I am posting here my review of Preeta Samarasan's novel Evening is the Whole Day that appeared in Sahitya Akademi's journal, Indian Lite
rature (April May 2009). Sahitya Akademi is India's national academy of letters. Samarasan's novel made it to the Vodafone-Crossword Book Awards 2008 shortlist. You will find an interesting review of the book here and more at the author's website.
Sad But Satisfying
Evening is the Whole Day by Preeta Samarasan, HarperCollins Publishers India, New Delhi, 2008, Pp. 340, Rs.395/-
Two departures frame this beautiful and sad novel by Preeta Samarasan. The first is the `ignominious departure’ of the servant girl Chellam from the Big House of the Rajsekharans in the suburbs of the Malaysian city of Ipoh. The other is the sending-off of the eldest daughter of the house, Uma, for studies in an American University. To a casual observer who stands just outside the gates of the Big House, these departures, hide more than they reveal. The context of these departures, the contrasts and the similarities, the secrets that they hide, the histories that that they are woven with, animate Evening is the Whole Day.
The novel both takes its name and begins with a quote from the ancient Tamil poetry collection, the Kurontokai:
The sun goes down and the sky reddens, pain grows sharp,
Light dwindles. Then is evening
when jasmine flowers open, the deluded say.
But evening is the great brightening dawn
when crested cocks crow all through the tall city
and evening is the whole day
for those without their lovers.
It is worth noting that this treasure house of Tamil verse has been serving Indian novelists well, with at least one other Indian writer (Vikram Chandra, Red Earth and the Pouring Rain) delving into it for the title of his novel. The pathos of those two-thousand year old lines, permeates Samarasan’s story, bearing along the pains of a troubled Indian family who have made Malaysia their home for three generations. And in Samarasan’s expert treatment the troubles of the family reflect and retell the troubled history of a young nation, a history of ethnic tensions and economic inequity. Because of the ethnicity of the storyteller, the Tamil family at the centre of the narrative and the familiarity of the post-colonial space of a multi-ethnic nation-state in which the story unfolds, Evening is the Whole Day, is as much an Indian story as it is a story of Malaysia.
Time in Samarasan’s novel moves back and forth as she tells us about the Rajsekharan family, slowly revealing the many undercurrents of tension that flow beneath the sheen of happiness that is often the envy of neighbours. But as she reveals she also conceals, a technique which keeps the reader interested till the final chapters when some uncomfortable secrets of the family are finally out in the open. The tenuous happiness of this family of Indian immigrants, with its many undercurrents is symptomatic of the fractious peace of a Malaysia where majority appeasement has led to racial tensions. These tensions and violence, as expertly evoked in the description of the riots, mirror the tensions – often the handiwork of self-serving political forces – that time and again threaten to tear the fabric of our own nation apart.
In a recent BBC interview Samarasan was telling the interviewer that she didn’t start writing the book with a politics in mind, which is very much understandable. While race relations and racial tensions do figure in the storyline, this is primarily a novel about the Rajsekharan family and their inner dynamics. Yet she begins her book with a quote from Graham Swift’s Waterland which is about the `ifs’ of history, what `if’ it happened differently. `If only we could have it back. A New Beginning. If only we could return …’ This is an idea that recurs in the story pointing tantalizingly to alternate developments of the plot. In these unexplored plots, while she lingers at the junctions of those forking paths, she seems to point to the possibility of things turning out better instead and we see a streak of optimism in the author of Evening is the Whole Day.
Samarasan excels in vivid imagery. Her sentences are often beautiful to read though sometimes her verbiage can be a bit daunting. She often uses, what Harper Lee would call `fruity metaphors and florid diction.’ There is a tendency towards `bagginess’ and this overabundant style brings Salman Rushdie or Arundhati Roy, immediately to one’s mind, but in a negative sort of way. The story being centred on a family, perhaps, a quieter style would have served her better. Her magic realist escapades, like the one where a sparrow is sucked into the house as the vacuum of an embarrassing moment has sucked in all the air, seems too contrived. She is best when she describes the small details, the day to day existences and in those passages she reminds us of that great master of the realist novel, Gustave Flaubert.
The characters of Evening is the Whole Day are expertly etched, achingly real. Because of her brilliant characterisation, the picture of the Big House with the family and the servants going about their ways – Patti the grand old lady, the sisters Uma and Asha, the brother Suresh, their father – the big lawyer and his wife and the servants, Chellam, Lourdesmary, shine brightly before our eyes. Samarasan’s sophisticated characterisation merits a little more discussion.
