NOVEL
Between shade and shadow
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`As With Shadows is set in far away Bombay in an unfamiliar time and the main characters are partly real... '
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SULEKHA NAIR'S debut novel, As with Shadows, is intriguing. Unlike other first-time Keralite novelists — including Arundhati Roy and Anita Nair — Sulekha does not return to Kerala to home her first novel, nor does she draw yarn from memory's looms to people her story with characters who are transformed versions of childhood familiars (which in Roy's case, yielded spectacular results).
As With Shadows is set in far away Bombay in an unfamiliar time and the main characters are partly "real" — one of them, Kapilraj, is based on the grand pioneer of Indian films, Dadasaheb Phalke; the other, Ganpat, on Salunke, the effeminate cook who played the role of the queen in Phalke's first film, "Nala Damayanti".
Early years of cinema
The plot works in such a way that the story of these two men also tells the story of the beginning years of cinema in India, because their lives are made and lived out around cinema; Kapilraj's identity springs from his film-making, his own sense of self is woven around his films, while Ganpat, chosen by Kapilraj to play the female lead in his first film — because no woman, not even one from the red light areas, is willing to act in a film — reorders his sense of self around this role-playing, feeling identity with the female roles that he plays, only to feel betrayed and rootless when these roles stop coming to him.
Sulekha succeeds in evoking the enormous excitement, hard work and highs of these early years by taking us behind the scenes and this works very well, though what she does to evoke the corresponding emotions in the lives of the characters runs into a bit of heavy weather.
A brilliant opening chapter, with multiple narratives, viewpoints and multiple time frames flings the reader into the middle of Kapilraj's life to start off on an intense journey compressing several long years in the lives of the book's two pivotal characters. The narration moves from past to present, character-to-character and first person to third, shifting focus to foreground different characters.
On the flip side, these very same techniques trip up the writing because Sulekha doesn't have that familiarity with the craft of writing — which comes in large measure from practice — to be able to balance out all these various techniques in the service of the story. Seasoned writers might have avoided attempting to use all these techniques at the same time; what happens to Sulekha's writing, then, is that she cannot spend the necessary time on any one aspect — a little of it goes in developing character, but then it returns to the descriptive narrative and the characterisation slackens, and so on.
The hub of the story
The character of Kapilraj is easily the best-wrought part of As With Shadows and the greatness of the legendary Phalke, the thrill of his experiments and successes in cinema resound in Kapilraj. The two share circumstances of birth, upbringing and training, but it is largely Sulekha's portrayal of Kapilraj's inner life and the fire of his passions that makes it seem that Phalke could have been like this.
However, the main character of As With Shadows is not Kapilraj/ Dadasaheb; its main character is explicitly meant to be Ganpat, with Ganpat's identity crisis being the hub of the story. And this is where the book goes slack, slipping out of weave; here again, it's difficult not to feel that had Sulekha not been so ambitious about explorations in technique, the book might have benefited. But that is neither here nor anywhere.
Ganpat's life doesn't hold together because it seems that there are too many characters hovering around him and the writer spends too many words on building up those characters, and limits Ganpat to his "crisis", of which there is far too much for it not to seem diluted and blasι. He swings from one end to the other of the sexual pendulum — first convinced that he is not man enough for a woman and needs a man who will let him be womanly; then back the other way, falling in love, marrying, begetting children and indulging in domesticated marital bliss, and then, believe it or not, at a difficult moment, feeling that he was wrong to think that he was a man at all.
Through all this, Kapilraj is like a buoy, drawing the reader back towards the real story. The consistency with which this character guides both narrative and plot, makes it clear that the flaws of this particular book are the flaws of unfamiliarity, the kind that practice will prevent. Sulekha Nair's talent stands on firm footing, and with repetition, she will surely learn to cut a path clear through the limits and possibilities of the story on the page.
KALA KRISHNAN RAMESH
As with Shadows, Sulekha Nair, Dronequill, 2004, p.293, price not stated.
Distance helps
KALA KRISHNAN RAMESH talks to SULEKHA NAIR about her debut novel.
WHY did you take your book to Dronequill (the Bangalore based publishing house of Jamuna Pani), who are not big time as yet?
I wanted someone I could talk to and discuss the book with, not someone sitting far away in some unreachable place. And I'm very happy with the way Jamuna handled everything.
Why didn't you write about Kerala, which seems to be the mode for Malayali writers, especially the women?
I don't know, whatever there is to say about Kerala seems to have been said already and so much better than I could. Besides it's too close. I am comfortable with a bit of distance.
Were you at all overwhelmed by the awesome figure of Arundhati Roy looming over the Indian writing in English scene?
No, no not at all, she's is in a different league altogether. She's so talented and such a wonderful writer, I could never compare myself to her.
How did you come to write a story around the life of Phalke in the first place?
I was working at indiainfo.com, a site about Indian films and very often we had to read about the history of films in India, about its early years and the pioneers and the whole thing fired my imagination. The character of Kapilraj is not only Phalke but also has elements of the others, Chitre, Torney, Hiralal Sen in Kolkata. I kept wondering how a man playing women's roles would feel, what he would think, what changes would come over him and so on and it got to a point when I had to write it all down.
Did you have to do a lot of research?
No not much at all, because I just took the events that are well known, like Phalke's first film, or selecting the cook Salunke for the role of Damayanti, but the circumstances in which he dies, his family life, his relationship with his wife, his children, his relationship with Mallika Khanum, all that is totally imaginary, I have no idea who he married or even how many, if any, children he had.
The areas that I needed to research were about Mumbai, the buildings, and the food, things like that. I got my sister to do that for me as she lives in Mumbai. So she would go to some old grandmother and find out things like what they ate and how it used to be in those days. I had stayed in Mumbai briefly once and that seems to have helped me to get a feel of the place.
Did you ever feel that basing your characters on real people might distract the reader from the story as they might be too caught up in trying to find out which parts were real and which were made up?
No, Did you do that? No, I would be glad if people actually went and read about those times or did some reference because those times are all but forgotten now and they should be remembered.
Did you intend for Kapilraj to be the main character?
No, he just kept coming back and taking the front even though I tried very hard to keep him back, most of the revisions were to add to the character of Ganpat, but somehow Kapilraj seems to come out larger, better.
Where do you see yourself on the literary scene?
Oh, I am nowhere.
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