A twinning of two distant traditions

The author, a physicist with one foot in philosophy, grafts the narrative that traces the life of Ajita and Moksh Malhar like a Mobius strip, writes Srajana Kaikini

In The Art of the Novel (1986), Milan Kundera wrote, “The novel dealt with the unconscious before Freud, the class struggle before Marx, it practised phenomenology (the investigation of the essence of human situations) before the phenomenologists.” He saw fiction as an ideal vehicle for certain types of philosophy, particularly post-modernism and existentialism. K Sridhar’s novel Ajita, named after the fifth-century Carvaka philosopher Ajita Kesakambali, attempts such a feat.

The novel follows in the steps of other books in recent times, such as Sharvay by Mansi/Meera Baindur and Following a Prayer by Sundar Sarukkai — both works of fiction written by philosophers. K Sridhar happens to be a physicist with one foot in philosophy and therefore brings to the Indian literary turn of the philosophers, an interesting structural ‘twist’.

The narrative, grafted like a Mobius strip, traces the life of Ajita and of Moksh Malhar, set several centuries apart. As if twinning across time, these two figures gain coherence only in the mind of the reader. Moksh, the son of an atheist communist growing up in a socio-politically shapeshifting Bombay of the 80s and 90s, floats through his life events with philosophy as his lifeboat. Ajita, growing up as a dissenter amidst Vedic scholars, son of independent-minded parents, is questioning everything around him from the language of ants to the relation between a yagna and the rains. Several questions, some existential but most just circumstantial, haunt the protagonists.

Ajita, in his zesty quest for clarity, systematises his ideas into the most radical school of thought in Indian tradition — the materialists or the Carvakas (which was of special interest to the Marxists in India). Moksh becomes an academic philosopher who continues to struggle with his radical inheritances and losses, and eventually begins to doubt his foundational views. The form of the book, written as a cipher, is the writer’s nod to the Oulipo group of writers, which includes the likes of Georges Perec and Italo Calvino.

The book has cultural references scattered throughout it that map the struggle of dissent in India across the past few decades. These include the mention of works by M N Roy, to contradictions within Marxism, the struggles of Marxist thought with feminism and Dalit politics, amongst others. Similarly, the conversations between Ajita and Somedutta and Makkali Ghoshala make for some memorable moments.

The idea of absence and causality is at the heart of South Asian philosophical systems. They underline the very foundations of the debates and differences between the Theistic schools of philosophy like Advaita, Mimama, Sankhya schools and the Atheistic schools, including the Buddhists, Jainas and Carvakas. Time, space, matter, persons, nature, and experiences are different for each of these thinkers, developed and fine-tuned over centuries through their own distinct methods. Similarly, these very same concepts are very distinct in science, which inherits its methods from natural philosophy in Europe. Thus, when a physicist decides to write the story of a Carvaka philosopher, it can be seen as a twinning of two distant traditions, both interested in matter and materialism. The writer overcomes this potential conflation with his own interest in the phenomenon of emergence, reflected in a memorable conversation between Moksh and a Buddhist seeker towards the end of the novel.

The woman characters Japa, Dhvani, Razia, Maya, Geet, Ananya, speak with a power and conviction often missing in Indian historical fiction. In Ajita, the writer makes space for the dissenting, thinking, searching voice, questioning why things are the way they are, always one step ahead of time. In Moksh, the writer creates a witness who is always at a loss with his life’s events, mostly floating with tides, losing loved ones, coping, as if time has gotten the better of him.

While one may question how much the book’s form impacts the story, the book leaves us with some haunting images, like that of a river in full spate, priests in tow chanting in the distance for the rains to subside while Ajita with the fisherfolk on the riverbanks, frantically tries to change the course of the water.