Skip to main content

Call of the Forest




Book Review


Title: Dattapaharam: Call of the Forest

Author: V J James

Translated from Malayalam by: Ministhy S

Publisher: Penguin, 2023

Pages: 164

The forest is an enchanting place for many people including me. The chief reason why this book drew my attention is that the forest plays a vital role in it. We live in the forest through this novel. We move in the forest, climb its rocks, bathe in its streams, and sleep in its caves. The smells and sounds of the forest envelop us.

The hero of the novel, Freddie Robert, vanishes right in the beginning. He is somewhere there in the deep forest living with all the wild animals because the call of the forest is far sweeter to him than the allures of human civilisation. His friends begin a journey into the forest to find him. The novel is about that journey.

The novel is about forest, rather. About the need to merge into nature. The human world is replete with hypocrisy and deceit. The animals are far better. They turn out to be kinder too in the novel. Only, you should know how to deal with them. Rather, you should reach their level of existence – a high level of ‘transparency’. Freddie Robert is seen by a team of researchers as completely naked man. Freddie’s nakedness is a mark of his transparency. Nothing, not even clothes, now separates him from nature.

Before Freddie’s disappearance, he tells one of his friends: “Only the forest has a pure present time. The one who can live like a wild animal, after understanding himself, is fortunate. Without worrying about what is behind him, and without concerning himself with what is yet to come, he can exist purely in the present.”  

Is such bliss of living purely in the present possible? Maybe, in the forest it is. But what motivates one to seek such bliss? In the novel, mysticism is not what motivates Freddie to abandon human civilisation. It is not spirituality of any kind either. There’s not even any convincing metaphysical reason suggested. Towards the end of the novel, a very ordinary human motive comes to the surface. I don’t want to discuss it because it will be a huge spoiler in case you wish to read this novel.

Freddie was a gang leader at college. His gang was called the Pandavas. Freddie was Yudhishtira, but one without any sense of dharma. There is a Panchali (Draupadi) too but playing a completely different role. Freddie has to learn his dharma from the forest, the place where “there are fewer wicked animals … when compared to the mainland.” The human world today is led by “charismatic masters who are frauds” and “devils who read the scriptures seated on commercialized spiritual pedestals.”

How do we redeem ourselves in such a world? Can the forest be of help? This novel suggests it can.

I didn’t find the suggestion very convincing. The plot and its movement toward denouement will keep you hooked to the pages. But the characters turn out to be rather unconvincing. Superficial. Towards the end, it is impossible to believe what they are saying and doing. Not because the forest has deluded them; they are deluding themselves because their creator (the author) has a lesson to teach the readers.

Eminent writers like Bernard Shaw have written with the clear purpose of teaching certain lessons to the readers. But their didacticism didn’t detract from the literary eminence of their writing. James stops short of belonging to that category of writers.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Prelude to AtoZ

  From Garden of 5 Senses, Delhi [file pic] Hindsight gives an unearthly charm and order to the past. There can be pain too. A lot of things could have been different, much better, if only we possessed the wisdom of our old age back in those days. As a writer put it, Oedipus, Hamlet, Lear and a lot of those guys must have thought, “I wish I had known this some time ago.” Life is a series of errors with intermittent achievements. The only usefulness of the errors may be the lessons they teach us. Probably, that is their purpose too. We are created to err so that we learn, I dare to put it that way. I turn 64 in a month’s time. It’s not inappropriate to look back at some of the people whom life brought into my life so that I would learn certain lessons. No, I don’t mean to say that life has any such purpose or design or anything. Life is absurd. People come into your life as haphazardly as vehicles ply on your road or birds poop on your head. Some of these people change the chemist

Why I won’t vote

From Deshabhimani , Malayalam weekly Exactly a month from today is the Parliamentary election in my state of Kerala. This time, I’m not going to vote. Bernard Shaw defined democracy , with his characteristic cynicism, as “ a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve .” We elect our government in a democracy. And the government invariably sucks our blood – whichever the party is. The BJP and the Congress are like Tweedledum and Tweedledee though the former makes all sorts of other claims day in and day out. BJP = Congress + the holy cow. The holy cow has turned out to be quite a vampire and that makes a difference, no doubt. In our Prime Minister’s algebra, it is: (a+b) 2 which should be equal to a 2 and b 2 . There is an extra 2ab which is the holy cow. In George Orwell’s Animal Farm , the animals revolt against the human master and set up their own nationalist republic. Soon politics develops in the republic and some pigs become leaders. The porcine

How Arvind Kejriwal can save himself

Narendra Modi and Amit Shah have a clear vision. Eliminate all opposition. Decimate them or absorb them. My previous post [link below] showed a few people decimated by them. Today let’s look at the others: those who are saved by joining the Bharatiya Janata Party [BJP]. 1. Himanta Biswa Sarma  This guy was in Congress and faced serious charges related to the multi-crore Saradha chit fund scam. He also faced corruption charges related to drinking water supply in Guwahati. His house was raided by the Central Bureau of Investigation [CBI]. Then he switched over to BJP and all his crimes just vanished. It’s as simple as taking a dip in the Ganga and all your sins are forgiven. Today he is the chief minister of Assam. Nothing is heard of all the charges that were levelled against him. 2. Amarinder Singh  This former Captain in the Indian Army was a Congressman until Modi’s Enforcement Directorate [ED] started raiding him, his son and his son-in-law. He put an end to all those raid

The Good Old World

Book Review Title: Dukhi Dadiba and irony of fate Author: Dadi Edulji Taraporewala Translators: Aban Mukherji and Tulsi Vatsal Publisher: Ratna Books, Delhi, 2023 Pages: 314 If you want to return to the good old days of the late 19 th century, this is an ideal novel for you. This was published originally in Gujarati in 1913. It appeared as a serial before that from 1898 onwards in a periodical. The conflict between good and evil is the dominant motif though there is romance, betrayal, disappointment, regret, and pretty much of traditional morality. Reading this novel is quite like watching an old Bollywood movie, 1960s style. Ardeshir Bahadurshah, a wealthy Parsi aristocrat in Surat, dies having obligated his son Jehangir to find out his long-lost brother Rustom. Rustom was Bahadurshah’s son in his first marriage. The mother died when the boy was too small and the nurse who looked after the child vanished with it one day. Ratanmai, Bahadurshah’s present wife, takes her

Kejriwal’s Arrest in Modi’s Kurukshetra

For some mysterious reason, Arvind Kejriwal’s arrest reminded me of Haren Pandya. Maybe, because Pandya’s 21 st death anniversary is approaching (26 March). Have you forgotten Haren Pandya? He was the Home Minister of Gujarat before Narendra Modi assumed dictatorial powers in that state. Modi chose to teach humility to Pandya by making him the Minister of State for revenue. Pandya chose not to learn humility from Modi and resigned from that post in Aug 2002. Remember Gujarat of 2002? You should. A fire engulfed a train on 27 Feb 2002 killing 58 Hindu pilgrims who were returning from Ayodhya where they had gone to discover their god, not very unlike Christopher Columbus undertaking a voyage to discover India and messing it all up. What caused the fire in the train? Lord Ram knows probably. The upshot was that there was a riot in Gujarat by Hindus against Muslims. Haren Pandya is one of the BJP leaders who gave statements in many places indicting Modi for the riots. He asser