The subtitle of Suchita Malik’s Scent of the Soil: A Civil Servant Returns to his Roots encompasses the gist of this story: about a civil servant, who, having achieved much in his career and won many accolades, realises that he will perhaps be happier back in the village where he was born and brought up.
Shubhojit Singh, the protagonist of Scent of the Soil, is a high-ranking IAS officer; the story opens with a glittering function at Vigyan Bhawan where Shubhojit is being bestowed the Prime Minister’s Award, the highest honour for a civil servant, for the second time in his career.
From his obvious career success to the adulation he receives from juniors; from the plush bungalow he occupies to the warmth and friendship of his colleagues—Shubhojit appears as a man to be envied.
This, however, is illusory, for Shubhojit is a lonely, unhappy man. It has been three years since his wife Yashodhra left him and married again.
Also gone from Shubhojit’s life are their two grown-up children, Hemant and Neelakshi. Hemant, on the verge of starting college, is drifting away into drugs, and Shubhojit finds himself having to use his official status to bail Hemant out of a mess.
But things take a sudden turn when Shubhojit suffers a mild heart attack, and his family—including his ex-wife, his estranged children, and his old mother, who lives in the village—comes to his bedside.
As Hemant, Neelakshi and their grandmother Kamladevi stay with Shubhojit in his house while he recuperates, the older people recount the experiences of their lives, with results that are predictably rosy.
On the plus side, Scent of the Soil encapsulates philosophies that the daily grind of career and competition in urban India may have made most of us forget. Shubhojit’s realisation that he has invested everything in his career while neglecting his family is probably uncomfortably familiar to thousands of ambitious, career-oriented individuals.
The insights into the functioning of the IAS are interesting (and more so are the reminiscences of village life in northern India).
The minuses, however, outweigh the pluses. The story is a mere thread, with not enough of a plot to justify nearly 300 pages. Instead of a story, much of the book consists of long-winded platitudes about how to live one’s life. The introspection, the reminiscences, and the admonitions to the younger generation could have been worked in a more dynamic fashion instead of what they are: trite and repetitive.
Another major shortcoming of Scent of the Soil is its dialogues, many of which are simply too unreal to strike a chord. As an example, “…I have always maintained that a large part of the problem is over when you place yourself in the shoes of the aggrieved and then think of a solution.
When you acquire land for any urbanisation-related activity, contiguity of land is a critical requirement for efficient planning and provision of all civic services…” sounds more like an extract from an address at a seminar than a father telling his children about an incident from his career.
Scent of the Soil promises much, but delivers little by way of substance.