A Multidisciplinary Research Journal - Devanga Arts College

to revolution might bring purpose to his life. After much hardship, he is taken to a rebel training
camp. The remainder of the novel is a tale about his new self that Willie wants to tell his sister,
the idealist. Long sessions are in the form of letters to her.
Repelled at first by the brutal life of a guerrilla, Willie finds to his surprise that he is good
at it. When his superiors make him a courier, because of his experience surviving an African
revolution, he has a startling perception: Never having felt at home anywhere, he is yet able to
look at home everywhere. The ability serves him well in evading police scrutiny, and he
becomes trusted. He develops bonds with a series of squall leaders, recognizing that each them
has become a rebel out of some private need to leave society and strike out of some private need
to leave society and strike out against it and not out of idealism; they are ‘action men’ which to
say that they do not hesitate to kill.
The first Bhoj Narayan would appear to be an Indian success story, a man who came
from a low-caste family to join the middle class, but infact shame still dogs him. Hatred of
Indian land lords, remnants of a feudal system, moves him to join the rebel army. He becomes
Willie’s mentor. For a while, Willie is content in his role. A poor recruit Roja, is their downfall.
Although likeable, Roja is unreliable and eventually betrays Willie to the police, however, Bhoj
Narayan is accidentally captured in Willie's place. The episode teaches Willie two things: that an
old veteran rebel can suddenly fail and that Willie himself is capable of killing, for he executes
Roja.
After that, two experienced leaders Ramachandara and Einstein, both violently angry
men, take Willie in to their confidence. The first is killed in ambush because he simply lacks
basic combat skills, and the second after woefully botching a kidnapping, surrenders to police
and persuades Willie to do so, too. Willie realizes that the guerrillas are led by incompetent field
commanders who have little idealism, while the movement in general, the philosophers and
strategists do not understand the practicalities of the guerrilla warfare that they promote, Willie
enters an Indian prison, along with many of his former comrades. Their endless, repetitive and
rapid political discussions soon drive him to the verge of madness. As Willie thought,
“How unfair it is. Most of time in the movement infact
nearly all my time, was spent in idleness. I was horribly
bored most of the time I was going to tell Sarojini in the
semi-comic letter that I didn’t write how little I had done,