Compassion in a post-truth world

Book Review

We live in a topsy-turvy world. Mass murderers get acclaimed as messiahs, hard-core criminals are apotheosised as yogis and sadhvis, and absolute ignoramuses are elevated as dignified gurus of ancient wisdom. On the other hand, sane voices are being muffled, if not silenced altogether. How does one create credible fiction with conventional heroes and plots in such an inverted world? Impossible. What does writing amount to in such a situation? Paul Zacharia answers that question and does much more in his debut English novel, A Secret History of Compassion.

Zacharia is a renowned Malayalam writer. His stories and longer writings provide refreshing peeps into human affairs. He can be funny and serious at once, spiritual and irreverent, mystical and cynical. In his first English novel, he is most of all that, yet much different from his usual self. A Secret History is a baffling novel. None of the characters is realistic. The whole setting of the novel is a dream world. The narrative is post-truth.

The protagonist, Lord Spider (who has a few other pseudonyms too), is a popular writer whose annual income from his thrillers and mysteries is a mind-blowing sum. He has been entrusted with the job of writing an essay, his first non-fiction work, by the Communist Party with which he has more than friendly associations. The transition from fiction to non-fiction is quite arduous for him. Fortunately, Jesus Lambodara Pillai who is a hangman by profession in addition to being a mystical voyeur and aspiring writer offers his assistance. The essay which is completed towards the end of the novel is a product of the hangman and Spider’s wife Rosi. Rosi is a freelance philosopher. Lord Spider’s contribution to the essay is almost nothing though he claims the authorship.

The essay which begins with the futuristic claim that “The time is not far off when robot armies, interstellar ships and AI units controlling WMDs and slaughterhouse machinery run by EI will be programmed with Compassion” is really not the central theme of the novel. What the three writers of the essay say and do is what makes up the bizarrely absurd phantasmagoria of the novel.

God and Stalin are women in that world. Jesus flies about in the sky and J L Pillai meets him occasionally since the latter can alter his shape into a bird or whatever he chooses. Pillai has a blood relationship with Jesus too. Satan turns out to be quite different from what we know about him.

Everything from God to Satan, compassion to communism, fiction to truth is different in that world. Patriotism is a multipurpose strategy which has nothing to do with love for one’s nation. Religious martyrdom is an act of folly on the part of both the martyr and his torturers. Lovemaking is fiction. God shares the profession of the fiction writer. “We share the same profession,” God says when Spider tells her about his profession. “Only, I don’t write fiction. I make it happen,” God elaborates.

Before meeting god, however, Spider was of the opinion that “gods simply don’t get any sleep” because they suffer from insecurity feelings about whether they will be replaced “tomorrow” by other gods since “replacements were aplenty”.

What we should beware, according to the essay on Compassion, is “the shroud of silence that hides History’s unending massacres of the Body’s Uprisings – the brutal extermination of the Revolution of Passion. O! Beware the silence masking the tragic History of love and lovemaking. Listen, if you can, to the fearsome last rites of orgasms, to the inconsolable whimpers from the annihilated universe of sweet lust…. Ask: Who expelled Compassion from the paradise of love?” [Emphasis added]

During its convoluted course, the narrative mocks the usual elements of popular fiction: “terror, horror, pathos and salvation.” Zacharia’s novel does not offer these; it offers more – it offers the “fear in a handful of dust” of a bewildering Eliotean Waste Land.

The novel is replete with literary and historical allusions. There is also much religion and philosophy interspersing it. Only those readers who have some literary finesse are likely to enjoy this novel. Even they may not wish to read the book more than once unlike much of the other works of the author.

