Growing pains
This stunning novel is far from a simple story which ''reveals itself on its own, predictably.'' The author deftly draws us into exploring the momentous empty spaces between life and death, between overwhelming tragedy and regeneration in these times of insurgency, senseless violence and killings.
A bomb explodes in a university café, blasting to smithereens 19 young lives, the promise they held, and the dreams of the loved ones who survived their deaths. The last mother to enter the café and identify her dead son takes home his remains packed in a box. She also returns with a three-year-old boy, who was found in a small empty space amidst the carnage, miraculously alive and breathing.
As the little survivor grows up and tells his story, the past “barges into the present and shifts life from its centre.” The parents of the dead boy are powerless to prevent the grey pall of their loss from withering “all the dreams and seeds and fruits and flowers and bees” of the present in one sweeping stroke. The parents and society refuse to see the
surviving child as an individual in his own right. Made to take over where the dead son left off, the traumatised child refuses to speak or eat. It is as though the dead boy and he are all mixed up.
“The new one just lies in his empty space, just lies there, who notices? It’s the old one who is buried again and again and then resurrected each time.” Entangled in memories of someone else, the parents may tend to his physical needs, but emotionally they are not with him. The dead son’s presence continues to control the family’s lives.
The characters are powerfully portrayed. Their emotions, their motivation, strike us like that bomb blast, forcing us to rethink the enigma of the human condition. The surviving boy’s character shines through the bleak landscape of the book. He refuses to be negated by that one incident that becomes the driver and the keeper of the rest of his life, to languish as the ghost of someone else.
He gradually begins to eat, grow, go jogging in fresh air and even perform well in school. The father’s “overriding purpose” appears “to deride my audacity in claiming equality with his son.” Bitter and resentful, the father starts flagellating himself with all the hatred he has for a world he cannot come to terms with, willing himself into illness.
The surviving boy contains within himself “the seeds of love, roaming around, entranced amidst the villainies of hatred.” He lovingly nurses the father to health, who makes a gesture of affection at their parting. The surviving boy also begins to feel affection for a young woman, leading to a superlatively erotic lovemaking scene before a mirror. He goes forth to study at the same university where the son died in a bomb blast many years ago. “I am going to burn down fully that empty space to which I don’t belong, and complete the story and earn my release.”
The story comes full circle with another unexpected tragedy, mocking ghosts from the past and further denials of love and recognition. The author skillfully leaves unfinished threads and hints to uncurl their possibilities. Deep in our hearts, we hope that the surviving boy is left with a “novel vision of that empty space which says, here is the very beginning, free of all that is old and musty, waiting for everything to start from this point on, fragrant and fresh!”
The translator does a fine job and the English version reads smoothly. While it is impossible to retain every linguistic nuance of the original version, the complex ideas continue to assail our complacency with incredible power.
