In the very early years of the 17th century, Miguel de Cervantes created one of fiction’s most enduring characters, the redoubtable hidalgo, Don Quixote de La Mancha. Accompanied by his sidekick Sancho Panza, Quixote sets out on a mad quest to be the chivalrous cavalier, each deed dedicated to his lady love, a village girl on whom he has bestowed the name of Dulcinea.
Ryan Lobo’s ‘hero’, Lalgudi Iyer, is a Don Quixote with distinctive Indian quirks. The 60-something Tam-Brahm has been abandoned by his family in Kashi to eke out the last days of a precarious existence. Until one day, when Mr Iyer hits his head on a stone Shiva lingam and ends up convinced that he is none other than the warrior brahmachari Bheem, who must vanquish demon Bakasura. He also falls in love with the ‘half-beautiful’ (half her face is scarred by an acid burn) widow Damayanti, whom he promptly designates the Panchakanya of Benares, and to whom he dedicates each victory as he sets out on a quest to defeat Bakasura. With him is the Dom, Bencho, who deserts his job as cremator of the dead in order to pursue his dream of becoming a politician, having believed Mr Iyer’s self-confidently bombastic claim that the first town Mr Iyer defeats will become his, Bencho’s, domain.
And so they go on a crazy spree down the Ganges, accompanied part of the way by Bencho’s donkey Trishala. Saving an ill-treated (and thieving) boy from a boss who’s thrashing him, coming to the aid of a bunch of criminals, seeing Bakasura in every Tom, Dick and Harry who crosses Iyer’s path. This is mad adventure at its best, going at breakneck speed and with hilarious mishaps at every twist and turn. Despite that, Mr Iyer Goes to War is not just farce. And it is not just a story that, in its essentials, bears a resemblance to that of Don Quixote. It is distinctly and definitely 21st century Indian, with all the quirks and idiosyncrasies that define this land and this time. It is about caste politics, the pollution of the Ganga, the self-centred preoccupation with oneself that excludes even one’s own immediate family.
It is, too, about human nature: about dreams and ambitions, and the reluctance to let those be stifled. Mr Iyer’s assertion that he is Bheem, duty-bound to destroy Bakasura, may be put down to the ravings of a concussed old man, but there is in that lunatic belief a glimmer of truth. Do we not, most of us yearn for a more interesting existence? Do we not, somewhere—even if perhaps only in a less jaded childhood and youth—imagine ourselves as the victors of some grand battle, even if the enemy is not a demon but something more practical, more fitted to this world? Human life is inextricably bound up by dreams, with aspirations and goals, no matter how ludicrous they may seem to the outside world, and it is these dreams that drive not just Mr Iyer, but everybody else in this tale: Bencho, Damayanti, the man who runs the home where Iyer lives. Lobo’s book is a delight: a funny, satirical, loony romp and a poignant, often heart-warming tale in which humanity triumphs, the good eventually wins and the wicked are trounced.