A page from the novel

XzX

Comments

Pranita a perverted genius

Bulldozer begins its work at Sawan Pranita was a perverted genius. She had Machiavelli’s brain, Octavian’s relentlessness, and Levin’s intellectual calibre. She could have worked wonders if she wanted. She could have created a beautiful world around her. She had the potential. Yet she chose to be a ruthless exterminator. She came to Sawan Public School just to kill it. A religious cult called Radha Soami Satsang Beas [RSSB] had taken over the school from its owner who had never visited the school for over 20 years. This owner, a prominent entrepreneur with a gargantuan ego, had come to the conclusion that the morality of the school’s staff was deviating from the wavelengths determined by him. Moreover, his one foot was inching towards the grave. I was also told that there were some domestic noises which were grating against his patriarchal sensibilities. One holy solution for all these was to hand over the school and its enormous campus (nearly 20 acres of land on the outskirts

Queen of Religion

She looked like Queen Victoria in the latter’s youth but with a snow-white head. She was slim, fair and graceful. She always smiled but the smile had no life. Someone on the campus described it as a “plastic smile.” She was charming by physical appearance. Soon all of us on the Sawan school campus would realise how deceptive appearances were. Queen took over the administration of Sawan school on behalf of her religious cult RSSB [Radha Soami Satsang Beas]. A lot was said about RSSB in the previous post. Its godman Gurinder Singh Dhillon is now 70 years old. I don’t know whether age has mellowed his lust for land and wealth. Even at the age of 64, he was embroiled in a financial scam that led to the fall of two colossal business enterprises, Fortis Healthcare and Religare finance. That was just a couple of years after he had succeeded in making Sawan school vanish without a trace from Delhi which he did for the sake of adding the school’s twenty-odd acres of land to his existing hun

Machiavelli the Reverend

Let us go today , you and I, through certain miasmic streets. Nothing will be quite clear along our way because this journey is through some delusions and illusions. You will meet people wearing holy robes and talking about morality and virtues. Some of them will claim to be god’s men and some will make taller claims. Some of them are just amorphous. Invisible. But omnipotent. You can feel their power around you. On you. Oppressing you. Stifling you. Reverend Machiavelli is one such oppressive power. You will meet Franz Kafka somewhere along the way. Joseph K’s ghost will pass by. Remember Joseph K who was arrested one fine morning for a crime that nobody knew anything about? Neither Joseph nor the men who arrest him know why Joseph K is arrested. The power that keeps Joseph K under arrest is invisible. He cannot get answers to his valid questions from the visible agents of that power. He cannot explain himself to that power. Finally, he is taken to a quarry outside the town wher

Randeep the melody

Many people in this pic have made their presence in this A2Z series A phone call came from an unknown number the other day. “Is it okay to talk to you now, Sir?” The caller asked. The typical start of a conversation by an influencer. “What’s it about?” My usual response looking forward to something like: “I am so-and-so from such-and-such business firm…” And I would cut the call. But there was a surprise this time. “I am Randeep…” I recognised him instantly. His voice rang like a gentle music in my heart. Randeep was a student from the last class 12 batch of Sawan. One of my favourites. He is unforgettable. Both Maggie and I taught him at Sawan where he was a student from class 4 to 12. Nine years in a residential school create deep bonds between people, even between staff and students. Randeep was an ideal student. Good at everything yet very humble and spontaneous. He was a top sportsman and a prefect with eminent leadership. He had certain peculiar problems with academics. Ans

Nakulan the Outcast

Nakulan was one of the many tenants of Hevendrea . A professor in the botany department of the North Eastern Hill University, he was a very lovable person. Some sense of inferiority complex that came from his caste status made him scoff the very idea of his lovability. He lived with his wife and three children in one of Heavendrea’s many cottages. When he wanted to have a drink, he would walk over to my hut. We sipped our whiskies and discussed Shillong’s intriguing politics or something of the sort while my cassette player crooned gently in the background. Nakulan was more than ten years my senior by age. He taught a subject which had never aroused my interest at any stage of my life. It made no difference to me whether a leaf was pinnately compound or palmately compound. You don’t need to know about anther and stigma in order to understand a flower. My friend Levin would have ascribed my lack of interest in Nakulan’s subject to my egomania. I always thought that Nakulan lived

Tomichan Matheikal's blog

Search This Blog