If his debut novel The Death of Vishnu explored the complexities that is India through the lives of residents of an apartment building in Mumbai, his second novel, The Age of Shiva, goes many steps further and more. It?s a sweeping saga, set in the aftermath of India?s independence, which follows the fortunes of three generations of a family ? and the fortunes of a newly-independent country.
So, not surprisingly, the novel straddles many cities and two continents and is as much a story of everyday life as it is of an evolving India, politically, culturally and socially. Like The Death of Vishnu, The Age of Shiva too tackles religious rivalries, caste-class divide, geographical barriers, the battle between tradition and modernity. Witness to all this tumult ? and living it too ? is 17-year-old Meera. And the tender and compassionate but deeply disturbing story traces her journey as daughter, wife and the most compelling and perhaps difficult of all, mother. It?s the mother-son narrative that takes centrestage even as the writer borrows on two ancient myths surrounding Shiva and Parvati to convey the overwhelming nature of their relationship. The first is about Parvati?s creation of a son from her body?s sandalwood paste to keep her company in Shiva?s absence and the second is the Andhaka myth in which the deformed Andhaka is separated from his parents and covets his mother.
The narrative begins with the mother, Meera, addressing her son Ashvin. In a beautiful first chapter, there?s hope and heartbreak as Meera nurses her son and hears her husband slurring the lines of a famous love song. ?Will you light the fire of your heart to dispel the darkness of my life?? Meera, of course, is pretty much responsible for how her life has turned out. She dreamily steals away her sister?s lover, Dev, who is a Saigal sing-alike, while still a teenager. But the romance doesn?t last. Like her young country, Meera will bedisillusioned soon after the euphoria of freedom. Dominated by bother father ? a liberalist who doesn?t see anything wrong in ?nudging ideas? into his daughter?s head ? and husband, she finds some meaning in her life only when her son Ashvin is born ? ?You are the hope and the fire, the absolution, the purifier.? Even as an aborted child comes back to haunt Meera, she clings to Ashvin with near-disastrous consequences. The beauty of the writing is in Suri?s ability to capture detail, be it a Karva Chauth ceremony or the froth hitting Chowpatty Beach in Mumbai during the monsoons or following Ashvin doing his rituals after his father?s death.
The characters ? and they are many from Meera?s Paji and Biji, her two sisters, to her husband Dev and his family, including a brother who covets Meera too, and the various residents of a typical housing complex in Mumbai ? are beautifully etched. No, there?s never a dull moment in Suri?s epic. And though Meera is the centre, she lives in troubled times and we are witness to the wars against China and Pakistan and the Emergency through her eyes.