Books: Spiritual Story

This is not only Anu Majumdar's first novel, but the first book I've come across which is specifically billed as a new age novel. Mark Tully in his charming introduction offers a clue to a new age novel, exhorting us to go beyond the materialistic and consumeristic dominant culture and "to return to the search for the eternal wisdom". This short novel does succeed, to an extent, in doing that in a style which is spare, evocative, poetic. However, it offers a pleasant and painless read.

Majumdar, who lives in Auroville, is better known as a dancer-choreographer, but she is also a poet with one collection, Mobile Hour, to her credit. Indeed, both poetry and dance seem to intermingle in this novel. The protagonist, Maitreyi, is a dancer who is on the road to self-discovery. In the process, she stumbles upon her ancient affinity with her namesake, the Maitreyi of the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad. In the Upanishadic story, Maitreyi is left behind when Yajnavalkya leaves home for the forest. But, according to another legend, Maitreyi follows him too, undertaking a parallel spiritual voyage until she meets him again as his equal and partner. The novel uses this legend and counterposes it with the modern Maitreyi's quest. Only, Yajnavalkya this time is a French architect called Yves Broca! The most interesting portions of the book, perhaps, have to do with dance. Maitreyi uses dance as the medium to convey her experience of spiritual transformation.

Some questions and problems, however remain. For one, the parallel stories are too predictable and comfortable as are the recurring coincidences and premonitions. The ending is too cliched -- when Maitreyi and Yves rush into each other's arms. Yet, all told, this precious little book is to be welcomed. Let us hope a new genre of fiction emerges which combines artistic inspiration with spiritual integrity.

AUTHORSPEAK: NAMITA GOKHALE
Glimpses of Kumaon: An overpowering obsession with the hills

Fourteen years after making waves with Paro, Namita Gokhale remains the same -- candid, witty and sophisticated, disguised under a disarmingly adolescent smile, "In Paro I was making fun of Delhi's socialites." she says, "Delhi is basically a small town with large pretensions." Her bookshelves are lined with a confusing variety of books: Han Suyin's Wild Swans cohabit with Ouspensky's Tertium Organum and Kiran Nagarkar's Cuckold. But under her cosmopolitan manner, Gokhale's persona remains that of the Kumaoni Brahmin woman she is. The 42-year old writer who grew up in Nainital remains obsessed by the air of the mountains. All of her work seems to be stuck with her personality as a Kumaoni Brahmin girl. "My way of looking at the world remains trapped in that primary identity; once you start loving the hills they hold on to you." Her earlier novel A Himalayan Love Story, in which she traced the lives of two star-crossed lovers who grew up in Nainital, bears testimony to her overpowering sentiment for the region. However, she has no particular stylistic slant, the only common thread running through her writing being "a bizarre, macabre sense of humour". And her intention has always been to "turn the stereotypical romantic novel on its head".

Her admiration for the four Pahari women -- Shivani, the well-known Hindi novelist, her grandmother Shakuntala Pande, Tara Pande and Jeeya (Laxmi Pande), whose lives she traces in her fourth work, Mountain Echoes: Reminiscences of Kumaoni Women (Roli Books) released recently -- is evident from the manner in which she speaks of them. "Rooted in that context, against Kumaon's strict Brahminical backdrop, these women showed a remarkable determination to keep their personalities intact." Gokhale was helped in this experiment by her aunt Meenakshi Joshi, who conducted a lot of the interviews, partially in Kumaoni and Hindi. It was extremely difficult to weave together a fabric out of disjointed threads "because memories are essentially very fragile things, these women were very reluctant to go back into their pasts," she says.

As to why her work is very woman-oriented, she feels a woman's life is "reflected in the rhythm of the seasons, not like men whose stories are rooted in wars, territories and legislation". She is currently working on a ghost story that is once again set in the hills and should be out later this year. In Gokhale's world, the misty mountains forever remain an eternal backdrop.