This Research- paper tends to explore the different shades of the post-colonial consciousness and identity-crisis in V S. NAIPAU s novel – Magic Seeds (2004) ^[1]. Before we proceed to the process of exploration of the above idea, let us have a cursory glance at the biography of the author Sir VIDYADHAR Suraj Prasad Naipaul (1932-2018) happens to be an Indian – origin, Trinidad-born British writer, having received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2001.

This novel introduces Willie Chandran as the chief protagonist and the hero who keeps drifting through postcolonial India, guerrilla camps, Berlin and London having his transnational identity. After getting disillusioned with his barren life in Berlin, while staying with his sister Sarojini, he switches back to India and starts campaigning a Maoist Guerrilla movement. He has to spend 7 years in the forest in alienation as a revolutionary for security reasons. After the collapse and the failure of his movement, he gets imprisoned and later released and deported. He is remaining in London along with his sister once again, being secluded and purposeless. The title of the novel— 'Magic Seeds' have a sarcastic allusion referring to revolutionary idealism lacking ground reality- seeds that never grow. Willie joins Guerrilla movement not from any valediction but from boredom and rootlessness and identity-crisis. He has to come across displacement thrice from India to London, London to Africa, then back to India and again then back to London. He lacks his own identity, his permanent home and the sense of belongingness, that is why he remains as a drifter wandering from one place to the other place. He lacks his permanent identity, neither being an Indian, nor an Englishman nor a Trinidadian.

Naipaul represents his character under the impression of a post-colonial consciousness and the identity-crisis. Willie observes and finds India as a Centre of corruption, exploitation and violence like a stagnant water despite independence. The title of the novel is very much ridiculous and absurd mocking at the beliefs that history or ideology can magically redeem the personal barrenness, boredom, rootlessness and identity-crisis. It looks like a waste land without any relevant culture, neither any revolution, nor migration leading to salvation. He remains as a wanderer and a drifter searching out his own identity and his own home.

V.S. Naipaul was born at Chaguanas, Trinidad and Tobago on 17th August, 1932 and passed away on 11th August, 2018 at the age of 85. He is much better known for his deceptive simplicity, precision, originality and profundity in his style. He dealt with clear language, concrete details, exploration of complex themes of displacement, identity-crisis, transnational identity, diasporic elements and post-colonial societies. On the basis of the story of the novel— 'Magic Seeds', the fundamental themes explored in the novel are Post-colonial Consciousness and identity-crisis, as Willy Chandran, the chief protagonist of the novel, remains culturally uprooted men also occurs in the novel - the failure of the political ideology, the boredom of the post-colonial subject, post-imperial disillusionment, the cultural conflict between Oriental and the Occidental.