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Literary Review
FICTION
Intensely culture bound
S. RAMACHANDER
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A warm human tale that makes a good read.
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The Geometry Of God; Uzma Aslam Khan, Rupa & Co, Rs. 395.
Here is an unusual combination of facts about an unconventionally structured novel. It is a work of fiction by a Pakistani novelist, published from New Delhi by an Indian publisher. It is written largely through the eyes of two sisters the elder of w
hom Amal, is a precocious eight-year old. She is thrilled to be under the influence of an iconoclastic scientist grandfather, who encourages her scientific exploration while they live through a period of political turmoil under General Zia, who tries to put the clock back on the modern scientific temper in the country.
Mosaic of narrative
The book is also fascinating in its use of language, and drawings sketched as if by a child, in the midst of a mosaic of narrative from different points of view, while retaining the protagonist quite clearly as the curious young girl, who goes on to become a serious student of natural sciences.
Meanwhile, she has a lifelong charge of looking after her younger sister, Mehwish, who has accidentally and rather mysteriously gone blind, while still a baby. Some of the most hilarious passages — and the most realistic and moving ones — are written from the young child’s perspective, sensing the world through all the other senses and through the sensitive guidance of a loving sister and a doting but entirely ineffective mother.
The most charming character is Nana, the grandfather, who encourages the children to play with words, to observe and listen to everything around them and, above all, question everything. In his view, predictably unpopular with the girls’ parents, science wins every time, even in relation to the nature of God and why people do believe. All of this is set in the milieu of modern Pakistan, with some fine descriptive passages that create the atmosphere of the place.
There is a particularly pleasant set-piece of Amal and her potential boy-friend Omar meeting taking Mehwish to watch a game of cricket, among the partially visually disabled, at a stadium. The little girl’s point of view turns out to be amazingly and ironically perceptive, given the circumstances, about people around her and their prejudices.
For a book about an intensely culture-bound set of experiences, it makes no attempt at exaggerated annotations or explanations for an English-speaking audience and uses Urdu-Hindustani words and very ethnic allusions with no italics but only a glossary at the end. It is also unselfconsciously feminine and clearly Asian in its sensibility, yet without any overt or strident political agenda.
Weakest link
However, the weakest link is the rather dated theme — religion versus modern science, as a source of objective knowledge of the external world. Surely only a fringe population would in this day and age argue in favour of literal interpretations of the various creation myths.
The other problem is with the very unusual device of rendering some of the words and expressions in child talk (big cause for because, inter up for interrupt) which is cute once or twice but certainly slows down the pace after a while, as does the random shift in point of view from one character to another. It begins to look as if the author took pages from the diaries of three different people who wrote partial stories and shuffled the pages into more or less temporal sequence. Ironically, it is for this very reason a good read and a warm, human tale, but one that fortunately need not be read from cover to cover to savour its worth.
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