Saraswati Park by Anjali Joseph
In the old days Indians writing in English were called Indo-Anglian writers. Much water has flowed under the bridge since. The better known ones like R K Narayan, Kamala Markandeya, Nayantara Sehgal, Ruth Prawar Jhabvala, a Pole married to an Indian architect, and Aubrey Menen, not to forget that author of the solitary comic masterpiece, All About H Hatterr, G V Desani, had been published abroad, although the advances they received were most likely modest. Things have changed considerably now. Only authors like Vikram Seth, Amitav Ghosh and a couple of others have publishers abroad and are paid handsome advances.
However, Penguin India and HarperCollins publish Indian authors writing fiction in English in a big way. Anjali Joseph, who read English at Trinity College, Cambridge, and has taught at the Sorbonne, Paris, has published her first novel Saraswati Park. She is a writer of intimate emotions captured with a delicate touch. Her canvas is small, a set of characters in Mumbai belonging to the petit bourgeoise. Their lives are lived in minor key. The author tries to wring as much music and meaning out of their experiences as she can. “Just when it seemed the temperature could go no higher and the weather become no stickier, there were storms. A crazed wind rifled through the house, knocking things over; Laxmi and Ashish ran around trying to shut the windows, but the wind was too strong: it entered and left heaps of a strange, ash-brown dust in the corner of rooms. One night Mohan woke as though to a familiar voice in a dream. The air was cool and moist; outside, he heard the rain.”
Anjali Joseph’s style has a Narayan-like drollery. In this scene when Mohan, the professional letter-writer at the post office, and an aspiring fiction writer in private, is confronted with the strange spiritual dilemma of a Jain guru who expresses himself thus in a dictated letter to his absent disciple: “I hope you are remaining calm and hopeful and that you find a little time each day to do your spiritual practice. Even if it is for five minutes before you sleep at night it will do you good. Do not worry about money matters, health or other things. We are all with you.”
Mohan is a strange, gentle soul, trying to be of help to others, including his English Literature student nephew with distinct homosexual inclinations, Ashish.
Mohan continues to till his lonely furrow till the end with an ease that comes through an instinctive comprehension of life and a compassionate nature that is an inextricable part of his personality. He is a fellow who dreams of writing yet another story, and without making a fuss, being of service to others.
Strange as it may sound, the world conjured up in Saraswati Park is also reminiscent of the Bombay of Basu Chatterjee’s Hindi films from the 1970s. The writer can evoke the mood of a place, of individuals living there, with economy and sensitivity. She is able to create a cohesive world where small situations and events take on a larger significance in the lives of people caught in them, than actually warranted.
It is unlikely that Saraswati Park or its author will be short-listed for the Booker or any other literary award. Her writing is too straight, too clean and too
humanist in its concerns to be fashionable. In literary terms Anjali Joseph may be seen as a talented ‘niece’ of Anita Desai’s. There is a resemblance in their concern for the lives of the characters they create, who usually happen to be decent, middle class people. In today’s world, ‘memorable’ literature is about jugglery of form and mystification of content. Narrative art has to draw attention to itself all the time: Where, then, is the place for a writer like Anjali Joseph who creates characters whose aspirations, joys and sorrows are ordinary, and who are content with small respites from life’s vicissitudes?
— parthafm@gmail.com