Hadal, A review: Stunning lines, meditations on what it means to be a person, and the sameness of people.

(A shorter version of this first published here)

To read a work of fiction that is drenched with splendid lines, intense examination of human complexity and a scathing criticism of a country’s systemic failures isn’t easy. CP Surendran’s latest novel, Hadal, is all of this, including being a compelling, difficult read.

Hadal, a word referring to oceanic depths greater than 6000mts, is a befitting title for a book that is, constantly, wave after wave of tight story-telling, and imagery that has lent itself deftly to the author’s will.

Honey Kumar, a police officer who is transferred to Thiruvananthapuram after being accused of graft, might be called the protagonist of the book, but only just. A deeply complex man constantly in denial of everything within and without him -- a fact that repeats itself in his addiction to cough syrup, his compulsive grip and dwelling on a painful past, and an affinity for masks – Honey Kumar makes life miserable for Miriam Zacharias, a Maldivian national and an aspiring writer, who has come to Kerala in order to finish her book.

In a classic plot development, Honey Kumar propositions Miriam when he realizes she needs her visa extended; when the attractive Maldivian woman says no, Honey Kumar is unable to take rejection and goes down a destructive, vengeful path. Slighting him further is obvious proof that Miriam is having an affair with Paul Roy, a suave, charmer of a scientist who is also the director of an ISRO centre.

Honey Kumar, in pure rage and evil pain, puts two and two together and comes up with 35, thereby throwing Miriam and Paul into a spy-scandal whirlpool entirely of the police officer’s making.

If your memory goes back to the news from the 90s, the above synopsis will tell you that the book is based on the infamous ISRO espionage case where a scientist was kept in custody and tortured after being accused of passing on secrets to a Maldivian woman. It took nearly six years for the case to be dropped and considered baseless. The risk one runs with rooting a book in a true life incident is that readers tend to expect a spiced-up version of the sequence of events. If that’s what you are looking for in Hadal, you might want to recalibrate your expectations. Make no mistake, the ISRO espionage case only serves as a starting point for the meditative but rakish ride this book is.

Replete with detailed boxing references, Hadal carries an almost ghost-narrative of pain; masterfully sculpted meditations of the various kinds of pain a human being can experience. From Honey Kumar’s never-ending trauma at his mother’s near-comical death, his being caned as a child by Father Almeida (and his cruel, cruel taunt when the former visits the priest later in life) to the physical agony that the author puts Miriam, Paul, Honey Kumar’s left foot, an American anti-nuclear activist Haws and even a dog through, pain is a recurrent and startling theme. Sweat, rain, and even a drink become painful as does the book’s reading, but only because of the keen, uncomfortable truths it holds.

Marriage is the other idea that the book criticises. All the marriages in the book are crumbling relics: oppressive, unnecessary and soulless. Miriam, herself somewhat cold, is married to an alcoholic college professor who has been unemployed since the recent change of regime in her country.  Paul Roy is married to the irascible Grace, and is himself a bit of a philanderer. Honey Kumar’s parents’ inter-caste, inter-community marriage is passingly referred to as a mistake. Ram Mohan, Honey Kumar’s erudite, deeply sensitive and thinking boss, lives in a marriage that he is sure will kill him. His wife Anita is said to be heartless and, in a shocking moment of realization on Ram Mohan’s part, completely wrong for the role of spouse and parent. Just like him. In detailing Ram Mohan’s marital trajectory, the language is often martial and you sense a parody, a role reversal, of the popular woman-stuck-in-a-bad-marriage stereotype. If Hadal’s characters are all heavy, burdened individuals careening to their inexorable fates along with the soul-searing rain that is constant in the narrative, the passingly-mentioned Anita is possibly the only one who seems empowered as she removes herself more and more from Ram Mohan’s life. Anita, and Vasu, an almost silent presence in the book.

The book’s greatest diatribe, however, is against the way systems in India work. Corruption, complete failure of humanity, a lack of basic facilities for its citizens and the scary things power and its illicit handling can do are all attacked in Hadal in biting, ironic, fluid passages that creep up on you, take hold and, sometimes, make you laugh in surprise.  Take, for example, an exchange between Ram Mohan and Honey Kumar at a point in the narrative where the former believes that all might not be as he thought.

“Honey Kumar, what do we think we are doing?”

“Getting to unearth an espionage racket?” …

“What’s the fundamental problems we face as a people?

