Who doesn’t know the colour of gold? That shimmering, yellowish tint which is craved by many; it is the colour of desire, lust and prosperity. But, Gita Aravamudan, in her latest book, Colour of Gold, presents a completely different shade of gold, one that is murky and sometimes even red.
The author has meticulously woven three different stories, whose loose ends loom in as one in the end. The three stories span four generations, each of which is oblivious of the other, and cover 100 years. There’s a secret that binds them all, a mysterious murder, an Australian journalist’s search for his roots - all of which are set in the once lavish, now in rubbles town of gold - Kolar Gold Fields.
Lionel Peterson, a young journalist from Australia, visits dusty Kolar to unravel the history of what once was the richest gold mine in the world. But, somewhere, deep inside his heart, he carries a desire to search for his roots. Accompanied by Sheila, who is well-acquainted with the topography of the place, Lionel starts digging the graves of his past. Meanwhile, the mysterious death of Bertie Flanagan, father of Sheila’s childhood friend Belinda, causes a deviation in Lionel’s search.
While the story comes to a stage where it revolves around Bertie’s death, Gita Aravamudan cleverly uses the flashback technique and intriguingly delivers a parallel narration of the other two stories. The strands in the stories are so wittily left loose that they never give away the century old secret to which every character in the story is connected, one way or the other.
Exactly 50 years before Lionel’s visit to Kolar, his parents had a romantic fling in the same town. His father, an Anglo-Indian, and mother a staunch, cultured ‘Bhartiya naari’ had eloped, creating ripples in the so far calm town of KGF. And, closely 50 years before this incident, that is 1903, Lionel’s forefathers had walked the place. It is from these stories that spring out tatters of some untold and unknown events which are sewn together at the end of the story.
The author also takes this opportunity to provide a historical background of the Kolar Gold Fields. She intricately portrays the regal and orderly lifestyle of the British, who turned this sleepy town into ‘Little England’, and how the freedom movement too bypassed this town. The plight of the labour class, the pain and suffering of women, is pictured by the author in a detailed way. Gita Aravamudan definitely strikes the right chord by bringing out an amazing story that appeals to the senses of the reader.