The Devourers: Werewolves & shape shifters

There aren’t too many titles that come to mind when one thinks of Indian speculative fiction, but Indra Das gives the genre a leg-up to a whole new level with his provocative debut novel, The Devourers. This is not a novel for the lily-livered, for Das’ ferociously exact prose pierces through the skin of the fantasy novel to reveal the savage heart of darkness that beats underneath. He builds on the mythological constructs of werewolves, vampires, rakshasas and shape shifters, and the result is much spectacular blood, guts and tears, but also a literary examination of the nobility and savagery that delineate and define the borders between human and beast.

Divided into seven narrative sections, The Devourers shifts between time, space and teller, to take on the weight of a saga as the tragic and redemptive story of a trio of shape shifters, their human consort, and their progeny is told. The first section, ironically titled “Hunting Ground” introduces the first narrator in present day, a college professor Alok Mukherjee, whose vanilla reactions to the astonishing behaviour of a magnetic, “androgynous beauty” set the stage for an unpredictable relationship.

The stranger, who introduces himself as a “half werewolf” named Izrail, part mesmerises and part propositions Alok to become a chronicler of his family’s history. There is a curious mix of irreverent humour and uncanny menace: ‘Mr Half-Werewolf. Mr H. Werewolf. If you had to, out of all these people, which one would you pick to eat?’ I ask… He just smiles, though he does look through the crowd as if considering the question. His gaze lands back on me.”

Izrail hands Alok a set of antique scrolls and it is Alok’s job to transcribe and print them. They have increasingly tense and emotionally charged reunions as scrolls, typewritten sheets, money and confidences exchange hands over the course of the novel. The narrative switches between eras and locations and Das does full justice when it comes to conveying the spirit of the age in his writing. There is the work-in-progress Taj Mahal, as seen through the eyes of a pack of ancient European werewolves by the light of campfires outside 17th century Mumtazbad. Alok is a helpless witness to the wild beauty of the forests of the Sunderbans:

“The forest is a wall of scent and sound — the constant hiss of leaves, the bone-crackle of branches and dry detritus shifting and warming in the morning, the unending sound of insects. The smell of wet earth and shadow-brewed chlorophyll…”

Or Das simply serves up some urban existentialism at a late night Baul music concert in present day Kolkata’s Shaktigarh Math that feels like a bhang-induced reverie.

That the scrolls are made from the skin taken off the back of a young boy is just the beginning of the stomach-turning features of the tales. The narrator remarks:

“I hold him now in my hands, his skin toughened under the sun of his empire which forgot him and over the smoke of our campfires burning earth fed wood.” Fenrir, a Norse werewolf who is crossing vast empires along with his two fellow travellers Gévaudan and Makedon, writes the first few scrolls. The remaining are by Cyrrah, a young Mughal woman who crosses paths with Fenrir. When humans come in the path of shape shifters it generally results in feeding time. But Fenrir and Gévaudan are capable of more and Cyrrah is so transformed by the experience that she cannot go back to the harsh civilisation she belongs to and chooses instead to participate in the brutal, primeval history of the shape shifters.

The archaic lexicon of supernatural legend has full sway in the story telling. Fenrir meets a group of shape shifters in Kabul, they are “vukodlaks” and one of them recognises the pack of three and calls them by their true names: “A kveldulf of the Viking-eaters, a son of Lycaon and a loup-garou. An odd trinity. Omen? I will ask for the blessings of the hags. Farewell.”

The assiduously prim notes that Alok the history professor makes in the transcribed scrolls are listed alongside so that the terms are explained for the reader. The notes read: “Lycaon is a mythological Greek king that was turned into a wolf, while ‘loup-garou’ is a French word for ‘werewolf’. ‘Kveldulf’ is Old Norse for ‘evening-wolf’. ‘Vukodlak’ is a Serbian word that refers to a type of folkloric ghoul, which can have shape shifting abilities. It, too, can apparently mean ‘werewolf’.”

Thus, a provenance and history is established that gives the events of the book a near-mythical resonance: the supernaturals of ancient and medieval Europe are panning out to other continents and encountering other life forms that the human histories make no record of. What Alok is to record, and bear witness to however, is more than just the record of bloody duels and shape-changing magic. For all the action in the book turns on the bending of a fine ethical point: can a beast meant for destruction also taste the forbidden fruit of creation as Fenrir attempts to? In Das’ sharply detailed and authentically constructed world, the answer seems to be a tragic yes.

The Devourers is full of surprises from start to finish. Relationships and circumstances mutate even as the devourers do when embracing “their second skin.” Das orchestrates a sort of primitive scream, an echo to the extreme anxiety of life forms leaving the primordial sludge to reach for something higher. It is a devouring hunger that destroys the characters in this book and Das hints that is only in their destruction that new things are created and hope is born. Karishma Attari is a book critic and freelance writer living in Mumbai. She is working on her coming-of-age novel, I See You.