Cry me a river...

There is something so charming about a bird and an elephant or a dog and a cheetah being friends with each other. Thousands of videos on the internet document these odd couples and friends in the wild. The charm of Somnath Batabyal’s latest novel is somewhat similar. Fundamentally, it is a rousing and expansive story of friendship and love among three friends, set during the turbulent years of insurgency and army occupation in Assam. At first, the love that the three boys, Rizu, Rana and Samar share, appears too incredulous to believe. Rizu comes from a family sympathetic to the ULFA cause, Rana is the son of a brigadier stationed in Assam to fight the insurgents, and Samar’s parents are refugees from Bangladesh.

In fiction, however, borders and biases can be more easily crossed and redefined; which is another achievement of the novel. As the story progresses, the three characters develop a bond unheard of, and through the eponymous ‘red river’ of violence, navigate their adolescent years with collective strength: until cataclysmic events disrupt their respective journeys.

Circles of life

Batabyal is an excellent storyteller. The book opens with the arrival of a television set — a day before the India versus West Indies final at the 1983 cricket World Cup. The whole village comes together to watch the match, and through its many emotional jolts and shocks, the voice of the community is rendered very well. The first half of the novel goes on to establish interpersonal and communal relationships and is quite engaging — the descriptions of cricket matches and adolescent feuds are especially enjoyable — but since the novel is fundamentally about rupture, the second half steadily becomes heartbreaking.

In the second half, the novel grows in tandem with its characters. The story is primarily told through Samar’s exiled family, which is on the run — crossing national borders or laying low in temporary settlements at the mercy of generous but selfish patrons. Large swathes of time pass through the chapters, and through multiple voices and perspectives, Batabyal’s narrative of loss and heartbreak becomes retrospective. And perhaps also morosely reticent. This is, admittedly, the only way to document and process loss: to allow the power of time and the fabricative protection of memory to blunt the force of emotions.

Time's tireless march

As the novel progresses, the personal becomes more muted and the scope of the narrative takes the form of a (fringe) political thriller. The prose is tauter but also smattered with a lot more coincidences and theatrics. Tensions rise in the Northeast, as the ULFA cadres and military both become more ruthless in their operations. In the realm of fiction, however, some “heroic” events and stunts are pulled off as the three friends’ lives intersect again and again. In one of the most curious coincidences, a protagonist is allowed to covertly meet an army official during a dangerous mission. But just like rivers, which despite their meandering, fall into the sea, Rizu, Rana and Samar always come together, despite differences and distances. This is, however, not to be romanticised… Time has somewhat addled their memories, even as they remember each other with fondness, but its tireless march has forced the three friends to make desperate choices.

Notably, Batabyal manages to expose the systemic calumny of the violence validated under the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act (AFSPA) in an episode wherein more than 20 innocent youngsters are gunned down by the army men accidentally. He also hints at the origins and functions of insurgency in Assam — sustained via international and local support. The novel raises important questions and suspicions by simply narrating these stories — like a festering wound exposed for the readers’ inspection.

Returning to the past

In its most profound segments, the novel often meditates on the impossibility of returning to a past that is lost. But it also makes us realise that “putting our faith in the impossibility of recurrence allows us to let go.”

An ethnographer and anthropologist by training, Batabyal ably registers the sociological and cultural differences between ordinary citizens living in conflicted spaces and times, and their everyday lives that are performed around the imminence of violence. However, some parts of the novel seem too driven by the narrative and not the historical reality of this conflicted land. Batabyal writes about how it is in stories that our lives and pasts flow, and how the ones we lose to this endless cycle of violence around us are found in our words. “Rebirth is nothing but tradition... Rebirth is our stories. In our words, [they are] always alive.” It is indeed these words that stay with you after you turn the last page.