Book - Bystanders
Author - Vidya Madabushi
Publisher - Tranquebar
Cost - INR 350
Nobility has been much on my mind lately. Not in terms of aristocracy (though I admit I’m hooked to Downton Abbey), but in terms of superiority of spirit. Giving up something for someone else. Rushing to a person’s rescue no matter how it affects your life. Staying true to your principles and beliefs even though giving at least some of them up would make you and the people you love much happier.
I’ve been thinking about nobility partly because my mother has become hooked to a TV channel that airs old Hindi movies in which the hero gives up his beloved for his best friend and spreads himself lavishly over a piano keyboard while he does so, singing so that he does not cry. It’s been on my mind also because I’ve been immersed in Victorian novels with morals about high-mindedness and honour. But mainly I’ve been thinking about nobility because of a book I just finished: Bystanders, by Vidya Madabushi.
It’s a story told in three parts. Well, technically four, but the last part is more like an epilogue, so it doesn’t really have much power. The first part is about Hari. Six-year-old Hari, who never really thought about his life until the day in school when he became “Sorry Hari” — the epithet an unfortunate fallout of the ideas of an over-sentimental teacher who believes that children minus one or both parents must always be pitied by everyone.
Hari has always known that his mother died of tuberculosis, but till he became Sorry Hari, he hadn’t thought about her much. His small world, comprising his father Vasan, their housekeeper Jayamma and his best friend Saleem, is complete. Now he wants to know more about his mother. And when his grandfather, his father’s father, comes to visit, he’s even more curious about his family. So much seems so very strange.
The second part of Bystanders is about Parvati. College-going Parvati with big dreams for her future, up to and including a Nobel Prize (is it a prize that can be displayed on a shelf?). Day-dreaming on a bus one day, she finds herself way past her stop in a part of the city she doesn’t really know, and making her way home, she is escorted by Ram, a classmate she’s never noticed before. Love happens of course, and before long, Parvati and Ram are intimate in every way, body and soul — but, Parvati realises at a crucial moment, not in the mind.
In the third part, we read Vasan’s story. Quiet, faintly eccentric Vasan. So remote from his son Hari, yet so much Hari’s whole world. This is Vasan as a young man, deemed a loser by his father, a failure, a boy-man going nowhere. Vasan’s father finds him a job in the city and a roommate, and the young man who has never left his small town is now on his own, sharing a house with Ram. He’s terrified of Parvati at first — she’s a young woman! He’s not used to young women — and stunned by the intimacy that Ram and Parvati share. But slowly he settles down, getting good at his job, enjoying being the third wheel in Parvati and Ram’s life.
Is Vasan in love with Parvati? You never really know. But he’s suddenly struck with a need to be noble that changes everyone’s life in such a profound and terrifying way that it’s hard to understand all this has happened because a young man made a decision. It’s very difficult not to blame it on fate. It’s inconceivable that such a thing could have happened because of a human being.
And what of Ram? Well. Ram may be the trigger for the story, but he’s basically a bookend. A way to wrap up these three stories neatly, complete with a bow on top. He’s really just a tool in the book, something to provide a reason for all that’s happened.
It’s hard to write about Bystanders without giving away the plot. So I’ll stop talking about the characters now and get on to the book itself. To begin with, it’s very readable — well written, smooth, flowing easily. Unfortunately, though, it’s far too emotionless to really grip. I’m the kind of person who reads a book a day: once I start a book, I rarely put it down. I’ve been known to finish a 1,500-pager in less than 36 hours — if the book grabs me. But Bystanders took me more than a week to read.
I put off reading it with excuses, the way I put off work when I don’t want to do it. Which was odd, because when I put a gun to my head and forced myself to get on with the book, I was quite happy turning the pages — till I had to get up and do something else instead.
The trouble, I think, is that though the stories of the three main characters are interesting in themselves, they are far too individual. There’s a lack of connection between them beyond the obvious, and that means you feel as though you’re reading three separate short stories, each without a purpose. Yes, Vasan’s act of nobility comes as a shock, jolting you into attention. And it finally ties the stories together. But it’s too little, too late. Should you buy the book? No. But since it’s not too bad, borrow it.
Kushalrani Gulab is a freelance editor and writer who dreams of being a sanyasi by the sea
