up until that moment I was convinced that my reason for taking this odd and even hazardous step was a strictly commercial one. American publishers had rejected my previous four titles as being ‘too British’. So how to avoid that stigma, and enter the lush transatlantic pastures? India seemed one answer, especially as I had had it in mind to write a crime story that would be somewhat of a commentary on the problem of perfectionism, and one of the few notions I had about India was that things there were apt to be rather imperfect. Good symbolic stuff.
Then, out of nowhere, into my head there came this man. Or some parts of him. A faintly worried face. Certainly, a pair of bony shoulders. A certain naïvety, which should enable him to ask the questions about the everyday life around him to which my potential readers might want answers. And he also brought with him a name: ‘Inspector Ghosh’. Oh, gosh, he would keep saying, wide-eyed.
It was only when I sent the outline of my Inspector’s adventure to a friend, an Englishman just back from Bombay, that I learnt that Ghosh is a Bengali name. It would be as unsuitable for a Bombay detective, at the other side of the Indian sub-continent, as Ivan Ivanovitch would be for a Parisian sleuth. He suggested the similar, but appropriate Maharashtrian name of Ghote. So, from birth we had advanced to christening or, more correctly, to the naam-karana, the name-giving ceremony.
At that point, however, I saw Ghote’s life as being a short one, a single book’s span. My speciality in 1963 was detective novels without a running hero, but with in each a different, more or less exotic background. There had been a coach-and-four trip, Zen (if in an English country house bleakly devoted to further education), the playing of croquet and a provincial opera venture. I saw India as just one more in that series. But the book, called of course from that running-thread of perfectionism The Perfect Murder, unexpectedly won the Gold Dagger award for 1964, and an Edgar Allan Poe award in America where, yes, it did get published. Ghote was granted an indefinite extension of life.
So in 1966 he underwent Inspector Ghote’s Good Crusade, in which he investigated the murder of an American philanthropist, was harassed by a fearful squad of Bombay street urchins, was grossly deceived when he gave all he had saved for a refrigerator to the apparently poverty-stricken ‘paramour’ of a fisherman and learnt (alongside, I hope, the reader) that giving is not always a straightforward business. He also solved the case. This was something he was contracted with his public to do, and because of that I was beginning to realise he would have to lose a little