Animal's People

Animal’s People is a beautiful, heartbreaking and wonderful story about one of the modern era’s most terrible tragedies.  I knew very little about the Bhopal/Union Carbine Disaster that took place in India in 1984 until i looked it up mid-read.  And although this novel is set in the fictional Indian city of Khafpur, a very similar thing has happened in at about the exact same time to this community.

Animal is born days before the disaster strikes.  One night, there is a problem with the chemical plant in town (owned by the Kampani).  Poisonous gas is released into the streets, immediately killing thousands of residents, including Animal’s parents and family.  The effects linger, tormenting and killing thousands more with respiratory and nerve damage, and these effects continue on for years.  Animal, our narrator, is struck with crippling disfigurement in his childhood, which the doctors attribute to the disaster, including the American doctoress Elli, who has set up a clinic to help those sickened by the disaster. 

The novel’s backdrop is the ongoing court case.  The Amrikan Kampani has eluded legal consequences in the nearly 20 years since the disaster struck.  Apparently by bribing Indian authorities, it has paid no damages, had no assets seized, and has not been tried.  The Kampani has not even cleaned the contaminated groundwater at the site of the old chemical plant, or told authorities what exactly was in the poisonous gas – claiming “trade secrets.”  As with every great book these events are only a part of the story, but this backdrop particularly resonated with me.  This novel should be read by all those politicians who have recently been claiming we should abolish or seriously downsize the EPA to enable corporations more freedom.

Animal is another great reason to read this novel.  He narrates the book in a series of tape recordings, to be later transcribed and translated into English – a crazy vibrant jumble of Hindi/Urdu/French/English at that.  Although he is vulgar, sex obsessed, and selfish, he is also a deeply caring, long-suffering, and hopeful supporter of his desperate community.  And while occasionally Indra Sinha was a bit heavy handed on the “finding the humanity in the Animal” theme, I was ultimately brought to tears by Animal’s story.

The God of Small Things

There are so many reasons to love this book.  I finished two days ago and I am still thinking about it: the imagery, the characters, the narrative structure, the tragedy.  I peeked and read some of the reviews of this book posted on GoodReads, and have to conclude that apparently I really like books that many find "too depressing."  Calling The God of Small Things "too depressing" is like saying you hate King Lear (or insert your favorite Shakespearean tragedy) because it too is depressing. 

Arundhati Roy begins her story at the end, and ends the story in the middle.  I'm not sure I have read another book with quite the same narrative structure - her bold choice ended up being perfect.  The last chapter of this book is the missing piece that elevates the novel, that makes two main characters become real at last, and ties together the themes of time (For The Time Being v. Later v. Not Ever), forbidden love (contrasted with the provocative interaction between twins Rahel and Estha), and tradition. 

Of course, all that would not be possible without her incredible writing style.  She sets the scene at the beginning so well that it begs to be read aloud:

It was raining when Rahel came back to Aymenem.  Slanting silver ropes slammed into loose earth, plowing it up like gunfire.  The old house on the hill wore its steep, gabled roof pulled over its ears like a low hat.  The walls, streaked with moss, had grown soft, and bulged a little with dampness that seeped up from the ground.  The wild, overgrown garden was full of the whisper and scurry of small lives.  In the undergrowth a rat snake rubbed itself against a glistening stone.  Hopeful yellow bullfrogs cruised the scummy pond for mates.  A drenched mongoose flashed across the leaf-strewn driveway.

For me, there was a timelessness to this story.  The themes were ancient, but the setting refreshing and new.  It was a Great Story, as described in the chapter about the kathakali danders - the kind that is familiar and though you know how it ends, you you listen as though you don't.  That is what makes this such an excellent novel and well-deserving winner.

The White Tiger

This weekend I finished The White Tiger.  I found this to be an engaging and interesting read, but it took me a little bit of contemplation to decide whether this novel seemed worthy of a Man Booker Prize.  However, I found myself recommending the book to others before completely sorting out my feelings about it, so that strongly indicates that I enjoyed it.

