| |
BOOKS
Heroism in Toturpuram
Lives of quiet desperation
burn brightly in Badami's new novel
By
Anita Nair
In one of his books Henry Miller asks, "Who
is a hero?" "Primarily," he declares, "one who has
conquered his fears." By that definition, the true hero in Anita
Rau Badami's charming and lyrical second novel The Hero's Walk is Nirmala,
who in the book blurb is merely categorised as a "wife".
|
|
|
|
THE HERO'S WALK
By Anita Rau Badami
Bloomsbury
Price: £15.99
Pages: 359
|
|
There is Sripathi Rao, "aged fifty-seven,
father of two children (one dead), burnt out copywriter" and a man
given to writing countless letters to newspapers for the sheer pleasure
of seeing his byline pro bono publico in print. Then there's his lonely
spinster sister Putti who nurtures an abiding passion for Gopala, a very
unsuitable bachelor, and her bitter, utterly manipulative mother Ammayya.
And there is Rao's activist son Arun and his wife Nirmala. Together and
separate, in the Big House on Brahmin street in Toturpuram, a fictitious
town three hours away from Madras, they lead, to quote Thoreau, lives
of quiet desperation.
The novel begins with a phone call from Vancouver
informing Rao that his estranged daughter and her husband have been killed.
From that moment, the lives of the inmates of the Big House change. For
there is a catalyst-seven-year-old Nandana who retreats into silence after
her parents' death. It is then the novel begins to breathe, and grow in
stature from just another book to an exemplary one.
 Nandana
is brought to Toturpuram. Meanwhile, Rao is torn between keeping his job
and an all-consuming regret and guilt about the past. Nirmala, who had
until then been the docile wife, shrugs aside her fears and tries to cope
with little support from her husband or anyone else. Dealing with a child
who is still in a state of shock; with a mother-in-law who is vicious
and vulnerable in turns; with a sister-in-law who has lost almost all
hope of ever being married; with a house that's falling apart... Nirmala
sets about doing the right thing. Mending broken spirits and healing wounded
ones. Nirmala in her own words becomes "the hero". While Rao
remains a man who is "too proud and therefore not heroic".
In many ways, The Hero's Walk is like a painting
of a battle scene. Of the moment just when triumph is staring in the hero's
face. But what makes the picture striking is its wealth of matter: the
other principal warriors each fighting their own battles. Minor characters
who fill the spaces. The asides and corollaries. The seemingly irrelevant
but quaint details.
|
Excerpt
|
|
In a few hours the heat would hang over
the town in long, wet sheets, puddle behind peoples' knees, in their
armpits and in the hollows of their necks, and drip down their foreheads.
Sweaty thighs would stick to chairs and make rude sucking sounds
when contact was broken. Only idiots ventured out to work and, once
there, sat stunned and idle at their desks because the power had
gone off and the ceiling fans were still. It was impossible to bat
an eyelash without feeling faint. The more sensible folk stayed
at home, clad only in underwear, with moist clothes draped over
their heads and chests, drinking coconut water by the litre and
fanning themselves with folded newspapers.
|
Together, they add to the texture and to the
power of the hero's victory. And it is here that Badami triumphs. As a
writer who understands both human strengths and frailties and yet capitalises
on neither. Making her characters real rather than larger-than-life uni-dimensional
cut-outs.
If I have a quarrel with the book, it has to
do with Toturpuram the town. Badami, who was born in India and lives in
Vancouver, has tried to give it body and roads. But in many ways the town
resembles a section of Madras before it became Chennai and so she need
not have created a Toturpuram at all. Also the fact that while everyone
else speak idiomatic sentences, Nirmala alone occasionally lapses into
what by now has become a tiresome parody of the Indian accent: "simply-simply",
"big-big".
The book's blurb will have you believe that
this is a case of Joanna Trollope meeting Anita Desai, "an intimate
and moving family story", which is merely a reflection of the blurb
writer's need to classify the book. Anita Rau Badami writes like herself
and that is why The Hero's Walk is a little gem.
|
|
METRO TODAY
Web
Exclusives