Title Muddy River | Author P.A.Krishnan |
Publisher Kalachuvadu Publications | Year 2012 |
“Was it through this slow, murky river that the ships came to found my own city?” — “The Mythical Founding of Buenos Aires” by Jorge Luis Borges
P. A. Krishnan’s Kalangia Nadi (The Murky River, 2011) tells the story of a man caught in the corruption of institutional power and personal sorrows, who undertakes an unyielding journey toward truth, with Gandhi as his guiding star.
The protagonist Ramesh, while on suspension and recovering from an accident, writes a novel titled “There Is No Other Side to This Street.” This title comes from the closing lines of Jorge Luis Borges’ poem “The Mythical Founding of Buenos Aires.”
The poem goes – It is hard to believe that Buenos Aires ever had a beginning. On one side is the sea, on the other side is an open land surrounded by dawns, rain, and fierce southeastern winds. Colors, fragrances, music, and people come together to enact today (of Buenos Aires ) as an extension of yesterday. Like air and water, it is eternal, a street that keeps growing, with no other side. The soul of that city is constantly being formed from the memories and imaginations of the people who live there. Borges speaks of it as an extension of time itself.
When narrating the history of the city formed at the estuary in the poem, Borges begins with “through this murky river?” — and then muses that, on deeper reflection, the river might have been blue, as an extension of the sky.
Similarly, P. A. Krishnan in this novel, travels through the river of time through a work of fiction that transcends history. He rearranges the lines of Borges’ poem and draws the reader into the story. Beginning with the poetic line the street had no other side, the novel unfolds before us as a murky river.
Sukanya, wife of the protagonist Ramesh, sends chapters of his novel named “the street had no other side“ to his friends. These epistolary exchanges appear intermittently throughout the novel, filling in the gaps and at times going beyond the narrative flow, sharing critiques and evolutions of the characters, pulling the reader in. They sketch the contours of the reader’s imagination and add another layer to the novel. Through this structural device, we come to understand the multidimensionality of the characters.
The novel begins with Ramesh’s personal troubles. Sidelined in the government bureaucracy due to his impulsiveness, he is sent to Assam to a new department. His job is to negotiate the release of a kidnapped engineer Ghosh. He experiences the grief of Ghosh’s family. He learns that within the power structure, there is no room for such feelings. In this new terrain, his world expands further to the social struggles of Assam militants. He witnesses the massive face of corruption within the Indian civil services. He attempts to get to the bottom of it and uncover the truth, but is battered by obstacles and complications. Even as a small pawn within the system, Ramesh stubbornly and honestly churns in the murky waters. He holds on to what seems right to him till the very end and we too are swept along with him, in his sorrows and joys. In the midst of that great whirlpool, he finds Gandhi to face life without fear. With stubborn resolve, faith, and commitment to truth, he acts.
In this novel, death touches Ramesh in many ways. The deaths of those close to him, including his daughter, occurs. It draws near him in the black mosque and in the gunfire of Assam militants. It draws nearer still when the engine of the flight to Visakhapatnam he travels in fails. It draws closest of all when he accidentally switches the gas regulator and his hand catches fire on the stove. Even in such moments, in all circumstances, he only wants to be with Suganya. With aesthetic sensibility, neither too much nor too little in the perfectly proportioned “Goldilocks” measure, the love between Ramesh and Suganya is told.
The metaphors crafted in this novel deserve special attention. The Jatinga birds, disoriented by the monsoon rains, are lured further by the artificial lights of villagers and become easy prey. The Simhachalam calves; the bamboo flowers whose sudden bloom and abundant seeds draws swarms of rats — each of these images recurs throughout the novel as a haunting portrait of the Assam militants: people led astray by forces beyond their understanding, and consumed by them.
While introducing characters and at climactic moments, the author adorns the narrative with poems and paintings, through which another layer unfolds.
Throughout the entire story, a quiet longing and love for a girl child quietly surfaces within Ramesh’s heart. He never directly expresses his grief over losing Priya through words or emotions. Beyond him, it overflows in his dreams. When he watches a little girl playing in the street, he instinctively feels she owns the moment as a goddess. It is through such fleeting glimpses that his unspoken grief and wordless longing is expressed, with a deep sigh.
In Assam, in the new department, in new terrain, Anupama is introduced as an institutional officer to Ramesh. She helps Ramesh to understand the problems of Assam and the militants. He develops an affection for her. The biblical painting of Jonah and the whale appears as a metaphor for Anupama. She believes that, like the whale, the serpent deity of Assam, Manasa will keep Assam safe in her mouth. But the Assam struggle swallows her too.
Like Ghantasala’s song “Life Itself Is an Illusion,” the climactic moments happen most casually over cart-wheel puri meal where the ransom for the kidnapping is paid. Kidnapped Ghosh during his captive period, ends up sleeping peacefully, eating well, growing heavier, and having to go through diet and exercise to get back in shape. In a way, Ghosh is privately enjoying the peaceful captive life. After he returns, his wife doesn’t even have the time to offer a word of thanks to Ramesh. Gosh even has an opinion that Ramesh could have negotiated better, offered more money, bargained harder to secure his release. Life itself teaches Shankara’s Mayavada (the philosophy of reality).
Gandhi runs as the unbroken thread through the novel. It opens with Ramesh writing an op-ed on how the ruling class has separated Gandhi from ordinary people — describing Gandhians and their principles with a mild mockery. When he meets Rajvanshi, the former Chief Minister of Assam, he is annoyed at their first meeting, Yet something in the man’s smile draws him. Later he finds himself quietly revering this person who navigates the same indifferent, merciless power structure with striking realism. Is this man real? Ramesh wonders.
Rajvanshi credits Gandhi for his simplicity, directness, fearlessness, and dedication to the people. Ramesh recalls his own Gandhian father saying the same — that courage and compassion were Gandhi’s gifts. The thread keeps surfacing: even in the Assam militants’ pamphlets, Gandhi’s words appear. To stand straight-spined, to search for truth without flinching and without letting go — it is in these words that Ramesh finds his clarity.
Gandhi’s words: “I give you a talisman. Whenever you are in doubt or when the self becomes too much with you, apply this test: Recall the face of the poorest and the weakest man you have seen, and ask yourself if the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to him. Will he gain anything by it? Will it restore him to a control over his own life and destiny? In other words, will it lead to freedom for the hungry and spiritually starving millions? Then you will find your doubts and your self melting away.”
Ramesh knows he cannot make even a small dent in the system of Indian civil services; that no social change will come of it. But he does everything within his power , without a single complaint, to free Ghosh and improve his life.
The novel ends with Gandhi’s hopeful lines: “When a river floods, it becomes murkier than ever, filled with silt. But once the flood recedes, it clears — clearer than before.”
Finding Gandhi amidst the complexities of 21st-century life, and discovering that his talisman is still relevant today — this is what a reader can gain, along with the sheer pleasure of reading this novel.