The most compelling aspect of this story, about an Indian boy (Balram) who grows up in poverty and claws his way out, is the contemplation of what it means to be free versus what it means to be trapped.  Balram discusses freedom frequently in this novel, and believes himself to be a free person after making the life-altering decision to murder his employer.  This is a story of the many ways a person can be trapped or free, and what sacrifices and humiliations a person can endure to move from caged to free.

Adiga, through Balram, describes dilemma of the caged/free dichotomy most clearly though use of the metaphor of the "Rooster Coop" - a pile of cages in which chickens and roosters are packed waiting for slaughter:

"On the wooden desk above this coop sits a grinning young butcher, showing off the flesh and organs of a recently chopped-up chicken, still oleaginous with a coating of dark blood.  The roosters in the coop smell the blood from above.  They see the organs of their brothers lying around them.  They know they're next.  Yet they do not rebel.  They do not try to get out of the coop." 

Balram and other impoverished low-caste Indians are stuck in the coop not because of a physical cage, but through bonds of family, duty, and dignity.  In order to break out of his cage, he must sacrifice these bonds - through violating his sense of duty to his employer, sacrificing the health and lives of his entire extended family (who serve as a hostage against his loyalty to his employer), and his own sense of fairness and dignity in murdering his employer who has never directly harmed him and has, for the most part, treated him with more care and respect than any other person he knows.  Balram's choices do not sit easily with me (and they seem very difficult for him), but I struggle to condemn him.  This moral ambiguity, the impossibility of justice in Balram's India is what has stuck with me from this novel.

The Inheritance of Loss

Through this novel, Kiran Desai transported me to a part of the world I had never spent any time thinking about - Northeastern India in the foothills of the Himalayas.  Her words evoked a fantastic sense of place and landscape that I really enjoyed.  And through the narrative structure of storytelling and memories she creates compelling and deeply flawed but fascinating characters.  This was a great novel.

The opening and closing sequences, describing the view from the central house overlooking the Himalayan Mountains, acted as a beautiful metaphor for many of the book's themes: 

"All day, the colors had been those of dusk, mist moving like a water creature across the great flanks of mountains possessed of ocean shadows and depths.  Briefly visible above the vapor, Kanchenjunga was a far peak whittled out if ice, gathering the last of the light, a plume of snow blown high by the storms at the summit."

For a person living in Seattle, the image of an almost corporeal mist hiding and revealing a stunning mountain resonates immediately.  And on those days when the Mountain (in my case, Mount Rainier) is exposed and lit by the evening light, there is nothing more beautiful, humbling, and inspiring.

 In this novel, Mount Kanchenjunga's appearance is a symbol for the discovery of deep and permanent truths, including love, family, and community.  We follow four main characters: Sai, an orphaned teenage girl on the verge of womanhood and independence; her grandfather the Judge, who has for most of his life rejected his Indianness in favor of Englishness; their cook, man who feels deep loyalty to the Judge and Sai, but is constrained by class and poverty, and his son Biju, an illegal immigrant in New York City striving to obtain his piece of the American dream. The novel is set against the backdrop of a sometimes violent uprising by Nepali-Indians demanding a separate and independent state.  Sai falls in love with a young man who chooses the movement over their love, and betrays her - a decision that torments him as he struggles with his conflicting feelings.

But for me the most interesting characters were those who attempted to reject their Indianness.  In their own ways both the Judge and Biju attempt to slough off their Indian culture and heritage in favor of Western ideals and dreams.  For the Judge, who studies in England and is appointed by the British before Independence, the India he sees is dirty, ignorant, classless.  He ultimately rejects Indianness to the greatest extent possible - from food and customs to his own wife and daughter.  Biju on the other hand rejects his Indianness only through perceived need.  He chases a dream of wealth and easy life that eludes him in New York.  Their decisions leave both the Judge and Biju miserable and cut off from family and community.  Only in the end, when all that both have worked for and accumulated has been lost, stolen, or decayed, does Mount Kanchenjunga reveal itself at the reunion of Biju and his father:

"The five peaks of Kanchenjunga turned golden with the kind of luminous light that made you feel, if briefly, that truth was apparent.  All you needed to do was to reach out and pluck it."