Faber and Faber Limited, 1995
617 pages
If it's a juicy story you're after, look no further. Vikram Chandra's book "Red Earth and Pouring Rain" is positively bursting at the seams with stories. Literally every character (and there are a bewildering number of characters) has a story to tell. Like Russian Matrushka dolls, bigger stories open up to reveal smaller stories which in turn spill out even tinier stories and so on till you find your self flipping back and forth in the book just to keep track of who is who.
This is Chandra's first novel. His canvas is big, his strokes are bold and his style, though a bit reminiscent of Rushdie, is essentially Indian epic story-telling at its best. There are loud battles and heroic deeds interspersed with quiet historical commentaries. Rajput warriors conceived from magic ladoos stride the landscape along with Brahmin intellectuals and foreign mercenaries . Hindu priests quoting the Gita and English missionaries armed with Bibles view each other across a chasm of mutual incomprehension. Printers in Calcutta quote Shakespeare, monkeys weave tales on the typewriter and reincarnation and death are everywhere. Gods appear framed in myth and color. Ganesha and Hanuman enjoy a sporting bet while Yama the god of death, like the chorus to a song stuck in one's head, appears and reappears at regular intervals. From Europe come adventurers attracted to India's wealth and mystery and before they know it are forever captured in the history of this fascinating country. There is the introspective Frenchman La Borgne, the righteous missionary Sarthey, the contemptuous English officer Skinner and the Irishman George Thomas later known as Jahaj Jung who "attempts briefly to escape his destiny, the inertial velocity of his name" but ends up becoming a leader of armies in various princely kingdoms.
"Red Earth and Pouring Rain" (Chandra's title is taken from a poem of that name by a 4th century Tamil poet) is a novel that defies any specific genre. If there is indeed a main tale, it told by Sandeep, a wandering mendicant who in turn learns it from a female ascetic who had seen an eternity pass in the few drops of water cupped in her palm. It is also the story of Sanjay or Parashar, an Avadhi Brahmin, and his journey towards immortality. Reincarnated as a monkey in the present lifetime, he is shot by Abhay Misra, newly returned from attending college in the United States. As Abhay's parents nurse Sanjay back to health, the aged monkey regains human consciousness and begins to communicate with the Misras with an aid of an old typewriter. Enter Yama, god of death and Sanjay's oldest enemy, ready to carry him away. Through the intercession of gods Ganesh and Hanuman, Yama decides to give the monkey a sporting chance. Sanjay agrees in a Sheherzade-like fashion to tell a tale so replete with twists and turns and with so many characters and incidents that his audience (local kids and their families at first) would not be bored. As long as he can do that, he will not be carried away by death.
Effortlessly, almost seamlessly, we travel with Sanjay, the Brahmin to the past, through many time-doors, to bloody battlefields, to a particularly horrifying encounter with Yama in a cave where Sanjay manages to convince the god to grant him immortality. With Sanjay we enter the royal zenana to meet with Begum Sumroo the witch of Sardhana with her secret portions and books and with Sanjay we follow the career of Sikander, the young boy born of a Rajput princess and an Englishman, and who gradually fulfills a desperate destiny. In London, Sanjay reunites us with Dr. Sarthey, the son of the bigoted British preacher with strange tastes and strange powers. In a Jack-the-Ripperesque scene, complete with yellow fog and deserted streets, Sarthey reveals himself to Sanjay as the murderer the British policemen have been dogging for years. Contemporary tales flow from Abhay Misra. His stories are coming-of-age experiences, sex with fellow students, drugs on a mountain top and finally, the quintessential American experience-driving the vast expanse of the country in a dusty car with a girlfriend and another couple, each of whom also have a story to tell.
As Sanjay, Abhay and others spin their stories, the audience begins to swell and fill the maidan outside the house. Things begin to take political and religious overtones as any gathering in India must. Chandra's description of the crowds are hilarious. He is a master at taking a situation to it's conclusion and then slightly beyond, to the realms of the ridiculous, much to the reader's amusement.
As a writer, Chandra hooks his audience with two baits. First, there is his powerful use of language. His carefully constructed sentences express profound thoughts and complex emotions with startling clarity. Second, he possesses the storyteller's art of keeping his audience guessing. As the tales turn and twist like mountain roads, the audience is never quite certain where they will end up. Keep your wits about you when you read "Red Earth and Pouring Rain" unless you want to feel like that confused child, who having heard the entire Ramayana in one long session, asks his grandmother "Who was Rama?".
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