Wednesday, January 16, 2008

The Age of Shiva - a review

[A shorter version of this appears in this week’s Tehelka.]
What would happen if Shiva never returned from his ascetic wanderings? Would Parvati and her boy spend the rest of their years in each other’s company? Leading a life that had need for neither husband nor father, that was fulfilled and immutable and carefree? Or would time change things? Would she notice his lip sprouting, his voice beginning to crack...Would her own beauty fade, her step begin to waver, the wrinkles start to form over her skin? Perhaps he would want to strike out on his own, explore the world beyond, leave the forest and his aged, unattractive mother with it?
Two ancient myths, both involving the children of Shiva and Parvati, flow under the surface of the modern story told in Manil Suri’s beautiful new novel. The first is the myth of Ganesha’s creation – Parvati fashions him from the sandalwood paste on her body because she wants a sentinel who will be answerable only to her, not to Shiva – with its subtext of a father being excluded from the private world occupied by mother and son; the son even assuming at least one of the father’s responsibilities (that of protector). The other story, darker and more explicit, has the deformed Andhaka being separated from his parents and becoming smitten by his own mother when he grows to adulthood.

Central to Suri’s The Age of Shiva are the many facets of the mother-son relationship, including the ones that don’t normally come up in polite conversation. The book establishes its tone right away: its opening two pages contain a startlingly intense description of breastfeeding that emphasises the erotic connotations of the act – in fact, it’s only a few sentences in that you realise this isn’t a lovemaking scene but a prolonged, careful first-person account by a mother feeding her baby.
Your tongue pulls against my nipple. So practiced, so persuasive, so determined, how does it know what to do? I feel myself responding. Each tug brings liquid flooding up, engorging my breast, pushing out into your insistent mouth...There is nothing, I think to myself, as you let go and turn to me, filled. Nothing that can be as satisfying as this.
This opening passage drew me straight into the book – not so much because of the quality of the writing or characterisation (that came later), but because it was so intriguing that a male writer had been brave enough to attempt a scene like this, much less pull it off. (Pop psychology alert: I subsequently learnt that Suri is gay; I don’t know whether that's connected with his being more in touch with his feminine side than most men are, or having greater empathy for women, but it might be worth keeping in mind.) As this tender yet disturbing book unfolds, the magnitude of his achievement comes into full focus: he has created a credible female narrator-protagonist and convincingly portrayed the various dimensions of her life – as a supportive but often unhappy wife, a rebellious daughter and most crucially a single mother raising a son through the awkward phase of adolescence.

Meera’s story begins in 1955 when, still a teenager, she meets her future husband Dev, an aspiring singer. Happenstance determines her fate, a minor tryst and a misunderstanding leading to an early marriage, sending her down a path where she will continually be manipulated by both her father and her husband. Her son Ashvin – the baby in the prologue mentioned above – is only born halfway through the book, but the 200 pages that go before help prepare the ground for his appearance, allowing us to understand the vital role he plays in his mother’s otherwise lonely life (“You are the hope and the fire, the absolution, the purifier”). Meera’s love for her son is also intensified by memories of an earlier child she was forced to abort, and whose shadow continues to haunt her. She is never as happy or as fulfilled as when she spends time with Ashvin, but her emotional over-dependence on him can have murky consequences.

Suri has a real talent for shining new light on familiar everyday incidents and, conversely, for showing the mundane side of extraordinary happenings - a carefully planned suicide attempt, for instance. The chapter describing Meera’s first karwa chauth in her new home is one of the most vivid in the book – comical, even frightening in places, if you don’t know much about the custom – as is the passage detailing little Ashvin’s mundan ceremony, traumatic for both the child and his mother, yet considered a necessary rite of passage by everyone else (because “the hair a child is born with is unclean from the mother’s womb”). He is also very perceptive about the nature of relationships in a large family living in cramped quarters – the demands of adjustment, the power struggles, the rigid observance of societal customs, the subtle overtures made to a new bride by her brother-in-law.