Toilets? Sixty percent of India defecated in the open.  “Corruption?”

Dialogue between characters, in my opinion is incidental, in the book. There's no painstaking detailing of interaction between characters that furthers the story, no pauses and extensions. The more important dialogue, in fact, is an internal one. A constant making sense of the world they inhabit, a consistent attempt at understanding their own motivations, confusions, ruminating their fates, deciding their futures. There are no pauses in those dialogues; the relentless seeking of whatever resolution Miriam, Honey Kumar or Ram Mohan undertake is a constant gentle assault in the book, with no room to breathe. 

Speaking of relentless, the rain in Hadal is something else. A giant green monster breathing heaving and groaning at the universe and the machinations it holds within its belly. Read carefully enough, you can hear the rain long after you've finished the final pages of the book. Surendran's pen is perhaps most keen and strong here; the rain is a character in itself, almost influencing gently, like a reluctant, ancient puppeteer everything that happens in the book, in one way or another.

Silences in any book interest me and while this book is anything but silent (it is, in fact, worlds colliding), there are spaces and silences that I want to walk into and explore. Is there any truth to Ram Mohan feeling victimised in his marriage? Is Honey Kumar worthy of pity or should we revile him? What is Vasu's double life? Why does Miriam choose to go back on a safer path? What does Honey Kumar see in Ram Mohan that he offers kindess and deference to him that he extends to no one else? But silences are always telling and these form alternate stories that for me to personally explore, if I choose to.

Much like the author, the book is eminently quotable; but Hadal holds back in certain places: how it portrays its women, the forceful seeking of resolution and the inexplicable sadness of some of its characters. Surendran’s craft is impeccable, as you will discover, to your delight, in the many, many heart-stoppingly poetic lines in the book. Clever, unselfconscious word play peppers many chapters. (“Waxed legs, and veined too.”) Balancing poetic perfection, then, is humour that is subtle and wicked, coupled with a sense of irony that is reminiscent of M Mukundan, and dare one say, Marquez. The latter’s influence is also seen in the effortless weaving of absurd reality, and fantastical imaginings that the characters induce in their minds either through circumstance or substance. Or plain geriatric illness. 

***

Why I like some authors...

There was a reason I have never read Anita Nair. When I first heard of Ladies Coupe (Penguin India, 2001) in 2002, I was interested firstly by the fact that a relatively young woman had written a book that was being widely talked about. I was also interested because I saw her picture and envied her for her curly hair and high cheekbones (yes, I've been brainwashed into the marketing ideal of beauty). But I took a look at the book on one of my trips to Landmark (on Nungambakkam High Road, not Spencer Plaza) and was disappointed. 

The thing was, some two years before, I'd just devoured Eats, Shoots and Leaves by the fantastic punctuation-nazi Lynne Truss and fallen in love with it. I knew when I was losing friends rapidly that I was using the book as my friend, philosopher, guide way too much. People around me couldn't as much hum without me saying a comma was missing. Anyway, as always I digress. So if you've read the book, you'll know what I have against Ladies Coupe (how the hell do I get that accent mark on e?) 

For those of you who haven't read it, let me explain. Truss has very cutting style and is truly one of those geniuses who can write an instruction-type book and make it funny. One of the first and best examples of what she means in her book is the film title 'Two Weeks Notice', the one with whatsisteeth and Sandra Bullock, (who, by the way, should never be allowed anywhere near a camera unless she wants to clean it.) 

Truss says the title should have been punctuated thus -- Two Weeks' Notice. Because, as we all know, Bullock is giving her boss a notice of two weeks. Which means there should be an apostrophe. And because it is plural, the apostrophe goes after the S. Otherwise what does Two Weeks Notice mean?

I have the same problem with 'Ladies Coupe'. I can forgive it when I see 'Ladies' on train compartments. Most of those who stencil those things in couldn't care about grammar or punctuation. But when you are a writer, writing in English, and I assume thinking in it as well, you just cannot be forgiven for a book that's entitled wrongly. 'Ladies' Coupe' is what it should have been. (Compartment would have been perfect but hey, that's her wish, whereas punctuation is not.) She didn't miss putting that accent on Coupe, did she? Most of us who have pretensions of correct pronunciation would have managed saying it 'coupay' without the accent on e. But she didn't forget that. She forgot the apostrophe.


