New Delhi, Sept. 5 -- "At times, we observe a change in a person when, in actual fact, it is the situation that has changed. At other times, we fail to see the transformation, perceiving instead that the varied situation makes it appear so." Our narrator in Rising Sons - an omniscient, non-bodied voice carrying the keen intelligence and wry sensibility of Kavery Nambisan - knows the universal complexities of person and situation. This narrative voice occasionally addresses the reader directly, bringing us into the story as characters produced by similar contexts of a country changing over a century.
Mud is life for the fifty-seven families in the village of Kesarugattu, and the rain-fed rivers sustain it. "We romanced the outside world through the newspaper. Knowledge burnished our rustic minds," informs the narrative voice. The words of Tarabai's letter on the plight of women resonate with Gowru, a young Brahmin wife, but we move forward a couple of decades to her titular sons. The eldest, Nanju, dreams of greatness and imagines himself in the guise of Vivekananda, Aurobindo and Tilak, "but never as Gandhi". The younger, Anna, speaks at a Congress rally in Mysoor about his gradual understanding of colonial rule and the swelling opposition to it.
Chinni, born to Gowru's childhood friend Bhagya and her Malayali husband Dharma, understands early that the world is tilted because people hide their real selves. She writes a two-page letter to Bhagat Singh in prison expressing admiration and displeasure at the way the shooting had been carried out, even offering to marry him in prison and continue the unfinished work. She also has reservations about Gandhi and the ideals of sacrifice he advocated. But enough about Chinni - we must get back to the sons now.
There are many other fishes in the pond of Kesarugattu, and in the rivers which bring them there: Ai tribals, Brahmins, Chandals and Mussalmans. Shantadevi, Muduki, Uzman and Maimoona, Sumana, Hanumantha, Gagana, Vaidehi. even when we visit these others only briefly, their essential contours reveal themselves clearly through a narrative voice that gives minor characters the dignity of keen attention.
There is also another protagonist who may be listed last but could hardly be considered least: Kuppu the dog, appearing at different times as pup, adolescent and aged, peace-loving fellow. "Which is why people say, Kuppu is forever."
The eternal archetypes which these transient human and non-human characters embody are depicted with such tenderness that even if the book were re-titled Ondu Kaththeya Atma Kathe or 'Memoirs of a Donkey', as one protagonist suggests grimly, it could still retain the affection and insightful censure that characterise Rising Sons.
Donkeys do not seem to have caste pride or prejudice, however, which are among the main themes of this book. Character decides destiny because it shapes our choices, but a bruised ego leads to reaction rather than choice - the spirals that emerge from wanting to be seen in certain ways can extend to dangerous shadows. Nambisan is an observer of individual tendency as much as of the social structures of family, village and politics which shape new citizens of a new country, and which have shaped us.
Humans have a deep desire to ease each other's pain, and a difficulty in balancing that against the restoration of their own selves. In India, virtues of Brahmin non-covetousness and Gandhian restraint were unable to stem the blood-dimmed tide of greed and vanity, which too are fundamental human vices. This slow percolation of a self-serving culture in the outward guise of piety pushes the Ai people - rooted to the earth and all her creatures - into wearing "half-pants" and "proper saris" instead of the simple lengths of cloth traditionally wrapped around their bodies. There is also the implicit bleakness of rural India becoming urban in the strange erosions and sediments which have metamorphosed Bengloor into Bangalore. Much is found, much is lost. Yet this pace of change, almost tragic when viewed as a generational saga, is delivered through an authorial voice so deft and irreverent that this reader found herself smiling often, and on more than one page even laughing out loud.
Rising Sons is a story on fertile ground and rich soil, with much to recognize in the moments it portrays, as a missive which illumines the heart. It weaves its chapters through leisurely visits to the interior lives of its characters and their contexts in a manner which justifies the Irawati Karve quote with which the book begins: "Human toil, expectations, hates, friendships-all seem puny and without substance, like withered leaves eddying in the summer wind. But the people who toiled and dreamed and loved seem unforgettable."
Published by HT Digital Content Services with permission from Millennium Post.