It is a beautiful book in a number of ways and it raises many memories.
Malawi was a multicultural place to grow up in. Most of the girls in my class in La Sagesse Convent that I attended in Limbe were Indian - Hindu, Muslim or Sikh. Actually, as a side note, few girls in my class were Christian, let alone Catholic. In the few years that I was there, I knew of only one conversion. An Irish Catholic girl became a Muslim.
My mother was also introduced to a number of Indian friends by our dear family friend, Aunty Joyce Mendonca, who was Goanese (and Catholic, since Goa was once a Portuguese colony). It was Aunty Joyce who showed us how to wear a sari and how to cook many Indian delicacies. On occasion, I would accompany my mother and Aunty Joyce to visit various ladies, and it was always well worth it for the food alone. No visit to an Indian household could be made without one being plied with food, and it is extremely rude to refuse what is offered, no matter how many other friends you may have just visited and eaten with. Indian ladies strive to out-do one another with novel delicacies. Visitors praise the food vociferously and there is much discussion about the ingredients, methods of cooking and what variations one might try. It is also an occasion for those who are not so keen on the hostess or who are jealous of her to insinuate that the food has too much of this ingredient or too little of that.
So I found Manil Suri's description of poor Mrs Pathak's preparations for her kitty party and their reception doubly hilarious, even while I felt keenly for her mortification.
In a way, living in Limbe was just a little like living in India. Limbe was then predominantly full of Indian shops ("dukas"), in which we haggled and chatted. (I loved most the shops that sold spices in large bins and whose aromatic mix of smells hung over the length of the street. I always looked with longing at the bin of jaggri - raw brown clumps of sugar molasses which I was occasionally given a taste of. The owner said that too much was dangerous to one's health - why did I believe him? Years later, while at university in Natal, I used to munch the molasses as my friend Ingrid and I prepared the feed for the horses on her family's small-holding).
With friends in Malawi, Natal and Cape Town, I have also had the pleasure of attending Hindu and Sikh temple ceremonies, being invited to Hindu and Muslim weddings, and sitting in ancient cinemas watching the original old Indian films in Hindi (with a friend translating), long before Bollywood semi-westernized itself. I have also derived great pleasure in reading the Ramayana (in translation of course - it is a wonderful story).
So "The Death of Vishnu" brought back so much to me as I read it: the book was vibrant and colourful-seeming: there were many references to Bollywood movies - indeed, several characters visualized their actions in terms of movies (as I am sure many of us have done from time to time in our own lives, even if it was only when we were in our teens).
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| An 18th Century Indian painting of Vishnu resting on the Naga Ananta-Sesha, with Lakshmi massaging His feet. Ananta-Sesha is the endless primal being who holds all the planets of the Universe on his hoods and whose mouths constantly sing Vishnu's glories. When he uncoils, time moves forward and creation takes place. When he coils again, the universe ceases to exist and only Vishnu remains, resting on Sesha's coils, floating asleep on the cosmic ocean until Shesha uncoils once more. Sounds so much like modern physics. |
An aspect of the book that I both enjoyed and admired immensely was the subtle humour and pathos with which mankind's great existential questions, spiritual beliefs and ethics were played out and considered in even the smallest everyday actions of the various characters throughout the entire story.
It was also a book about relationships, of how men and women understand and misunderstand one another, often over a lifetime and often in silently tragic ways. Here, Suri looks below the surface of the pettiness, meanness or ineptitude of his characters to their inner core with a compassion that makes wonderful reading.
And of course, since I have always had an abiding interest in and love of mythology and legend, "The Death of Vishnu" was delightful in what it had to say about the Hindu religion and its many legends - and of course about Vishnu himself. For anyone who wishes to gain a deeper understanding of Hindu beliefs, this book provides insight with ease.
I particularly admired Suri's almost living description of a vision of Vishnu. And (reading critically of course), I was struck by a sense of Vishnu being described in fractal terms in the vision. Of course, this would make sense with Suri being a professor of mathematics, though I have not come across him mentioning this aspect of the story as emanating from his experience as a mathematician. I love discovering how each writer consciously or unconsciously brings his or her own special interests and loves to his or her story.
I believe that Suri intends a trilogy. "The Life of Shiva" is published and I am off to find it. I also look forward to his intended book, "The Birth of Brahma".
Here is the link to Manil Suri's website for those who are interested: Manil Suri
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