Two pages into the book, or perhaps just a paragraph into the book, you know you are hooked – not in the way an addict is pleasurably hooked to the drug, but in the way a helpless fish is hooked by the cruel inescapable claw that hung innocuously with bait. And you know you will read it cover to cover in a day, despite all other work. Hoping that this irresponsibility of yours, this travesty of your usual route is a one-time affair and will be forgiven.
And now to the book. One of those days when mother was around, and wanted something to read. We Malayalis like to think that Arundhati Roy is from Kerala, and we all liked her-God-of-Small-Things. Let’s see if the new book was available and what it had to say. It was supposed to be good. Anyway the first one had won the Booker. “She writes well,” we told each other. Now what was the title of the new book?
Yes, the library had a copy and yes, it was available for loan. Wonder of wonders, a new book by a famous author was still not “on hold” by anyone. Great. But the library spelt trouble because the book could not be found. Why did I search for it in the shelves then? And why did it get found? Still trouble. Because the book was in fact on hold. By two others. But they agreed to let me read first if I read quickly. Like my friends let me read ‘The da Vinci Code.’ Reading fast is a useful skill.
And when the reading began, there was no ending till the author said so. Because you lived with the characters and what was more, they lived with you, in you. Starting with Anjum-who-was-Aftab, and Saddam Hussein-who-was-a-Hindu, a nameless girl who became Zainab, through Tilottama, Naga, Musa and Garson Hobart, and culminating in Udaya who became Miss Jebeen the Second. The book is an haunting story of hope and despair and the entire spectrum between the two. Delhi is where it all begins, in a warm comfortable home that can no longer contain the discordant notes in Aftab’s mind and voice. But the story is about Kashmir and the “Indo-Pak” (does this two-bit expression ever need explanation?) that’s within all of us. And about what happens to women and children in a war, even an underground war.
Roy’s narrative style is as unforgettable as her story is unforgiving. When a car has to raise its bonnet and boot for a routine bomb-check at a hotel, it seems to be a girl raising her skirts (Shamelessly? Helplessly? Could the two be the same?) When Miss Jebeen the First dies of a bullet wound it is a little rose above her left ear.
There are political references that are clearly left unclear. But who in India will not recognize the Poet-Prime Minister or the Sikh economist Prime Minister? But how does it matter? To whom does it matter? And as Roy asks, do those to whom it matters matter?
This is a book that stays with you. I have already decided to read it again a year later. Not because of its searing insights into politics and psychology but because it speaks in a voice that’s truthful but sensitive. Most importantly, it is intense but does not enjoy the narration of angst. And there is Miss Jebeen.
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