Magic realism meets political fiction

At a time when rivers and water sharing have been making headlines (read the Indus Waters Treaty), along comes ‘Saraswati’, British-Indian writer Gurnaik Johal’s debut novel. Every now and then, the much-revered river makes its way into mainstream political and cultural conversations. Revivalist themes are at the core of nationalist projects — a yearning to return to a perceived ‘glorious’ past and an aspiration to bring back symbols of greatness that seem to have faded. 

What happens when an ancient river resurfaces? That’s the backdrop against which ‘Saraswati’ unravels. It takes off with Satnam Singh Hakra, a British-Punjabi who comes back to his ancestral village for his grandmother’s funeral, only to find that an old well in her yard has suddenly come back to life. The water is that of the ancient river, Saraswati.

Soon enough, television cameras arrive, politicians of all hues led by the prime minister (Narayan Indra) want a piece of the river — the elixir that boosts their (and the nation’s) pride, revives their performance at the hustings and sends TV anchors into frenzied debates. Johal paints the news landscape thus: “The people on his screen were shouting about evolution, about Urban Naxals; they were shouting about firmer borders and the dictates of woke, of the brain drain and space exploration.” The people on television “were saying, ‘Let me speak’, ‘Let me speak’, ‘Let me finish’, ‘If I can just finish...’” 

‘Saraswati’ is also the story of origins, a story of creation and imagination. Satnam is the first character you are introduced to in a line-up of those bound together by the river. There’s Katrina, who is adept at exterminating colonies of yellow crazy ants, archaeology professor Nathu, eco-warrior and musician Gyan, a stunt double, Harsimran and a young illegal entrant into India, Mussafir, all related to each other, going about their lives unbeknownst to the other. The characters are spread across Canada, Singapore, Pakistan, Mauritius and Kenya, like a river’s tributaries. They have common ancestors in Sejal and Jugaad, inter-caste lovers who lived in the 19th century and named their children after rivers — Sutlej, Beas, Ravi, Chenab, Jhelum, Indus and the youngest — Saraswati. The chapters in the novel go by the names of these rivers. 

Johal’s treatment of ‘Saraswati’ is magic realism meets political fiction — bringing to mind writers like Ghanaian-American author Yaa Gyasi, whose debut novel Homegoing had an origin story theme or even Malayalam writer OV Vijayan’s The Legends of Khasak. 

There are retellings of folk stories (‘qissas’) in each chapter, from ‘Heer Ranjha’ and ‘Sassi Punnu’ to ‘Mirza Sahiban’, ‘Sohni Mahiwal’ and ‘Pooran Bhagat’ with altered endings by the narrators; the altered versions perhaps pointing to how stories are constantly reimagined and no legend stays the same over generations. What does it say about narratives? Could each generation have tweaked the endings of myths and turned them into their own ‘truths’ to suit themselves, because after all, aren’t human beings masterful editors, tweaking and changing stories all the time? 

‘Saraswati’ is a novel of ideas and multiple concerns, including fake news, hypernationalism, rabble rousing and environmental damage. It sags in the middle, bogged down by its own range. The sheer amount of detail packed in can be overwhelming and serves to distract rather than to engage. You learn more than one thing about how rinderpest infects cows or what yellow crazy ant colonies are, and how they can be wiped out. Another quibble with ‘Saraswati’ is the homogeneity in tone and language of characters across the geographies and time zones it is set in. The characters feel more like vessels for the ideas and less like flesh and blood.

The sweep of the novel is like a river that is now thinning, now gathering heft, now slowing down and now picking up pace. There are a couple of instances where a single sentence spans a page, one of them a stream-of-consciousness passage on how the sighting of Mount Kailash’s south face affects the narrator. 

‘Saraswati’ doesn’t quite end with the dramatic flourish you are lulled into expecting. Instead, there’s a tying up of ends as the narrator tells her newborn baby how things panned out on the day of Vasant Panchami, when crowds surged at the newly emerged river sites and how the river can become a tool for many things, all at once.