ANY BOOK THAT CARRIES the blurb “full of the sights, scents and sounds of India” runs the risk of colouring per-ceptions even before the first page is turned. To her credit, debutant novelist Suroopa Mukherjee does not fall victim to the tempta-tion of “exoticising” the primary location of her story: Varanasi. In fact, she starts on a determinedly ordin-ary note. The Senguptas are perfect paid-up members of India’s upper-middle class. One son, one daughter, both parents doctors, they are kindly, conformist, content. It takes the arrival of a young boy from an ashram in Varanasi to unbalance the equation. Avinash, the indestructible, is grave, luminous, unde-manding. And in his stillness lie questions the Senguptas would rather not face. There’s an engrossing story somewhere in Across the Mystic Shore, strung out in the inter-twined lives of four adults: Sameer and Van-dana (the Senguptas), and Abha and David. Vandana and Abha are best friends for longer than they care to remember; David, the Eng-lish student of Indology, is friend to one and lover to the other. Sameer is also Abha’s friend, whom she sets up with Vandana; Sameer and David, too, develop a conspirato-rial camaraderie that assumes its own inde-pendent coordinates. Through them, and two peripheral yet piv-otal characters, Mukherjee tries to tackle the big life-issues: childhood and marriage, wid-owhood and renunciation, motherhood and reconciliation. Cleverly constructed across 20 years and two cities, the saga ventures into taboo places family lore carefully avoids: The disgraced aunt, the rekindling of an old flame, the irrational hatred, the oppressive love. To that extent, Mukherjee succeeds, be-cause she brings sensitivity to her subject, and scholarship. Unfortunately, much of it gets mired in over-writing and a dated narra-tive device that does nothing for the story. But most of all, the novel cries out for skillful editing, especially in the first half. All too oft-en in the opening pages, Mukherjee falls back on the staples of pedestrian fiction. Sample this: “Mrs Chopra felt a thrill course through her veins” (page 4). And then there’s page 213 where, in one paragraph, Sameer “was angry”, “stared. in horror”, “felt sick in his heart”. Here, as in sundry other points in the narra-tive, the author’s telling us what her protago-nist feels, we don’t feel it ourselves. Perhaps the greatest flaw of the story-telling lies in the adoption of an omniscient narrator. It’s a de-vice that died with the 19th century. One of the first titles under Macmillan’s new imprint— in exchange of publication, the writer signs away world rights and advances in a non-negotiable contract that Hari Kun-zru calls the “Ryan Air” of Publishing — this could have been the definitive Varanasi novel. That slot is still up for grabs. That’s the good news.
