The Costs of Betrayal, Public and Private
Written: Dec 06 '00 (Updated Dec 16 '00)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: A simply told but cumulatively powerful novel about vice and redemption, private and public.
Cons: May be a milieu some readers have trouble identifying with.
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| caravan70's Full Review: Obedient Father Books |
You'll find this title, a Booker Prize finalist, in stores under the title An Obedient Father.
Judging Ram Karan, the central character in Akhil Sharma's first novel, An Obedient Father, wouldn't seem a very difficult thing. After all, we have here a man who makes his living acting as a "bagman" for a minor political functionary, collecting bribes from operators of schools and selling the land out from under them when expedient, and who's raped his daughter in her childhood and now seems poised to do the same to his granddaughter. The genius of this book is to draw the reader into Mr. Karan's world and expand it, using multiple narrative voices to provide a layered, complex vision of a village compound within the chaos of Old Delhi, and in doing so to not only humanize this most flawed of men but balance his turmoil against that of his associates and the cultural climate of modern India at large.
Sharma works from the inside out, giving us the daily grifts and obeisances of Mr. Karan first. Mr. Karan's personal fortunes are linked to that of his patron, Mr. Gupta, who in turn relies on the confiscatory abilities of his underling to further his career within the Congress Party. Mr. Karan considers these activities standard, but his misgivings round out the man: he's enriching his family financially, but fears that he's become corrupted in the process, and that his larceny represents the same weakness as he's demonstrated sexually. Sharma's account of Mr. Karan's daily efforts and the tortured irresolution that fuels them allows him to build separate casts of characters, both vivid, whose paths cross largely through the storytelling that Mr. Karan will eventually use as his best evidence of obedience. It's only through recounting his political history to his daughter Anita daily and asking her forgiveness that Mr. Karan feels able to purge the guilt of his most personal transgressions.
The unit of Mr. Karan, Anita, and his granddaughter Asha is the central one, and it's within this group that his acts have their most serious consequences. Anita still suffers profoundly from her father's violation of her as a child, and though she's resigned to living with him is determined to take revenge. Mr. Karan's extended family is often in evidence, showing up to pay homage on the anniversary of his wife's death, taking part in family quarrels, and getting as involved as they feel inclined to do in the extended spat between Mr. Karan and his daughter that forms the central tension of this novel. Through the proceedings Sharma presents us with what seems a nuanced evocation of Indian village and city life, and more particularly the loves and squabbles of our own families filtered through a foreign lens.
Politics is Mr. Karan's vocation, if not nominally, and in showing us his day-to-day hustles and evasions Sharma gives us a not particularly glamorous portrait of realpolitik in action. The cynical frame expands to include the rivalry between the nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party and the Nehru legacy, the Congress Party, and Sharma seems determined here to prove Tip O'Neill right and demonstrate that all politics is truly local. There's more graft and trickery here than in ten Cook Counties (as far as we know), and almost every character in this narrative seems to have a hand in the till directly or by extension. Mr. Karan is a very comfortable fish in this pond, and is often given to faux-regretful ruminations over his unfortunate role while taking a cab out to grab a few more rupees. Pleasantries are abundant, scruples few, and religious practice seems in this novel often to be the only factor holding back the participants in this grab-for-cash contest from total abandon.
Anita's sister Kusum, now a naturalized American scientist who resides in New Jersey, is a model of success for the family, and though she doesn't appear in person until late in the novel is in several ways key to it. We've throughout seen Mr. Karan's world from twin poles, his and Anita's, and Kusum's arrival provides counterpoint. And while it's always a dangerous thing to draw any inferences about an author's creation from his background, Sharma himself is a Delhi-born investment banker who calls the Garden State home, and it's my suspicion that he's intentionally chosen to end this novel in a way that reflects the open-ended view of the expatriate. Kusum views the world of her youth through a child's spectacles: shadowy forms clash and collide in unpredictable patterns. It's only when her plane is off and that world is seen from afar, like the Earth from an Apollo craft, whole, with all the imprecision, wonder and (unavoidably) cultural projection that accompanies such a view, that she forms impressions that sum up her experiences and give her the power of speech and action. We often write best about those things we've left behind.
One of the more amazing features of this novel is its ability to give a man as dauntingly corrupt as Ram Karan a soul the reader finds himself relating to, if only with great reluctance. The effect is rather like that which Peter Lorre in his role as child murderer has on us in Fritz Lang's M: if we're repulsed by his deeds, we're confirmed in our humanity when we find ourselves able to cognitively balance his obscene, horrible acts against the threatened mindless violence of a mob. Sharma gives us much the same tension here in the psychological interplay between Mr. Karan and his daughter.
Sharma's style is straightforward and conversational through much of this novel but tightens when appropriate, particularly when Mr. Karan and Anita are at battle. His narrative reminds me a bit of Tony Earley: it's at its most deceptively simple when it's building toward larger truths. Mr. Karan's relief after saving several Sikhs from religious murder is illustrative:
As I entered our compound, I smiled with relief and pride. When the world shifts, it shifts everything with it, I thought. If I was forthright and admitted my crimes instead of doing something like claiming that Anita's memories were confused, then over the next year or two we might learn to live with what had been acknowledged.
The personal and the political intersect here, and a good deed that seemingly provides hope on both levels proves to be likely a momentary stay. This book is full of such small revelations, and in its entirety is a fully realized vision of a man and his culture.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
caravan70
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Member: Darren Shupe
Location: Sacramento, California
Reviews written: 35
Trusted by: 77 members
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Books, music, cans, bottles, CRV, truffles (both kinds), port, uncertainty, something good.
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