Since then Nair has been someone I sneered at and looked at derisively in that judgmental way I have. I've never picked up a book written by her. 

However, the last week found me desperately seeking some reading matter other than my newspaper, my crochet pattern book and a giant book of bedtime stories and rhymes -- as much as I enjoy all three. Who doesn't like a bedtime story? I found a copy of 'Mistress' on the bookshelf. A quick synopsis for the interested (courtesy Nair's very bad website).

"When travel writer Christopher Stewart arrives at a riverside resort in Kerala to meet Koman, Radha's uncle and a famous kathakali dancer, he enters a world of masks and repressed emotions. From their first meeting, both Radha and her uncle are drawn to the enigmatic young man with his cello and his incessant questions about the past. The triangle quickly excludes Shyam, Radha's husband, who can only watch helplessly as she embraces Chris with a passion that he has never been able to draw from her. Also playing the role of observer-participant is Koman; his life story, as it unfolds, captures all the nuances and contradictions of the relationships being made--and unmade--in front of his eyes.

A brilliant blend of imaginative story-telling and deeply moving explorations into the search for meaning in art and life, Mistress is a literary tour de force from one of India's most exciting writers."


Nair is a very smart woman. Look at the elements -- adultery, Kathakali, a cello, a white man in Kerala and a river. How can one ignore a book that claims to include all of these? So Kathakali and adultery did their magic on me and I went for that over a rereading of A Cook's Tour (Anthony Bourdain).

I must say, at this point, that having read the first couple of pages, I discovered the reason she is so successful -- it is because she is a superb storyteller. 

As I read, I kept asking myself if I have lost eight good years of reading because of my judgmental nature. Had I gotten to her earlier, would I have read more, hence known more, hence gone on to writing more? I felt a sense of being unfair towards this author who I had dismissed because I was anal about punctuation. (I still am but not as bad as I was.) 


For, honestly, right from the word go, she had me gripped. Her characters were full and raw, her description of people a tad romantic and adolescent but engaging all the same. Just like a good storyteller would do it. My blogosphere (excuse me, please) friend Judy Balan (see blog roll for link. Oh, hell, ok, just click here, lazy farts) had a pretty accurate and fairly succinct detailing of the difference between Writer and Storyteller, which for some reason, I can't find now. So I read with a sinking stomach the words of a born storyteller. 

And then... 


I knew why Nair would never ever find pride of place on my bookshelf. (Moments like these justify the title of my blog.)


Here's why. Those of you who have read the book, please go back and read what I am talking about. Those of you who haven't, I am posting from work and was disorganised enough to not bring the book with me so that I could write out the scene for more clarity. In the light of such circumstances, you'll have to make do with what I have here. Or just stop reading and come back tomorrow when I can edit this post to include the bit from the book verbatim.


So, said white man Chris has gotten off the train somewhere near Shoranur, Palakkad districit, Kerala, India. Radha is immediately attracted to him and his cello. Shyam, her husband, is insecure. I can't understand the relevance of using the device of calling this highly-mismatched couple Radha and Shyam. Another strike against Nair, as far as I am concerned.


They get to the resort that the couple owns and Shyam (in what we can assume are his country bumpkin ways) asks Chris what the instrument is. Chris says its a cello. I presume, because he is an Englishman he knows that the word is pronounced 'chello' and not 'sello' as we in India would call it if we didn't know better. 


So
Chris: Chello.
Shyam: That's a sello? Come to the restaurant, we'll show you our sellos. Laughs. (Referring to the brand of hot cases that we have in India called, you guessed it, Cello)*


Can you understand why I trusted my instinct about Anita Nair and haven't ever read her? No? Let me try and explain without the asinine pronunciation-spellings and terrible paraphrasing. 


Chris said 'cello' but would have pronounced it the way it is supposed to have been. So, listening to that, there is no way that Shyam would have thought of his Cello hot cases in the restaurant. Because, like Shyam if you don't know what a cello (the instrument, not the hot case) looks like, then chances are you don't know how it's pronounced or spelt. Which means, in Nair's head Chris pronounced cello as sello, which is why Shyam thought of his humble hot cases and made a really bad joke. 


Or I am a complete idiot and Shyam -- as well as the rest of India -- pronounces Cello (the hot case brand, not the instrument) as chello and I am the only one who calls it sello. 




* Paraphrased heavily because I don't have the book.