At the same time, he doesn’t make an easy target out of orthodoxy. Meera’s father Paji is a determined rationalist, very liberal on the surface (and so anti-tradition that he snaps the heads off any youngsters who bend to touch his feet), but his influence has just as stifling an effect on her life as anything else does. There’s a passage that can stir conflicting emotions in a reader who feels squeamish about the tradition that requires an Indian woman to touch her husband’s feet on certain occasions: Paji promises to help Meera on the condition that she won’t perform this subservient act during a particular ritual, and she instinctively rebels against his diktat when the moment arrives; in this case, her way of asserting herself (and breaking free from his hold) is by doing something that many of us would see as demeaning to women.

The Age of Shiva is full of such little moments that blur the lines between tradition and modernity, conformity and defiance. Despite not being a hefty 900-pager, it’s a true epic,
full of interesting, well-delineated characters, moving between two very different cities, Delhi and Bombay, and spanning nearly three decades between the 1950s and the early 1980s (while also reaching back to include Partition and its effects on the psyches of millions of people). We stay with Meera throughout, but her story is placed against the backdrop of significant developments that transformed India – the wars against China and Pakistan, and the Emergency among them – and for the most part the personal and the political merge very well. It’s possible to argue that the book meanders in a couple of places and that a subplot involving Meera’s brother-in-law Arya, who works with a right-wing Hindutva organisation, detracts from the main thread of the story. But these are minor flaws in a work that is consistently engaging, compassionate and insightful.

18 comments:

  1. Sounds intriguing. I wonder why the book's called The Age of Shiva? From your review, the father appears to be a remote figure ; I'm guessing that's deliberate, of course, but even the absence must be strongly delineated in a way that invokes Shiva.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Not sure about that myself, but it's supposed to be the middle part in a Brahma-Vishnu-Shiva trilogy (Suri's The Death of Vishnu being the first one). Check this little write-up on Suri's website. The theme of asceticism, which he mentions, certainly runs through the novel, though it applies more to Meera's life than anyone else's.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Oh - Manil Suri actually wrote another book! I wonder if he teaches mathematics anymore hehe. Incidentally, he teaches in the same university I did my masters from and from what I've heard from friends, he sucks hehe. Maybe thats why he turned to writing.

    I find his book classical NRI type books, which unfortunately I don't enjoy. Your review has convinced me I won't enjoy this one either.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Supremus: don't know what you mean by "classical NRI type book". Sounds like one of those sweeping classifications people sometimes make about diaspora writing, without looking at a work on its own terms. Anyway, there's nothing "classically NRI" (in whatever sense I understand that term) about this one - he's more perceptive about middle-class life in India than many homegrown Indian writers would be.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Very very happy to hear that Manil Suri has a new book out. The Death of Vishnu was superb. There was a passage in it, describing one of the protagonists eating Paani Puri and the description was soo vivid, that the "taste" of the verse is still with me

    Incidently, I bought the book because of the inside backcover which had this B/W pic of Manil Suri. I found him really hot and now you had to tell me he is gay. Sigh!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Hi Jabberwock,
    Thanks for this review. I'm always intrigued by (naturally attracted to, even) films/books that deal with conformity -- so to put -- in a sensitive manner, without (to borrow your words) making an easy target out of it. Thrusting a strict rationalist/liberal point of view in one's work sort of alienates it from, um, the "real world," whatever that means.

    Not sure if that made me come off as someone who's "closet-regressive," (frankly, words like 'progressive' and 'regressive' often don't make sense to me) but I hope it's just the crude way in which I expressed it!

