JOIN USA retelling fit for a king
This, all of this, is a mistake. There are books that must not, cannot and should not be reviewed. Period. A rare gem in a stockpile of colourless fiction is to be revered, read in small little bites and wept over. This is literature as lovers dream of it. Each page embodies the ease of a genius, the almost heartbreaking deftness in kneading sparse fact and language into a lustrous artefact. More than a book, this is the footnote from a lifetime spent in the letters. This is where the gentle reader is meant to drop off, buy the book immediately and soak in its wonders.
It is no secret that our great subcontinent has no time for history, except as a tool in politics. Too many monuments and relics of the past are abandoned to the elements even as historical sites are defaced without mercy. Yet some bits of history matter. However skeletally the populace knows of the great emperor Ashoka (even if through forms of popular culture: films, plays and terribly written history books), his greatness touches us in every currency note. His chakra adorns the national flag. Ashoka permeates our lives and thoughts; he remains Indian history’s poster boy, a national legacy. Yet, too little is really known of this great man. Only a few facts or dates may be teased out of passages from contemporary Buddhist texts and later Hindu treatises, inscriptions and his iconic installations of dharma stambhas or religious pillars.
The myth of Ashoka
Asoca is the reimagining of the historical figurehead through the lens of literature and a 21st century sensibility. It is not a blatant misspelling as much as it is an assertion that this is one of the many ways a legend from antiquity may be perceived. Asoca, therefore, is an estimation, skilful guesswork that makes no pretensions of replicating reality, despite a remarkably well-mapped progression along a path where facts signal as semaphores. Yes, the most adept historians know real history can at best be only an approximation. Irwin Allan Sealy succeeds spectacularly in the trans-creation of the myth of Ashoka: beginning from a boyhood among numerous princes; the saga of a lesser queen’s son with corrugated skin and the nickname, Crocodile. As he journeys to manhood, he is revealed with deep sensitivity in this tell-all version of events that shape his destiny. It is that open, honest confidence that takes the reader below the skin of the man.
There are wily embellishments of whimsy. For example, the mighty Asoca has no resources to fund his own coronation as the palace coffers are empty and it is left to his close friend and brother-in-law, the burgher Aloka, to bankroll his ascent to greatness. Much of the machinations of the emperor’s administration are blueprints of bureaucracy in present-day India. And hilarious. The minor characters that flit through this epic are all too familiar, perhaps a wholly Indian DNA that manifests over 24 centuries.
A sum of all his loves
The author may well conduct a masterclass on weaving gossamer threads of relationships: intriguing and earnest in romantic ones while mesmerising in same-sex friendships. It is friendship — with his blood brothers, with the young prince who dies after a truant ride out to the ocean, with Aloka or with his guru Ananta that truly define Asoca. In the end the emperor is, as are all men, the sum of all his loves.
That one defining event in the life of the emperor is beautifully redone. One hundred thousand dead. One. Hundred. Thousand. To this day, the number defeats me. I go over it, and over it. I picture five dead, then another five laid out beside them. Then nine more such groups. Already the dead are too many. Already the farther bodies are faceless. The limbless must be gathered together before the count can proceed. Presently, we reach a thousand. Now another such. Now another. Over and over, I perform this exercise. Beneath the veneer of the bloodthirsty king is a gentle soul grappling with his own frailty and insignificance. The carnage of Kalinga is a turning point in India’s destiny as much as his.
In Asoca, the publisher, the editors and mostly the author have given readers of India a gift, a seminal artwork. It is the sheer mastery of phrases, of chapter forms and of literature that makes it a dizzying pleasure to read. Out of the corner of my eye, I watch a lone boatman steady himself like a spider and spit his web fully formed into the sky. The retelling flows like poetry. At times, it offers insights into our own lives.
More than a biography, Asoca is the revival of a long-dead emperor in a manner he truly deserves.