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Literary Review
FICTION
A familiar loneliness
SHEBA THAYIL
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Hasan’s world is Shillong, peopled by characters you can feel for…and cringe for.
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Lunatic in my Head, Anjum Hasan, Zubaan-Penguin Books, Rs 295.
On page 68 of this layered cake of a book, the author allows us into the mind of one of her characters, Aman Moondy, trying to clear his IAS exams for the second time, wakes up near dawn and in that terrifying, seemingly motionless period of the eart
h’s turn, sees his sad life for what it is; it is stark, real and moving. You know Hasan, like you, has known loneliness, the kind that comes in the still of the night and from which no one, although you secretly hunger and wait, can scoop and save you. It’s as striking a passage as Abraham Verghese’s doctor palpating a patient towards the end of My Own Country, and it tells us immediately that here is a writer of worth, and worth reading.
Hasan’s world is Shillong, and her people are not endearing, but you can see them in your mind’s eye, and feel for them, and cringe for them. There is Firdaus, a lecturer who thinks she deserves better (who doesn’t?), there is Sophie, eight-years-old and struggling to come to terms with her narrow world that seems to be stuffed with a wide range of vileness, and there is Aman. Like a stone throwing up ripples, there are their friends and family. Hasan’s talent lies in making all this seem familiar.
Every rock festival in India has Amans, guys who dream of finding women wearing Tees with Pure F***ing Rock emblazoned on them but who meanwhile yearn to just strike up a conversation with the girl of their dreams, hoping for “the bearer of the predetermined code… a locking of antennae”. When Aman finally does, it is so tortuous it’s achingly funny. He spends his days with his friends at Ambrosia, drinking tea and discussing music and the only thing that keeps him going is organising a Happening where people can come and play their dirges and read poetry, that and his drug-infused worship of Pink Floyd. Aman knows Roger Waters has read his letters and produced an album influenced by his ideas, as a thank you, no need for a return letter. Aman is likeable, though, which is more than can be said of Firdaus.
Not a nice character
Middle-aged, living with a cold grandfather and trying to keep a distance from the teachers in the staff room (a bite on the nose is what she gets for her pains from the woman whose husband is having an affair and who finds no platitudes coming from Firdaus to sustain her), she is emotionally stunted and this is reflected in her inability to finish her thesis. The description where she makes eggs, rotis and milk for her grandfather is fascinating in its detail. The boiling milk, the breaking of the rotis, the adding of the sugar from “his own supply” tells you everything you need to know about this man who sticks to routine and tradition and sees nothing, or if he does, will do nothing. Firdaus, meanwhile, is steadily heading for her breakdown.
It’s difficult to care. When she thinks, “You don’t need a great deal of sense to go on a shopping trip”, my dislike crystallised. Oh yes, you do. You not only need sense but sensibility, and this is typical of the kind of arrogance that infuses Firdaus’spirit, or lack thereof. Her only saving grace is her feeling for Shillong, “The beauty of it, she would think as she walked, the beauty of it…she longed for Shillong even as she lived there”. In fact, Shillong is a central character, filled to the brim with the small and large personalities of isolated yet bustling enclaves, with people longing to escape and longing to belong.
Finely etched
The only longing Firdaus arouses in us is to shake her hard and tell her to stop moaning and get on with her life. An actual earthquake does that anyway, (where each of our main characters after their respective flashpoints come together for a moment and then branch out into their futures), but you never feel the empathy for Firdaus that you feel for Sophie, who must sit through domestic violence, unsavoury neighbours and a near-death experience of a sibling before finding sustenance in Nancy Drew. Yet here is the only discordant note in Lunatic in my Head (from a Floyd song, by the way). Not in her reading material, nor her behaviour, nor her thinking and speech does Sophie resemble any eight-year-old of my acquaintance. But she’s interesting all the same.
The tone of Lunatic in my Head is gentle and thoughtful, it respects the reader by never falling into the trap of trying to impress like the hugely overrated Kite Runner does. Hasan, in other words, has done her job.
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