This book does not have any identifiable heroes. It is populated with individuals who in their own small or big ways, with their minor or major aspirations, their baseness or frivolity, their faithless wanderings or touching dignity weave an unforgettable human story. While the characters of Chellam and the elder daughter Uma, are no doubt very important to the structure of the novel, this reviewer found two other characters that infuse Samarasan’s novel with what he thinks are the unmistakable qualities of good literature. These two unforgettable characters are those of Uma’s younger sister Asha and the peripatetic, Uncle Ballroom.
Asha while being only six years old when the story begins, in her quietness, her secret spying of the goings-on in the house, her troubled inner landscape, remains deeply etched in the reader’s mind. Not the least for the fact that she is present and silently watching at one of the crucial moments of the book, when the grandmother (Patti) dies. Who is responsible for her death? Who should be punished? Only Asha knows, because she watches it all and sure enough she does punish and with all the wantonness of logic that only a six-year old mind could perhaps muster. She is the personification of the gaze, that focuses (though sometimes in secret) over the Big House; she punishes as she pleases but she also hankers for the love of her elder sister. In a way, because of her strange interiority, her quiet ways, her ability to communicate with ghosts, Asha is almost unreal and therein perhaps lies her appeal to the reader.
Uncle Ballroom, the other memorable character is also deftly portrayed by Samarasan. As the story progresses this ne’er-do-well uncle gradually comes out as the character with a lot of dignity and human qualities. Gay and colourful, he tries his best to help the impoverished Chellam while also giving dance lessons to Uma. But in the end he comes face to face with a dark secret of the family and wrongly blamed, has to leave the house. He is the character of the carnival, the performer of the spectacle, the jester whose heart is surely made of gold.
His departure much like the departures of Uma and that of Chellam is another movement, another pointer to the gathering gloom. A story has ended without resolution and a new one will begin. This new story is the story of the young nation, be it Malaysia or India, the stories of post-colonial societies ring eerily familiar.
The jester has vanished now, he sulks somewhere in secret. Chellam has gone, swept away – hidden under the carpet. She is a stain on a future that is surely shining, she is someone who can be made the scapegoat for all that does not work out well, as if secrets could be hidden like that. The elder daughter, with her own list of miseries, her own disenchantment, has left for America where `anything can happen.’ Where `you can go broken, and tomorrow find yourself whole.’ That is the closing line of Evening is the Whole Day, a sad but wondrous book.
[Copyright 2009. Published review. All rights strictly reserved. Published in Indian Literature a Journal of Sahitya Akademi - India's national academy of letters.]
Read other published non-fiction and fiction reviews by Rajat Chaudhuri.
rature (April May 2009). Sahitya Akademi is India's national academy of letters. Samarasan's novel made it to the Vodafone-Crossword Book Awards 2008 shortlist. You will find an interesting review of the book here and more at the author's website.Sad But Satisfying
Evening is the Whole Day by Preeta Samarasan, HarperCollins Publishers India, New Delhi, 2008, Pp. 340, Rs.395/-
Two departures frame this beautiful and sad novel by Preeta Samarasan. The first is the `ignominious departure’ of the servant girl Chellam from the Big House of the Rajsekharans in the suburbs of the Malaysian city of Ipoh. The other is the sending-off of the eldest daughter of the house, Uma, for studies in an American University. To a casual observer who stands just outside the gates of the Big House, these departures, hide more than they reveal. The context of these departures, the contrasts and the similarities, the secrets that they hide, the histories that that they are woven with, animate Evening is the Whole Day.
The novel both takes its name and begins with a quote from the ancient Tamil poetry collection, the Kurontokai:
The sun goes down and the sky reddens, pain grows sharp,
Light dwindles. Then is evening
when jasmine flowers open, the deluded say.
But evening is the great brightening dawn
when crested cocks crow all through the tall city
and evening is the whole day
for those without their lovers.
It is worth noting that this treasure house of Tamil verse has been serving Indian novelists well, with at least one other Indian writer (Vikram Chandra, Red Earth and the Pouring Rain) delving into it for the title of his novel. The pathos of those two-thousand year old lines, permeates Samarasan’s story, bearing along the pains of a troubled Indian family who have made Malaysia their home for three generations. And in Samarasan’s expert treatment the troubles of the family reflect and retell the troubled history of a young nation, a history of ethnic tensions and economic inequity. Because of the ethnicity of the storyteller, the Tamil family at the centre of the narrative and the familiarity of the post-colonial space of a multi-ethnic nation-state in which the story unfolds, Evening is the Whole Day, is as much an Indian story as it is a story of Malaysia.
