Victory City

“But if the ruled continue to be unruly it won’t be easy to rule them.”

The citizens of Bisnaga emerge into existence in a very sudden way. They are immediately unsure of themselves and how to live their lives. The brothers worry more about being able to rule over these citizens than about how to make them happy, so their first priority is to ensure that their subjects are placid. For all the complicated history that is about to unfurl in Bisnaga, the immediate concern of the first dynastic rulers is to ensure that their rule is unquestioned. The city was not founded with the citizens’ best interests in mind.

“They are of the place, they are the place and the place is them.”

Bisnaga and its citizens arrive in the world at the same time. Pampa notes that the city and its people are what defines it, and until these people have their stories and their history, they will feel awkward and uncomfortable. They must live in the place to give it meaning, as a city without stories is essentially lifeless. Pampa recognizes the innate bond between the lived stories of the citizens and the importance of the city itself, as the empire cannot exist without the stories she tells.

“The English are at present a backward race.”

Domingo arrives in Bisnaga as an outsider. His knowledge of Christianity and European culture marks him as different from the local people. While the “pale-faced” people of Europe may all seem the same to the people of Bisnaga, Domingo’s warning about the English carries a sense of foreshadowing. As England emerges as a colonial power, the English will spread to India and try to conquer Bisnaga. Hukka, Bukka, and Pampa may not be able to conceive of such a threat at this time, but the day will come when Domingo’s prophecy is proved correct.

“Even the words Dev could understand might have meanings he could not know.”

Dev, like his fellow disreputable brothers, cannot speak the secret language of the female commanders, but he cannot help fall in love nevertheless. When he asks, he is told that the language is a series of metaphors and associations that imply a deeper meaning than he could possibly understand. Dev knows only about the words; he does not know about their true meanings. This secrecy hides the information in plain sight, using poetics and linguistics as a code to conquer the world.

“Every man he killed had the face of Domingo Nunes.”

Hukka is the king of a rapidly expanding kingdom but his jealousy toward his wife’s lover means that he can never be happy. He fears his wife’s magical powers and needs Domingo’s knowledge of gunpowder to propagate his imperial ambitions. As such, even the all-powerful Hukka has limitations. The existence of his wife’s lover serves to remind Hukka of the limitations of his power, which rankles the king as much as his jealousy.

“The death of the first king is also the birth of a dynasty.”

Through his death, Hukka consecrates Bisnaga as more than just a city. By inheriting his brother’s kingdom, Bukka demonstrates that the family dynasty is tied to time and geography and transcends the life of a single individual. As kings, their deaths are important. They need to die for their lives to have meaning, which differentiates them from the subjects under their rule. Deaths, not their lives, define the beginning and ending their kingships and their associated importance to history.

“Ponder on the difference between willing and joyous lovemaking and forcing oneself brutally upon another, smaller, defenseless human being.”

Pampa does not forget that Vidyasagar sexually abused her regularly while she was a child. Her view for the religious and cultural future of Bisnaga is informed by this traumatic experience. She confronts him with her ambitions, revealing to him that the abuse that he inflicted on her has caused her to envision a world in which old religious men do not sexually abuse whomever they please. She wants a liberated future in which sex can be enjoyable and joyous, rather than a hidden, abusive, and traumatic action that is used as a means of control by powerful men against those weaker than themselves. Vidyasagar’s diminished religious authority is a direct consequence of his earlier sins.

“Pampa’s was the opposite problem. She would outlive everyone.”

The tragedy of Pampa’s great power is that it alienates her from the world she is trying to build. She creates a city, marries the kings, and starts a dynasty by bearing the kings’ children. Because she will live so much longer than other people, however, she cannot allow herself to truly love her husbands, her lovers, or her children, as she knows that she will eventually watch them die. The gift of long life and prophecy curses Pampa by hollowing out her capacity to love.

“Bisnaga was becoming alien to the world she had created when she whispered it into life.”

Pampa struggles with motherhood. Just as her own sons have chased her out of the city she built through her magic, she is no longer able to recognize the culture she helped to create. Though she tried to steer the education of her sons and her city in the right direction, she has come up against the reality of free will. She cannot control everything, even those things that she created. Her status as mother means, frustratingly for Pampa, very little.

“Maybe this is what human history was: the brief illusion of happy victories set in a long continuum of bitter, disillusioning defeats.”

After being forced to flee into the enchanted forest with her daughters, Pampa begins to reassess the definition of victory. Slowly, she is coming to the realization that neither defeat nor victory is real; they are both part of a cycle of illusion and disillusion, with optimism and pessimism interchanging over the course of history. There is no moral valence to fate, only the continuation of the punishing and rewarding cycle of victory and defeat.

“Many people would choose blindness over clear-sightedness.”

When she returns to Bisnaga, Pampa discovers that her dreams for an inclusive and egalitarian society have been undermined by Vidyasagar’s hateful preaching. His exclusionary message about hating any non-Hindu person may not be correct or sustainable, Pampa knows, but many people prefer the simple, easy message over the more complex (and correct) alternative. The novel suggests Pampa is battling against human nature, rather than trying to prove someone right or wrong.

“There will be no more burning of living women on dead men’s pyres in Bisnaga.”