    ReplyDelete
  7. I got a bit confused after I read your response to Space Bar's comment. There's some subversiveness (or rather, an alternate way of rendering) in "linking" Vishnu to the phase of Death and Shiva to the phase of Life. But then, that completes the cycle without letting any scope (of any alternate way of rendering) in the third novel.
    In that light, Suri's post-script note (in the write-up that you've linked to) on what he could have done makes more sense. It's probably because the entity of Brahma isn't traditionally as significant a God figure as the other two are. In which case, I wonder what he would come up with in his next novel.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Your review intrigues me to actually find why is it called The Age of Shiva. But, the description about Meera's father being liberal makes me think about Sati rather than Parvati. More so because its an arranged marriage that happened out of coincidence unlike through penance by Parvati.The mother-son duo description might be more about Parvati though.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Hi Jai,

    Can't comment on Suri being in touch with his feminine side on account of his being gay. I feel that these are standard cliches used in the media nowadays , probably somebody really needs to ask or interview a gay to get some insight into these things. That too depends if the guy really understands the whole theory.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Shwet: I know you didn't mean it this way, but your "somebody really needs to ask or interview a gay to get some insight into these things" has the effect of making gays seem like exotic or otherworldly beings who have never been interviewed or subjected to analysis!

    I'm wary of the cliche-trap myself, but I think it's likely that homosexuals, by virtue of being marginalised in many ways, might have greater empathy for other groups that face similar problems (women in traditional societies, for example).

    Sangeetha: yes, there is a reference to Daksha and Sati as well. Btw, I'm also suddenly thinking of Amit Chaudhuri's very funny short story "The Wedding", an irreverent take on the Shiva-Parvati wedding.

    ReplyDelete
  11. General alert for anyone who's in Delhi and interested: The book launch is at 7 pm January 22 at the Silver Oak, India Habitat Centre. I'm going to be in conversation with Manil Suri as part of the event. (Am not usually very comfortable with this sort of thing but I liked the book so much that when the nice lady at Penguin called and asked if I would do it, I couldn't help saying yes.) I can't promise a scintillating discussion or anything, but do drop in if you can. Preferably after confirming your attendance at events@in.penguingroup.com.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Zero: I think you might also be interested in Saeed Mirza's Ammi. (Mirza is a staunch Leftist and rationalist who admits to being strongly influenced by the Sufi tradition!) Will put up a profile/review on him soon...

    ReplyDelete
  13. The Death of Vishnu was bought from a book shop called Select in Bangalore that I used to frequent. The only thing that led me to buy it was the title. And considering the book shop is really small(one room and very low ceilings and once I even got locked in when the owner did not notice me inside), I thought that this was not a very popular book. As it turns out there are people who have read it and the author has a website to boot. Definitely the next book on my stack of unread books is going to be The Life of Shiva.

    ReplyDelete
  14. Fascinating! I love literary period work. Haven't read The Death of Vishnu, but from his website got an idea of the story, though the Age of Shiva attracts me more. Have you have read The Death of Vishnu? If so, which one did you like more?

    ReplyDelete
  15. Jai: I think your explanation is quite lucid and easy for anybody to understand . Marginalised communities can emphathise with each other. We can certainly hope that they do , it would make the world a better place to live in apart from being a comforting thought.

    ReplyDelete
  16. your description of the first two pages is beatifully put. and the first two pages are stunning!

    am in the middle of reading the book and stumbled upon your blog thanks to space bar.

    ReplyDelete
  17. Hi, thank you for your review of Age of Shiva, but I don't think your review did justice to the task of a reviewer. It is full of rhetorics and it lacked pointed discussions about specific points-- it is, if I may say, what gives bad name to book reviewing in India. How can you not mention the bad grammar, and misprints, and just write some colourful sentences to review a book full of colourful, adjective-laden sentences? The reviewer's task is a serious one and one shouldn't make a mockery of it. You should read the review of Age of Shiva by Kalpish Ratna in Outlook. Now, `they' have got the guts to say what most Indian reviewers--- mostly lazy to properly analyze, dumb to even spot grammatical mistakes, and oozing about getting invited to literary events--- cannot. It is not just about different tastes of reviewers, it is about sloppiness in writing and publishing that reviewers anywhere else would have been keen to point out.

    ReplyDelete
  18. Suri doesn't make Meera an entirely sympathetic character. She isn't grateful for her father's kindness, she is cruel to her husband and she smothers and sexualizes her son. She fails to appreciate the underlying value of tradition (i.e. respect for others) and fails to take advantage of the modern (i.e. opportunity for career and education).

    ReplyDelete