To somebody for whom Mathematics is as Greek as it gets, the first few pages of this book are rather confidence undermining. A girl who is just about 10 thinks to herself that she is 10 years, two months, 13 days, two hours, 42 minutes and six seconds old. She is a girl who “sings numbers in her head”. Numbers to her are a “lullaby”. She makes number songs and thinks 512 is a ‘warm number’.
As long as Lalwani sticks to describing Rumi and her prodigious talent, the book is rivetting. The story is about Rumi’s struggle with her identity (she being an undeclared genius). Being brought up in grey Cardiff by a father— a professor of maths himself— and a control freak, and a mother who leads an isolated existence, far from her Indian roots, only adds to her trouble.
Her strict father pushes her like parents of prodigal children are wont to and her mother is only a silent, suffering witness. Rumi, being a child like any other, reads Enid Blyton when she is supposed to be doing complex sums and indulges in kleptomania till she is caught.
The narrative stumbles when the author begins describing the family’s isolation and the racism they face. Here, the novel gets mired in cardboard characters (the evil whites and the poor browns), ragging-happy classmates, immigrant dilemmas and longings, their typical angst swirling with national pride ... the works. These have been portrayed so many times in so many books and movies that today it can be quite happily declared the most overused plot cliche ever.
As the book reaches midway, the author concentrates more on Rumi’s coming-of-age traumas, her new-found freedom at Oxford and her desperate attempts at leading a normal adolescent’s life. And this is when the novel picks up pace and becomes dramatically more interesting.
Rumi’s sexual instincts are awakening. She wants to soak in the magic of pop music and wear trendy clothes but maths is always intruding. There is a lot of humour and sensitivity in the author’s description of Rumi’s heart-wrenching loneliness, her falling in love with a Pakistani and Rumi’s mother’s hilarious yet somehow sad attempt at warding off sex-related queries. (Only white people have sex. ‘Our’ babies are born differently, she tells Rumi.)
‘Gifted’ is gifted in parts. The rest is not genius material.
Book: Gifted
Author: Nikita Lalwani
Publishers: Penguin India
Price: Rs 395
Pages: 273