Pampa has used her control over Deva to remodel the society in Bisnaga. In spite of her efforts, however, her grandson’s violent nature cannot help but shine through. He demands that 4,000 of his many wives must commit suicide at his funeral, much like Pampa’s own mother felt compelled to throw herself on a fire many years earlier. Pampa is horrified, not only by his intent, but also by her inability to prevent the violence from breaking out once again. Despite her great powers, Pampa cannot hold back the misogynistic violence of men.

“That was the day of the expulsion of all pink monkeys from the jungle.”

The pink monkeys are a metaphor for the colonial takeover of India by the British in the 17th century. The fall of Bisnaga occurs before the complete takeover of India by the British, but the earliest colonial presence is nevertheless destructive. The pink moneys arrive, turn the local monkeys against one another and attempt to take over the land for profit. Pampa helps to drive out the pink monkeys, but she is aware that their expulsion is only temporary. For all her power, she can do nothing to avert the inevitable violence of colonial history.

“All these tales can be treated with respect or dismissed as tall tales, as the reader prefers.”

The novel presents a deliberate lack of verisimilitude. The narrator is translating and summarizing Pampa’s original poem, a story that already plays loosely with the concepts of reality. As such, trying to discern actual historical information from the summary of a translation of a poem of a myth is impossible, as evidenced when comparing Pampa’s version of events against the extravagant perspective of the outsider Niccolo de’ Vieri. There is no complete truth, the narrator suggests, only the truth that feels most correct and interesting to the reader.

“She wanted to sit alone with the king and tell him the true story of his kingdom and of her crucial role in its making.”

Pampa recognizes the vanity of her desire to receive credit for her role in the creation of Bisnaga. She may be powerful, she may have her enduring youth, but she is never praised for her ability to found and propagate an entire city. Living in exile or under another identity denies her this acclaim. She cannot help but desire the praise she feels that is due to her.

“Once in each generation you reappear to cheer me up.”

Domingo Nunes is one of the most prominent illustrations of the cyclical nature of history in Victory City. Pampa acknowledges this, recognizing that she meets a strikingly similar European man once each generation at a time when she needs happiness in her life. These recurrent Domingos provide the same function in her life, even if they are different men from different cities in different eras. Pampa exists outside of the cycle, as she is old enough to comprehend how the cycles operate.

“Her fabulist dynasty had ended.”

The death of Zerelda Li is a pivotal moment in Pampa’s life. At this point, the last of her descendants is gone. Her ancestral line is extinguished, forcing Pampa to confront the brutal reality of her fading legacy. She had three daughters and three sons, as well as acting as the mother of an entire empire, but now she no longer has any living descendants, and her empire is on the point of collapse. For two centuries, Pampa has worked hard to build something. Now, the tragic consequence of her hard work is that she must live long enough to watch everything end. Her plans and ambitions, however grand and fabulous they may be, are as brittle as a human life.

“It was as if I heard your voice whispering in my ear.”

Krishna’s arrogance is such that he could never believe his will might not be his own. His words suggest that Pampa has returned to her old magic, whispering suggestions into the king’s ear, making him believe that he is acting of his own volition. Krishna does not want to see himself as weak or impressionable, so the very suggestion is almost absurd to him. Pampa may be influencing him, but Krishna’s own arrogance is her best protection against any allegations as he refuses to believe that he could ever be manipulated.

“I’ve had enough of your reappearances.”

Hector Barbosa is the fourth European to visit Bisnaga and meet with Pampa. Each of these men has been a reincarnation of Domingo Nunes. For the first time, however, Pampa refuses to enter into a relationship with her reincarnated lover. She feels her time is running short and she has not accomplished what she wants, so she cannot indulge her familiar romances. That Hector is refused is an illustration of Pampa’s struggle to deal with her rapidly diminishing time on earth.

“There were days of diarrhea, then no diarrhea, then there it was again.”

In Victory City, the world operates in cycles. From the reincarnations of visiting Europeans to the names of the kings, repetition and recurrence are motifs in the novel. The idea of cycles is built into the lifeforce of the character also, to the point where something as mundane and commonplace as diarrhea and sickness moves in similar cycles. For a character as old as Pampa, age allows her to comprehend such cycles and see how they dictate the flow of history.

“She herself wrote that the whispers were a blessing. They brought the world back to her and took her back to the world.”

At one time, Pampa used her magical whispering to subtly shape the world in her image. She influenced people and imposed her beliefs on them. After being blinded, as she approaches her death, Pampa notices that the whispers change direction. Now, she listens instead of speaking. She hears the whispers of the people and allows them to influence her and her story. The cycle is inverted and the whisperer has become the audience.

“I want to be a foreigner.”

Pampa has lived so long that she is exposed to the same desires and longings from different people. Many years before, her own daughter Zerelda described her desire to be a foreigner and to travel the world. Though both Tirumalamba and Zerelda grew up in lavish palaces, they feel a yearning for travel and escape that their duties inhibit. After feeling as though she failed her own daughters, Pampa is given an opportunity to make things right by helping Tirumalamba to achieve her dream.

“My time here is finally over.”

After more than two centuries, in which her life has been tightly entwined with the history of the Bisnaga empire, Pampa knows that she will soon die. Her words are vague but deliberate. When she refers to her “time here” (331), she is speaking both about her time on earth and her time in the city. She gave birth to the city and she will watch it die, at which point she will also leave her life behind. Pampa cannot separate her physical presence in the city from her actual life because they are one and the same thing.