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Literary Review
Memories in song
SHEILA KUMAR
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A prodigal son’s elliptical journey
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The Assassin’s Song; M.G.Vassanji; Penguin/Viking; Rs 450
One undertakes the task of reviewing this much-praised book with some amount of trepidation. And then, before one gets too deep into the book, there comes the realisation that the story is paramount, reviews become just the trimmings. Vassanji has an
absorbing story to tell and he tells it well.
The NRI Karsan Dargawalla just happens to have an inheritance lying heavily of his shoulders, a legacy he tries his best to shrug off, without much success. He is the descendant of a famous pir, Nur Fazal of Pirbaag in Haripir, a quiet enclave of Gujarat. Since we must deal with labels, the enigmatic pir was a Muslim, his successors marry Hindus (Karsan’s mother is a Hindu) but the touchstone of the powers at this shrine are that it does not preach any one religion. Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Christian all come and commune with the pir’s grave and, on a more corporeal level, with the current Saheb, Karsan’s father.
Fleeing inheritance
Karsan is duly consecrated as the gaadi-varas, the successor, but in one smooth move, he upturns the laid-down grid and flees to the U.S., to Harvard at first, a career abroad, a wife, even a child. Haripir and his family, the Saheb, Karsan’s conflicted mother, his baby brother Mansoor, all seem far away. Or so Karsan thinks. Just as he also gives in to the guilty thought that Pirbaag may well be only superstition, not really an inheritance.
As Karsan’s life story knits together, that of Gujarat unravels. And then Godhra and its “20-fold revenge” happen, desecration and destruction is wreaked upon the shrine and its protectors. The Saheb is killed, his younger son turns aggressor. Karsan comes home to find that nothing can be the same again. However, even as he readies to take on his father’s mantle, in response to the pleas of the faithful who seek succour after the communal carnage, Karsan also comes to realise that some things can remain just so. In becoming the last lord of the shrine, Karsan is making a stand, letting the destroyers (“who would make ink from our ashes”) know that not everything good has been erased. “We all believed in miracles, they were all around us,” Karsan says earlier in his tale; in the end, a tradition continued itself becomes a miracle of sorts.
This tale of betrayal, weaknesses of the mind, of prophecies and a set of beliefs preserved through the songs (ginans) of the founding father, is a dirge that can be sung many ways. Through songs of delicate melancholy, through songs sung on a resilient even joyous note, songs that hold memory fast. The build-up is exquisitely slow, and the reader dreads what awaits, some turns of the pages later.
Chilling descriptions
There is the chilling description of an evolving riot, what the author calls a “near riot”. Karsan asks his father, “Why do Hindus and Muslims hate each other?” To which the Saheb replies, “They don’t hate each other. They’re only sometimes afraid of each other… and there are those among them who exploit that fear.” This, of course, is the kernel of the story, a kernel that impinges starkly on the lives of all the characters in the book yet never quite takes centre-stage.
Vassanji asks the reader a question through Karsan: what is an ordinary, secular Indian? Is such an entity possible? Even as the author probes whether communal conflagrations are an aberration or something intrinsic, he leaves it for the reader to make an informed judgment.
This is a secular tale told in an even tone, without the slightest undercurrent of accusation or sermonising; the fact that Vassanji no longer lives in India probably helped. However, it does beg one question: are we to thus forever record the atrocities, sing laments, while the perpetrators walk abroad with untroubled minds?
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