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Journalism of Courage
The Age of Shiva
Manil Suri
Bloomsbury, Rs 495
A skilfully crafted story about love and loss, The Age of Shiva is a substantial saga of family ties and betrayal that keeps you gripped from the first page onwards. Manil Suri, a professor of mathematics, is obviously that rare male author who can construct a perfectly empathetic world of a female protagonist, without tripping up, even once.
This, after all, is not unfamiliar territory: right from superbly written novels such as Vikram Seth8217;s A Suitable Boy to Manju Kapur8217;s Home, we have been introduced to Punjabi families preoccupied with the marriages of their adolescent daughters, and the uncertain results which follow. The trauma tosses up the usual suspects: the dominant patriarch, the pernickety mother, the rogue suitors, the rebellious daughters who delightedly discover their sexuality only to eventually succumb to boredom between the bed sheets after their dreamboat husband turns out to be an inept lover. Normally, there will also be issues of inequality of wealth, stature, religion, education. And then, of course, comes the denouement, with the woman8217;s ultimate discovery of her own self, and sometimes, as in The Age of Shiva, this revelation is extremely painful, and difficult to accept.
But Suri triumphs as he manages to refashion the well-known rites-of-passage tale through some luminous writing and by endowing his characters with very human and equally fatal flaws. At the heart of it are the almost Oedipal ties between the narrator Meera and her son Ashvin, which result in an unbearably sensual and nearly illicit relationship. When the sexually naiuml;ve Meera nurses her young child, she is completely obsessed by his perfection and beauty 8212; and is unaware of how her overwhelming desire to possess him, to physically bond with him, will lead to confusion and distrust as he grows up: culminating in a blurring of boundaries with beds being constantly pushed together and pushed apart. Her need for him, especially after her husband8217;s death, grows monstrously 8212; almost annihilating her son, till he learns to resist.
The Age of Shiva, like other novels that have been published lately, such as Tabish Khair8217;s Filming, also deals with the rise of Hindu fundamentalism in India. And so Meera8217;s bodybuilding, Ramayana-quoting brother-in-law Arya spouts many of the clicheacute;d anti-Muslim dialogues 8212; but, fortunately, Suri8217;s characters are never too sharply delineated into good and evil. They have their falls from grace and also their epiphanies but most of the time they are simply occupied with the complicated business of living. Suri brings in the post-Partition politics of India through the lives of Meera and her family, giving a clear sense of change from the secular politics of Nehru to the divisive policies of Indira Gandhi.
Dominantly, however, it remains rather a feminist tale 8212; as most of the male characters are completely damaged goods. Paji, Meera8217;s father, the redoubtable, strong-willed Congresswallah, is uncompromising in his Machiavellian schemes to control his daughters and his family; Dev, her husband, an aspiring Bollywood singer, sinks into parasitical alcoholism when he is not pomading his hair; Arya is the lustful Hindu fundamentalist who later tries to rape her, and almost everyone Meera encounters in the Male Universe is always ready to exploit her. Sandhya, her sister-in-law who is driven to suicide, and her friend Zaida, whose husband wants a second marriage, are among her female anchors and confidantes.
Therefore, some of the book8217;s vivid imagery 8212; including Meera8217;s attempt to walk, Woolf-like, into water and drown herself 8212; throws up no surprises. And we have already seen and experienced other aspects of women-tied-to-the-kitchen-sink in wonderful, explicit films such as Deepa Mehta8217;s Fire and Mahesh Bhatt8217;s Arth.
Yet, this is a very good read, especially because of Meera. In her, Suri has created an unforgettably honest narrator, building up her thoughts with pain, beauty and simplicity. And it is his careful insight into the mother-and-son relationship that makes this an outstanding book.
