Books: Passion Play

Entertainment and the Arts

India Today
Sep 7, 1998

BOOKS
Passion Play

Sibal sculpts sharp yet emotional characters.

By Uma Vasudev

THE DOGS OF JUSTICE
BY NINA SIBAL
HARPER COLLINS
PAGE: 320 PRICE: Rs 225

After Yatra, her first book, Nina Sibal seems to have gone through an ordeal by fire. It has made her shed the unnecessary baggage of too many characters, angles and plots. In The Dogs of Justice, her second novel, she emerges chiselled and definitive. This is basically a love story. Shahnaz is in love with Aslam Sheikh, both Kashmiris involved in militant activity in the pre-1947 days. There is a misunderstanding. She marries instead Captain Ranbir Sahgal of the Indian Army -- called upon for help against Pakistani aggression by Maharaja Hari Singh.

Personal anguish forms the theme of the book. Sibal's characters do not yell out their agonies. The tone is muted. All through, Shahnaz sits like a stone goddess of alienation. For Ranbir, she is like "a vacant space between my hands. I longed to grab her from wherever she had fled". Or as Shahnaz says of herself, "Now I'm like an object lesson about how to escape from desire. If it was something of the flesh, many of us could do it."

There are several other sharply etched characters. Even sharper social issues carrying one into more contemporary involvements. Shades of personalities one knows merge into real-life events. There's a Medha Patkar somewhere in Amrita Shah and certainly Shabana Azmi in Shalini Bhagat.

Sibal speaks through different voices. Shahnaz, Ranbir, Monica, Adil Cossawala, the geologist -- almost as a relief from having to identify Shahnaz too positively. Sibal lets her burn in a passion which "at its deepest and purest can go nowhere, it can never be fulfilled". It leads Shahnaz to a final betrayal. Yet the book is remarkably free of guilt. There are no judgements. Only feelings. Passion is the thread weaving events into a tapestry of pain. This book is good enough to make you curious about what Sibal wrote earlier -- it made me read Yatra -- and what she may write next.

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