Book Review: The Far Field

It's a tale of love & loss

This seems to be a good time for Indian writing in English. It’s heart-warming to see many new names speaking in a distinct voice and a style all their own, managing to knit the readers in the texture of the tale that they weave. Madhuri Vijay is one such with her first book, The Far Field, that lures, tempts, engages, and involves the reader in the tale of the protagonist Shalini.

Shalini, the only child of South Indian parents in Bengaluru, has a strange relationship with her parents. Her father is a mostly absentee father who loves his daughter but is too busy being the moneybags and businessman to give her or her mother any emotional closeness. The mother is not the cloying full-of-maternal-care mom but is hard, tough, caustic, vicious, mercurial, an “outrageous queen” with a “lightning tongue” whose term of endearment for her daughter is “little beast”. There are no overt signs of affection, no cuddles or kisses, but her caring shows in crazy weird embarrassing moments.

As different as chalk and cheese, to use the cliché, are the parents: he of the Miles Davis and Simon and Garfunkel variety who “refrained from making his usual speech about the irrationality of organised religion” when his wife lit the daily lamp in front of her idols. Such is the relationship in the household between “she, my incandescent mother, and I, her little beast.”

In such a scenario enters Bashir Ahmed, a travelling salesman from Kashmir, with his beautiful wares that are accompanied by a trove of tales for the mother and daughter. Hardly anything is bought but it is the beginning of an unspoken relationship between the mother and the salesman, an intense electric bond that even the young Shalini can sense yet cannot put a name to.

Over the years, the association comes to an end: Shalini grows and her mother, lost in her own secret lonely world, kills herself. The hazy memories of Bashir Ahmed with clues about his village from the stories that he had narrated make the restless Shalini impulsively head to Kashmir in her quest for the man who meant something to her mother. In her mind, her mother’s suicide is somehow connected to the strange relationship she had with the Kashmiri and she wants to unearth the mystery to lay her demons at rest and bring the mourning to a close.

Kashmir, specially Kishtwar, where she reaches, is like a different country for her, with a different ethos, landscape, culture. The volatility of the region becomes apparent to her when she is taken in by a local family while her quest for Bashir Ahmed is on. Despite basic communication between them and her, she starts thinking of them as her family: one that she never had in Bengaluru. The bonds are nurtured and, as they grow roots, her temporary hosts Abdul Latief and Zoya locate Bashir Ahmed’s village where she moves. This is her new family now: Bashir Ahmed’s quiet wife, son, daughter-in-law and grandson. Bashir Ahmed is considered dead with no one forthcoming about any information about him.

Shalini bonds with Amina, Bashir’s daughter-in-law, like a close sister. She adapts to the village life with great ease, more comfortable milking cows than she was in the westernised ethos of her Bengaluru home. Waiting for the right time to meet Bashir Ahmed who she chances upon serendipitously, she gets mired in not only the local politics, history, and the relationship between the villagers and the army but also emotionally with Riyaz, Amina and Aaqib.

Her closeness still does not make her an insider with the villagers. Her well-meaning attempts at helping her newly acquired friends, however, backfire, leaving her seething. Her well-meaning attempts to help her Kashmiri friends end up having dangerous consequences for the families she has come to love.

Madhuri Vijay’s book comes at a topical time with Kashmir being in the news. It lays open the situation on the ground with a direct narration with no ‘bad men’ but everyone being a victim of prevailing circumstances in the larger picture. It is a story with plenty of sentiment but no heavy mawkish emotion. There’s an unstated yet deeply felt warmth, love, attraction, and a shivery expectancy thanks to the masterful use of words by the author.

One would have thought the technique of juxtaposing the past and the present in each successive chapter would get confusing but it is not so. In fact, it helps the story to flow along while keeping a grip on it, leading to a smooth narration. The characters become real, each one with a distinct personality and complexity.

The story drags on a bit in the middle and could have been pruned somewhat to lend a crisper narrative. But that is not to take away from the readability of the book. However, there is a sense of dissatisfaction towards the end; it’s as if a happier problem-solving end would have been more gratifying and reassuring. But well, that wouldn’t have been real. Like in real life. In short, go read this absorbing and remarkable first book. And look out for future writing from Madhuri Vijay.