Rain- A
Survivor’s Tale
by Sriram
Subramanian
(A Critical Review)
The
novel revolves around the life and times of a man who is in conflict with his
past and his present. He challenges the forces of nature and long-standing
conventions, loses badly, learns his lessons and starts over. As the subtitle
suggests appropriately, the story is about a survivor, a person who goes
through all the trials of fire and emerges purified. It touches upon a number
of issues, starting with the problems of a northerner marrying a Marathi girl
as the protagonist does. It beautifully captures the way a language can alter
the status of a person. The protagonist despite his love of all things
Maharashtrian is not able to express his fidelity and loyalty to the community
due to the fact that he does not know the language. It expresses aptly how
language barriers create family rifts. The book starts with the relationship
dynamics in Jai’s family and highlights the entrenched blind faith in certain traditions
and personalities like the great astrologer Pandit Borkar whose prediction sets
the wheels of events turning and effectively begins the novel plot in earnest.
What follows is a story of a man walking on a tightrope of his dreams and
others’ expectations, trying desperately to establish himself, walking in his virtuous
father’s footsteps and keeping everyone happy. An atheist, he tempts fate by
openly declaring his intentions to thwart the great Borkar’s predictions of
hard times in the near future and swears to build a bungalow for his wife,
Sarika. He ignores her intuitive feelings when she tells him to pause and warns
him repeatedly regarding opportunistic friends. But inebriated with the will to
succeed at any cost and heady with the lucrative big business deal he lands up,
Jai ignores Sarika’s misgivings.
What
results is his complete collapse when not just his client breaks the deal, but
he has to file for bankruptcy when his business partner and long-time friend
turns into a venomous foe. All these difficult times are worsened by his
father’s death leaving behind three thick diaries that take Jai on a
soul-searching journey back to his past. His demons start resurfacing and
skeletons begin crawling out of his past closet turning his mind around and
creating a miasma of guilt around him, a whirlpool which he is not able to
escape and eventually gets sucked into.
The
adventures of Jai when his business crumbles and he takes to the streets takes
the reader to the grimy underbelly of the city of Pune and unveils the tragic
fates of those who make their living on the streets. It also exposes the
political drama that goes behind the scenes of an election.
Various
themes sprout up in the novel at different times, for instance, the Marathi pride
and fierce sense of belonging towards their own community, the ambition of
politicians, a mother’s blind love, misplaced anger, infidelity and so on.
Jai’s father-in-law is the father figure in this book, the man who is able to
view everything with an unbiased perspective and provides sane advice to anyone
who needs it.
Jai’s
past deals with a crucial social matter of how rumors can ruin a person’s life.
The reception of a sibling by a child has been sensitively portrayed in the
novel. In fact, Jai’s story of Sunny is the crux of the plot and a prime mover
in his upbringing, his relations with his father and the major cause of his leaving
his hometown. The author has carefully threaded this delicate issue into the
book, taking into account honest, unbarred feelings and giving them voice in an
effort to understand and learn the nuances of such a touchy matter.
The
thing about the characters was that they were predictable. The good thing was
that they could be easily identified with. A bit of unreality crept into the
story at times, when the protagonist takes to the street and farm life easily,
giving it a very movie-ish feel. But there is an element of unconventionality
in the plot when Jai’s difficult decision with Ashok bears no fruit and he is
relegated to unknown parts of the country because of his own decision never to
meet Sarika. The reader is kept wanting for the two star-crossed lovers to meet
but is tormented for quite sometime. The jewel on the crown is the worldview of
the holy man who wanders into the village where Jai has settled and shakes him
out of his torpor, giving him the peace of mind he had been seeking so
long.
False
friends, hypocritical relations, critical naysayers, hurt beloved, tormented
protagonist- all the major elements of a potboiler combine in this book with
the burning concerns of the age what with corruption, domination of females,
plight of the slum-dwellers, the dirt of politics, and the state that the
country is in to give it a contemporary fast-paced feel.
The
novel moves through the political centres of the city of Pune to the smelly
dilapidated hovels beneath the flyovers to tranquil farmlands seamlessly
telling many tales in a natural voice of a common man who abides by the rules,
is moderately ambitious, dogged by guilt due to his past and wants to transform
his life.
Some
incredible life lessons emerge suitably in the final chapter where Jai finally
gets his salvation from the honeyed words of a great man, who in some beautiful
and powerful lines, explains accurately what life is all about. It is beautiful
to note the role of rain in this novel. At the outset of the novel, Jai prayed
for the rains to be delayed as opposed to the majority of the population for
whom rain was a blessing in disguise. As rotten luck would have it, it rained
cats and dogs soon after and life took a severe downturn for him. However, the
end of the novel shows how Jai reconciled with his lot, forgave himself, reconciled
himself to the harsh realities of life and ultimately came to love the rains.
***
Here is the link to buy it online :)
https://www.amazon.in/Rain-Survivors-Tale-Subramanian-Sriram/dp/9385854119
