Synopsis "The Theme of the Guru in Jhabvala's New York Novels: A Dissertation (in English)"
Having lived in both India and the USA, and being an admirer of Jhabvala, I chose to write on how the Hindu system of the Guru or spiritual mentor always intrigued Jhabvala. She never found one, and came to discover certain terrible aspects of some famous fake Gurus. Some gurus developed from the strength-giving guru of The Householder to the complex and complicated Guru in Three Continents. Having lived through phases during which the US government had to seize the Rolls Royces on Acharya Rajneesh's Ashram or campus, the themes of greed and control that bothered her about fake gurus, evolved into the controlling cousin in The Poet and Dancer who ruins the protaginst's gift as well as life. I saw her novels coming back to the same faith and self-determination with which she built her own life. However, this is expressed in the darkest ways possible, through freakish psychiatrists and a bunch of bad people, as her fiction developed. Jhabvala, by the way, wrote screenplays of Howard's End, A Room With a View, Jefferson in Paris, Picasso, and others. The last two I mentioned are infused with controversial but truthful results of her own research. She has lived mostly away from the land of her Booker Prize Winning book, Heat and Dust, and in New York, since 1971, and has three daughters living on the three continents--Asia, Europe, and Nirth America-- that she used as locations for the globe spanning cult of a fake guru in her novel, Three Continents.
