The snake around your neck

“Wow!” I said to myself as I read the last line of a 573-page Malayalam novel, Ghathakan (Killer) by K R Meera. Since most readers of this blog don’t/can’t read Malayalam, I won’t write a review but deal with one of its major themes which I found irresistible.

Wealth is the ultimate value or virtue in today’s world. Meera’s novel which is a detective story on the one hand and brilliant literature on the other shows how money has come to rule all of us – our politicians and ascetics and the whole lot of us. Interestingly, the novel opens with the infamous demonetisation of 8 Nov 2016. A week after that catastrophe which our Prime Minister hurled at a nation of a billion plus citizens, the protagonist of the novel is attacked by a killer. Satyapriya, the 44-year-old protagonist, is determined to find out why someone wants to kill her. The quest takes her on an arduous and excruciating journey into her past and the pasts of many people including her father, a child abuser.

Demonetisation is a metaphor in the novel, and it appears again and again as a motif. The catastrophic exercise was carried out with the professed intention of eradicating black money but black money did not disappear. On the contrary, black money came back with vengeance. You can’t eradicate black money. Black money is as much an integral part of the human systems as is evil. The inextricable as well as metaphorical link between money and evil is emphasised repeatedly in the novel and the conclusion is just a loud Amen to those emphases.

“Whether it’s Hindus or Muslims or Christians or Buddhists or Jains, the plain truth is that man has only one religion – money. Only one lover – power.” The narrator-protagonist tells us. Even demonetisation was an ingenious way of usurping power from certain sections of the citizens by making their amassed wealth worthless overnight. It was not about black money. It was about striking at the very roots of certain perceived enemies.

No, Meera’s novel is not a political work at all. It has everything in it, quite like the Mahabharata. There is vengeance, fraudulence, chicanery, Geetopadesha, and the final vacuum that remains after the whole war for dharma is over. Gandhi is replaced by Godse in one of the currency notes in the novel. Godse becomes a hero and his death anniversary is commemorated as Balidan day. No, the novel is not political though politics runs throughout the novel as an invisible and ethereal force that seeks to decimate certain people like Kashmiris and Maoists. You won’t meet politicians in the novel. Power is omnipresent. The invisible killer is its ideal metaphor. You will meet a godman, though. And he is no god’s man. Unless you accept wealth as a god.

We live in a post-truth world of metaphorical snakes. There are cobras and vipers and kraits. Your best bet is to take the python and put it around your neck. The python will protect you from the other snakes. But protecting yourself from the python is your duty. How to do it? There is a way, says the narrator-protagonist. Just tickle the python. The poor creature will then have to make a choice between its food and its laughter.

We are all carrying a python each around our necks. For our own survival. How long will we keep it laughing with our tickles? The killer (ghathakan) is just awaiting his opportunity.

PS. The last novel by the same author that I read was Hangwoman and that was six years ago.