Time in Samarasan’s novel moves back and forth as she tells us about the Rajsekharan family, slowly revealing the many undercurrents of tension that flow beneath the sheen of happiness that is often the envy of neighbours. But as she reveals she also conceals, a technique which keeps the reader interested till the final chapters when some uncomfortable secrets of the family are finally out in the open. The tenuous happiness of this family of Indian immigrants, with its many undercurrents is symptomatic of the fractious peace of a Malaysia where majority appeasement has led to racial tensions. These tensions and violence, as expertly evoked in the description of the riots, mirror the tensions – often the handiwork of self-serving political forces – that time and again threaten to tear the fabric of our own nation apart.
In a recent BBC interview Samarasan was telling the interviewer that she didn’t start writing the book with a politics in mind, which is very much understandable. While race relations and racial tensions do figure in the storyline, this is primarily a novel about the Rajsekharan family and their inner dynamics. Yet she begins her book with a quote from Graham Swift’s Waterland which is about the `ifs’ of history, what `if’ it happened differently. `If only we could have it back. A New Beginning. If only we could return …’ This is an idea that recurs in the story pointing tantalizingly to alternate developments of the plot. In these unexplored plots, while she lingers at the junctions of those forking paths, she seems to point to the possibility of things turning out better instead and we see a streak of optimism in the author of Evening is the Whole Day.
Samarasan excels in vivid imagery. Her sentences are often beautiful to read though sometimes her verbiage can be a bit daunting. She often uses, what Harper Lee would call `fruity metaphors and florid diction.’ There is a tendency towards `bagginess’ and this overabundant style brings Salman Rushdie or Arundhati Roy, immediately to one’s mind, but in a negative sort of way. The story being centred on a family, perhaps, a quieter style would have served her better. Her magic realist escapades, like the one where a sparrow is sucked into the house as the vacuum of an embarrassing moment has sucked in all the air, seems too contrived. She is best when she describes the small details, the day to day existences and in those passages she reminds us of that great master of the realist novel, Gustave Flaubert.
The characters of Evening is the Whole Day are expertly etched, achingly real. Because of her brilliant characterisation, the picture of the Big House with the family and the servants going about their ways – Patti the grand old lady, the sisters Uma and Asha, the brother Suresh, their father – the big lawyer and his wife and the servants, Chellam, Lourdesmary, shine brightly before our eyes. Samarasan’s sophisticated characterisation merits a little more discussion.
This book does not have any identifiable heroes. It is populated with individuals who in their own small or big ways, with their minor or major aspirations, their baseness or frivolity, their faithless wanderings or touching dignity weave an unforgettable human story. While the characters of Chellam and the elder daughter Uma, are no doubt very important to the structure of the novel, this reviewer found two other characters that infuse Samarasan’s novel with what he thinks are the unmistakable qualities of good literature. These two unforgettable characters are those of Uma’s younger sister Asha and the peripatetic, Uncle Ballroom.
Asha while being only six years old when the story begins, in her quietness, her secret spying of the goings-on in the house, her troubled inner landscape, remains deeply etched in the reader’s mind. Not the least for the fact that she is present and silently watching at one of the crucial moments of the book, when the grandmother (Patti) dies. Who is responsible for her death? Who should be punished? Only Asha knows, because she watches it all and sure enough she does punish and with all the wantonness of logic that only a six-year old mind could perhaps muster. She is the personification of the gaze, that focuses (though sometimes in secret) over the Big House; she punishes as she pleases but she also hankers for the love of her elder sister. In a way, because of her strange interiority, her quiet ways, her ability to communicate with ghosts, Asha is almost unreal and therein perhaps lies her appeal to the reader.
Uncle Ballroom, the other memorable character is also deftly portrayed by Samarasan. As the story progresses this ne’er-do-well uncle gradually comes out as the character with a lot of dignity and human qualities. Gay and colourful, he tries his best to help the impoverished Chellam while also giving dance lessons to Uma. But in the end he comes face to face with a dark secret of the family and wrongly blamed, has to leave the house. He is the character of the carnival, the performer of the spectacle, the jester whose heart is surely made of gold.
His departure much like the departures of Uma and that of Chellam is another movement, another pointer to the gathering gloom. A story has ended without resolution and a new one will begin. This new story is the story of the young nation, be it Malaysia or India, the stories of post-colonial societies ring eerily familiar.
The jester has vanished now, he sulks somewhere in secret. Chellam has gone, swept away – hidden under the carpet. She is a stain on a future that is surely shining, she is someone who can be made the scapegoat for all that does not work out well, as if secrets could be hidden like that. The elder daughter, with her own list of miseries, her own disenchantment, has left for America where `anything can happen.’ Where `you can go broken, and tomorrow find yourself whole.’ That is the closing line of Evening is the Whole Day, a sad but wondrous book.
[Copyright 2009. Published review. All rights strictly reserved. Published in Indian Literature a Journal of Sahitya Akademi - India's national academy of letters.]
Read other published non-fiction and fiction reviews by Rajat Chaudhuri.
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