JOIN USKiran Nagarkar has long marked himself as the balladeer of a city imploding into pieces which gather and morph into new shapes even as it is “falling... falling... falling” (in his own words).
Rest in Peace is a mockery of a title for this sequel to the capers of Ravan and Eddie through the feisty city of Mumbai, in all its crumbling sheen and resilience. This duo who have passed into the folklore of Indian English fiction as cult figures of slum dreams, or chawl dreams to be precise, are back with all their whacky vigour, lusty humour and philosophical absurdities spreading out the epic expanse of this unbeatable trilogy. Truly, Nagarkar has gathered around himself a devoted fan following although the media glitz has passed him by in spite of his unrelentingly gritty writing. Despite his pitiless pen that pumps the tortuous vignettes of chawl life into the readers’ mindscape, we lap up the picaresque spirit of this novel.
The episodic narration is not just a fictional form but a way of life for Ravan and Eddie — footloose, talented but poor dilettantes with Bollywood dreams and tunes tinting their sleep in Technicolor. They are the extras who rose to super stardom only to crash into the abyss of poverty and joblessness through a story line that could be the envy of any Bollywood money spinner.
Nagarkar has spun a filmy yarn in more ways than one. The rags-to-riches plot and its reversed version are older than Deewar or any other Salim-Javed script. Ravan and Eddie literally ascend from the chawl to the dizzying heights of Mumbai life. CWD chawl is as sacred as Malgudi, and in spite of its impossibly collapsible condition and its revolting stench, the quaint denizens have been with us ever since the days of Shree 420 or a Pyaasa.
Seasonal changes in politics and culture throw their shadows on Ravan and Eddie as they graduate in life from survivors to seekers. There are seductive peeps into the making of Bollywood film music in all its creative highs and treacherous lows. The book feeds on our collective memories of cinema and spawns and spoofs more cinema. Black and white dreamy frames of the 50s cut into the daredevil daku films of the 1970s. The great Indian fantasy called Bollywood and the greater Indian reality of mafia slip into each others’ clothes, preying upon all and sundry, sprinkling the life of the ordinary with stardust and corpses.
The garish palette soaks the grey lives of Ravan and Eddie in the colour tones of a Jeetendra-Sreedevi starrer. But melancholy deepens the hues through Pieta and the stammering musician Meenakshi Venkataraman entices us into the vagaries of musical genius. Nagarkar’s inventiveness, wit and irony make the characters and situations seem infinitely familiar but strangely distant and unreal at the same time. The narration becomes cinematic as is Nagarkar’s wont, in its pace and spirit. As the author broods in his afterword (which is in itself a piece of delightfully tongue-in-cheek prose), “Time to say goodbye to them. Who knows where they will turn up next, in novels, serials or in movies? God willing, we’ll meet again.” Bollywood may will it too!
Everyday sorrows, deaths, betrayals and losses come and go at a breathless pace and we have no choice but to hop onto this exhilarating, roller coaster ride in yet another adventure of survival. For theirs is an ever swinging fight to stay alive, to keep away the wolf at the door. Their journey from being the composers of magical musical notes to that of highly imaginative undertakers, offering customised funeral services is a new high in paradoxical imagination. Steeped in corruption and criminality, everyday life in Mumbai is surreal and fantastic and Nagarkar captures the homemade variety in all its stinging terror in his typical deadpan tone.
A consummate storyteller, Nagarkar’s style does not come in the way of a superbly structured plot. Words and sentences are fused with the destiny of the story and although you are not expected to be struck by a dazzling vocabulary or mind blogging imagery, there are times when the reader just gets caught in places and hovers there awhile savouring the sheer beauty of imaginative eloquence. The plot revels in many climactic moments, blending the terrible and the farcical in bizarre pyrotechnics, and you fold up in terrified, helpless laughter. If the prequel, The Extras, was reviewed Walter Mitty like, it is the Chaplinesque touch that enchants you here.
Many a time you dissolve into a tearful smile only to tremble at the thought that satire could not get more human than this. Ravan and Eddie have been a part of that sacred and beautiful covenant the author has made with his readers. We do not know if they will come back again, but whether they do or not, they have a niche unparalleled in the fictional world of India. And this reader feels blessed, fortunate and happy that they have happened in her life.
Rest in Peace
Kiran Nagarkar
Harper Collins
2015, pp 376 Rs 599