Longing and belonging

The River has no Camera is about the need to belong, about yet another expatriate Indian returning "home" to her roots. It is an unpretentious work detailing with candour and directness the inner conflicts of a cosmopolitan young woman, says A. J. THOMAS.

Exiles or emigrants or expatriates are haunted by some sense of loss, some urge to reclaim, to look back, even at the risk of being mutated into pillars of salt...

Salman Rushdie.

ANJALI CHANDRAN is the latest in the line of novelists writing in English about their "imaginary homeland", Kerala. It cannot be ascertained from the information available on the blurb of her debut novel whether she is an out and out Marunadan Malayali (expatriate Malayali), but internal evidence strongly hints at it. To fall back on the blurb again, "In The River Has No Camera, we look at Kerala through the eyes of a young cosmopolitan Indian woman..." Indeed, the protagonist is a modern Indian woman, who, inspite of her young years, has already faced the rough and tumble of fast life. She has had both the advantages and disadvantages of such a life: advantages like total independence and equality (almost) with men, and disadvantages like total alienation, loneliness, mistrust and so on.

What little Kerala culture the protagonist subscribes to - obviously acquired through her parents, for, she has never visited Kerala all her life, and it is her first visit with which the novel opens - is of dubious consistency, very much like the frequent and often unnecessary use of Malayalam words and phrases in the text in pathetically inaccurate transliteration (which soon turns off a Malayali reader). She is almost like a middle/upper class White woman from the First World. Inspite of her fascination for the "natives," she can't relate to them fully. Besides, she is a tamburatti, Her Ladyship. So, she is twice removed from the local lot. The kindly stationmaster who helps her out is "Binkity" of the Binkity, the Naughty Gnome and a "funny fellow". The description of the men of the village, the way they dress, their laziness, the women and their eating habits - all these bespeak an outsider observing the Other.

The longing of an expatriate to belong somewhere is the theme of the novel. And that is exactly what Anagha does; reclaiming Alanghat Tharavaad (her ancestral home) and establishing herself there, bringing about a complete reconciliation between her mother and herself by unravelling the mysterious past that smothered her mother's personality.

I do not mean to imply that these thematic nuances have anything to do with the quality of the novel. No. It is a well-written novel, by a sensitive, intelligent author. The directness, candour and the force of the narrative make compelling reading. This is an utterly unpretentious work, unlike some of its illustrious and sometimes widely acclaimed predecessors. However, this work is more about the inner conflicts of a " cosmopolitan young woman," than her interaction with the culture of a Kerala countryside, which merely serves as the setting for a part of the story.

Inspite of my good words for this novel, I will not call it a great work. It has failed to arrive or "cross over to the other side" as the protagonist does during her midnight Veena recital on a full moon day on the back porch of Alanghat, playing for the puzha and devi. There are a few obvious reasons for this: like the descriptive passages on Nayars and the matrilineal system, which could have been alluded to in the text and finely placed as an endnote, and the passages expounding the philosophy of "Stillness/Conflict" God, Shiva and so on. If these had been finely integrated into the narrative, the novel would have soared to sublime heights.

One also wishes Shani and his activities as revealed through the Matunga Agasthya naadi oracle and Anagha sharing her grand-uncle Raman Nair's genes leading to her violent temperament could run like a leitmotif in the novel obviating the necessity for the induction of a classical villain like Muthote Shankaran Nair. The facilely black and white situation that results, then, could have been avoided in an otherwise accomplished narrative.

The title of the book is derived from the passage: "...It was still and silent all around. Still. No memory. The puzha (river) never remembers. It carries no camera. No suitcase." It is the continuation of an argument that one should "forget to remember and remember to forget" to attain stillness of mind. As a title, The River Has No Camera is a little too farfetched, and the cover too literally realistic. Better editing could have been done, eliminating obvious repetitions in many places. Cleaning up of the copy was in the main left out as one finds out, encountering error after error beginning with the "Acknowledgements" page and, thereafter almost on every page. The adoption of American spelling also strikes a jarring note.

On page 173 one reads, "Indulekha is a classic, the first Malayalam novel written by

O. Chandu Menon in 1899." But the fact is that Indulekha first came out in 1889, and though certainly a classic, it was not the first Malayalam novel. That honour goes to Appu Nedungadi's Kundalata which came out in 1887. Again, there are several references to Solomon and Saramma being Pentecost Christians, and mention of their having a church and a priest. Pentecost Christians have only Faith Homes and no churches; they have no priests, either. Errors like these could have easily been avoided.

However, one feels thankful to the novelist for brilliant lines like, "Thripallur (Shiva Temple) was like a payphone from where I could make a long-distance call... to the Infinite"; or better still, " How does where and how long compare with infinitude? A circle with everywhere as its centre and nowhere as its circumference."

The River Has No Camera, Anjali Chandran, Srishti Publishers and Distributors, 2001, p.293, Rs. 195 (paperback).

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