The Age of Shiva by Manil Suri; Bloomsbury; Price: Rs.495; 449 pp
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It can be classified as a personal, intimate story or an epic set against the background of free India’s tumultuous birth and growth as a democratic nation or a tribute to the selfless love of a mother. Or all of them. Mumbai-born and US-based Manil Suri, a professor of mathematics at the University of Maryland, Baltimore, is at his lyrical best when narrating the trials and tribulations of fictional Meera Sawhney, the protagonist of The Age of Shiva, which has received as many rave reviews as it has put-downs around the world.
Suri, whose debut novel The Death of Vishnu won a slew of awards, including the LA Times Book Award and McKittrick Prize in 2002, recounts Meera’s evolution from a 17-year-old girl through love, marriage and motherhood against the background of watershed political events in free India. The partition, Jawaharlal Nehru’s defining term as prime minister, the Bangladesh war, the Emergency, the growth of Hindu nationalism, Hindu-Muslim acrimony, all provide a historic backdrop to this sweeping magnum opus.
But while India’s turbulent history is a choice backdrop for a love story, The Age of Shiva doesn’t quite rise to the heights of Dr. Zhivago or A Tale of Two Cities. It’s too preoccupied with Meera’s self-destructive choices in love and marriage to impact the significance of the turning points of contemporary Indian history upon the reader in any meaningful manner. For instance it’s at the Red Fort Republic Day celebrations of India’s eighth year of independence in 1955 where Meera first sets eyes on Dev, her elder sister Roopa’s boyfriend. As Nehru’s voice crackled through the air declaring “The achievements we celebrate today is but a step, an opening of opportunity, to the greater triumphs and achievements that await us. Are we brave enough and wise enough to grab this opportunity and accept the challenge of the future…”, Meera translates nation-building into a personal message encouraging her to grab Dev “dangling ripe and heavy within reach, waiting to be plucked”.
She seizes the opportunity, stealing Dev from her prettier sister Roopa, who anyway wants to marry for money not love. Her father ‘Paji’, a successful publisher who fled Rawalpindi to Delhi during partition, objects to the match as Dev’s father is a modest railway signal master, who unlike him couldn’t re-establish himself in independent India post partition. But an amorous rendezvous at the deserted tomb of a Muslim saint with Dev sets tongues wagging and forces Paji to relent, and Meera moves into the one bedroom flat of the signal master as Dev’s 17-year-old bride.
Within days of her marriage Meera is disappointed with her husband, whose ambition is to make it big as a Bollywood singer. Nor is she enamoured of her over-religious in-laws who harbour strong resentment and hatred against the Muslim community and are ardent supporters of HRM, a Hindu nationalist organisation. Quite unlike her liberal and secular Paji cast in the Nehruvian mould who abhors religion and its ritualism, and is a great champion of secularism.
Paji’s presence in Meera’s life is overbearing, prompting many of her decisions. When Meera becomes pregnant it’s he who encourages her to abort the child so she can pursue a college education. He strikes a bargain with Dev to persuade the wavering Meera, promising to buy a flat for them in Bombay to help him realise his Bollywood dreams. In Bombay, Meera and Dev start life anew. She enrolls in Wilson College and he starts making the rounds of recording studios. But her performance in college is lack lustre and the best he can do is land a receptionist’s job in a music studio.
The turning point in her drab life is the birth of her son Ashvin. Disillusioned with Dev’s lack of ambition and immersion into drunken self pity, Meera invests all her love and expectations in Ashvin who becomes her raison d’etre. Her emotional dependence on Ashvin increases when Dev is fatally hit by a car on the bridge leading towards Bombay Central during the Bangladesh war. Widowed, Meera overwhelms Ashvin with her love and affection, warding off her Islamophobe brother-in-law Arya’s sexual overtures and marriage proposal. The remainder of the story revolves around how Ashvin comes of age and breaks loose from suffocating maternal love with oedipal overtones.
Suri’s portrayal of maternal love is powerful, dipping into Hindu myths to find parallels. The myth of how Goddess Parvati ‘created’ a son (Ganesha) to keep her company in Lord Shiva’s absence, corresponds to Meera’s need to find companionship in Ashvin to make up for Dev’s inadequacies as a husband. Moreover the legend of Andhaka coveting his mother Parvati, detailed in ancient Hindu scriptures, is used to explain Meera’s physical attraction towards her son. In fact Suri goes overboard in stretching the parallel, loading the natural physical intimacy of mother and child with sexual innuendo.
Moreover though The Age of Shiva is an ambitious book tracing the fortunes of the Sawhney family in the aftermath of India’s independence, it’s not a page-turner. Suri rambles on describing Hindu rituals such as a wedding ceremony and karva chauth in excruciating detail. Add to this forced history lessons on the significance of India’s political milestones, which are sometimes thrust into the narrative so obviously to give the book its epic proportions. Quite clearly this is exotica for foreign, rather than Indian readers.
Yet the self-pitying and not particularly ambitious and intelligent Meera’s fictional biography sustains reader interest. Her life is defined by the wrong choices she has made. Suri is clever, witty and poetic in detailing Meera’s strained bilateral relationships with her father, husband and son. As her life story unwinds, so does post-independent India’s tumultuous history. The Age of Shiva may not have what it takes to keep readers on the edge but it’s an engaging read because it also provides a history of post-independence India.
Summiya Yasmeen