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.