An author growing up in the temple town of Tirupati (and presently settled in Sydney) is sure to evoke interest in any reader and quite expectedly, Vidya Madabushi infuses her novel, Bystanders, with the unique freshness of her famous hometown. There is love, lust and loneliness in plenty here, but most importantly, there is a sense of languor that can only be captured by a writer who has lived the small-town life.
Thus, we have six-year-old Hari growing up in the sleepy town of Sripuri. The household consists of little Hari, his father, Vasan, and their cantankerous caretaker, Jayamma. For all the outward appearances of normalcy, this is an uneasy triangular motherless household where no one ever mentions Hari’s absent parent. The taciturn and moody Vasan suffers from frequent bouts of headaches and spiritual confusion; when he decides to embrace Christianity there is pandemonium in the small town. Hari’s equation with his father is strangely distant, there is none of the warm father-son moments and over the years Vasan’s parenting continues to border on distaste with a clumsy kind of affection thrown in sporadically. Hari, a publicly pitied figure due to his motherless status, is the usual precocious child playing hooky from school and getting into scraps while deep down his anguish revolves around the elusive identity of his mother, an enigmatic figure whom no one seems to know anything about.
Life ticks on in the cosy town of Sripuri and the author is in her element as she weaves around the domestic minutiae that surround lives led in a small town. Thus, we have Jayamma and Vasan’s constant bickering, Hari’s regular departures from discipline and a much-awaited visit from Hari’s grandfather. Later, his grandfather sends him books to read and before passing away, also imparts a bit of cryptic advice which Hari will take a long time to decipher. There is a languid quality to life till, on the way back from a school trip, his school bus meets with an accident and Hari suddenly finds himself face-to-face with his mother, Parvati.
The novel splinters four ways with the next section being narrated from the mother’s perspective. We learn about the flamboyant Ram’s fascination with Parvati in college and after the initial hesitation, Parvati’s fluttering reciprocation. Their relationship, delicate and tentative at first, and then progressing to tumultuous passion, is exquisitely brought out by the author. Vasan, a gauche young man, arrives to live with Ram as his housemate and is instantly smitten by Parvati. When Parvati discovers she pregnant with Ram’s child and he disappears, there is a cataclysmic feel to the plot and you know there is drama afoot. Set against a backdrop of rain, the scene gets irascibly etched in the reader’s mind.
Madabushi’s strength lies in her depiction of seemingly mundane moments. There is stillness in her writing, a laidback charm that is hugely appealing. The warmth of relationships shine through, whether it is Hari’s conspiratorial camaraderie with his grandfather, Jayamma’s layered attitude towards the father-son duo or Parvati’s relationship with Ram and Vasan. The contrast between the city-smart Ram and the provincial Vasan is brought out skillfully as is Hari’s heartache for the modest home he has left behind in Sripuri. The plot meanders along lazily hinging mainly around familial relationships, and yet there is depth, humour and immense literary merit. There is plenty of wry irony and a quirky ambience too, factors that are getting increasingly rare in an age of fast-paced plot-driven fiction. The end could be a tad disappointing for some readers. A sense of anti-climax hangs uncertainly in the air, the novel begging for a more sharply defined conclusion. It is the characters that stand out by power of their credibility—the depressed and dithering Vasan, the stereotypical playboy Ram, the beautiful Parvati and the feisty woman from the gutters, Jayamma. Delightful phrases pepper the text; “her mind is writing in cursive….,” Madabushi writes in one place. A riveting novel that grips the reader with the quality of its prose and deftly etched characters.