Crowded Vision

In sagarika ghose8217;s earlier novel, The Gin Drinkers, the words tumbled out pell-mell as if the author was involved in a hectic race to get the most number of words on a page in the shortest possible time. The haste, though disconcerting, combined with the amusing take on foreign-returned students and the key quality of the characters to produce an effect that was somehow engaging. In Ghose8217;s second book, Blind Faith, the prose is a trifle more measured but the landscape is harsh. There is a naiuml;ve protagonist, a dead mystic, a remorseless blind mother, helpless fathers, family curses, a misogynist son and so on and so forth. The action still hurtles forward at a bruising pace with events following upon each other at breakneck speed, the setting shifting between London, Delhi and Goa, a world of the upper class and non-resident Indians.

Ghose has a penchant for the quirky. In her earlier book the antics of a gang of book thieves ran like a minor strain through the book. In Blind Faith, however, the plot is completely outlandish. Mia, an Indian TV reporter in London, becomes fascinated with a stranger she interviews at a gathering of spiritualists on the street because he resembles the subject of a painting by her late father. Persuaded by her newly widowed mother to marry, she comes to India as the bride of another man, a diabetic businessman who sells make up to film companies and is also the son of a blind, former bureaucrat who lives, like her lover, an insipid white doctor, in Goa. There is a mother-daughter spat in London, parties in Dehi, stalkings in Goa, a plane falling into the sea, a visit to the Kumbh mela, all leading to a bizarre denouement that cannot be revealed without giving away too much but which involves the stranger that Mia has become obsessed with, a bearded man with a bow and arrow on his back, and the businessman husband.

It is a failing on the part of the Indian publishing industry that it has not generated genres of fiction writing in English. Ghose8217;s book though would be difficult to slot, falling somewhere between a thriller, a bestseller and a teen romance. There are also some philosophical ruminations and an attempt one suspects, at allegory.

Ghose does not however manage to pull it off. She falls far short. The plot, the characters and events are unconvincing. The style leaves much to be desired. And the attempted mysticism seems like a hasty sweep across exotic India. Perhaps comedy flows easier from this writer8217;s pen.