Lakshmi Puri’s debut novel is about the power of love – and India’s wisdom and eloquence

Malati and her sister Kamala are the two major heroines of this saga, who act as pronounced foils to each other, recalling Jane and Elizabeth Bennett in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Helen and Margaret Schlegel in EM Forster’s Howards End, and Shakuntala and her sakhis (confidantes) in Kalidasa’s Abhijnanashakuntalam.

Baba, their father, is a stoic feminist, who ensures that his daughters receive an education which is equal to that of their male counterparts, particularly after they lose their mother, Ayee. In a trenchant early scene, Ayee lies dead on a mat in the courtyard after childbirth, her young daughters believing that she is merely asleep.

Guru, who eventually marries Malati, is a lawyer, and a major male protagonist; and Malati herself becomes a lawyer. Malati and Guru are loosely modelled on Puri’s parents: BG Murdeshwar, constitutional lawyer, and Malati Desai, her mother, who taught at Mahila College in Benares. The impetus for this novel was Puri’s discovery of 148 romantic epistles between her parents. Ultimately, in the manner of memorable tales, this is one about the power of love — in the midst of personal and historical vicissitudes.

Puri is deft at character delineation and depicting interpersonal relationships, which she presents across the plot through a scenic swathe of figures, both major and minor — Surekha, Hema Kaki and Mohan Kaka, Krishna Rao, Malak, Vivek, Govind and Maa Saheb are some of the novel’s major characters; and, amongst the minor characters are Ram, Shyam, Maji and the conniving Mai (who resembles ‘Dewas Nuisance Lady No. 1’— the villagers’ name for the malicious Dowager Maharani in EM Forster’s Hill of Devi).

Raja Rao is a personal favourite, ever since my father, Professor Bidhu Bhusan Das, an eminent educationist, introduced me to his writing when I was 11. Owing to this, what is of pivotal interest to me is Puri’s unique and persuasive linguistic cadence, which sets her apart from almost every other Indian writer in English today. I asked Puri about what might have led to her creation of a language of inscape, with its own pervasive rhythm. She said that it was her exposure to Marathi theatre, as a teenager. The novel abounds in delightful snatches of verse, ditties, and colloquialisms, in Hindi and Marathi, which create strong affinities between the reader, author, and its characters. The dominant melodic line is an abhang by the medieval Marathi saint-poet, Muktabai, who died at 18 — she wrote of miracles, an ant swallowing the sun, and flying.

Over centuries, India’s sacred, cultural, and tangible wealth were destroyed and looted by repeated invasions, as thousands of its magnificent temples and institutions of higher learning were desecrated. What remained was a state of spiritual aridity and cultural deracination. Now, postcolonial cringing is yielding to an embrace of India’s rich cultural roots. Ingmar Bergman spoke of how crucial it was for us to stay connected to our civilisational history — Swallowing the Sun urges us forward, in this liberating direction.

The novel is a riveting feat of storytelling, and stylistically unique; it resuscitates for us the beauty, timeless wisdom, and eloquence of India: the only extant continuous and ancient civilisation today. It establishes Puri as a force to reckon with in contemporary Indian writing in English.

The writer was appointed Distinguished Fellow at Carnegie Mellon University in 1990. She is a global advisor on public policy, communication, and international relations. Views are personal