Monkey-man
Usha KR
Penguin
260 pages
Rs299
Usha KR is back. After A Girl And A River won the Vodafone Crossword Award and was short-listed for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, comes Monkey-Man, her fourth novel.
On the face of it, this is about split narratives after sightings of the mysterious monkey-man that sent shivers down India’s spine. But the monkey-man here is mostly metaphor and partly the surprise dénouement while standing roughly for the unknown that shapes a metro’s phobias and paranoia.
Bangalore has rarely occupied so much literary space. From Pensioner’s Paradise to Silicon Valley, Indian-made khatara two-wheeler to foreign collaboration power machine, chai corners to lounge bars, its commie heroes swapped for dashing RJs, the chaotic traffic, dug-up roads, flyovers, call-centre affluence, IT identity... The changing dynamics call for redefinitions and point to urban-rural paradoxes at once poignant and comical. Holy water in an empty Pepsi bottle and the disappearance of the “single plait taut with hair oil.” In such times of hasty modernisation, Usha sets her novel.
Amidst the laments for the mislaid — “the art of the cement lattice, the waves and the lotuses, was now lost” — and the pervading sense of irony, is a gentle humour that offsets Indian English; for instance a jeweller’s invite to “display your family jewels.”
After introducing her main characters — brought together loosely only on the basis of their brush with the monkey-man — the author takes her time building myriad strands, before a fiercely focused second half fastens reader seatbelts with its purposeful plotting and masterful control of main story.
Bound together by their simian connection, teacher Shrinivas Moorthy, call-centre employee Pushpa Rani, secretary Neela Mary Gopalrao, and peon Sukhiya Ram explain to the media and radio-jockey Bali Brums what they think they saw. Flashbacks fuel the narrative and flesh out each character while aftermaths keep faith with the beginnings.
There is the pleasantly surprising touch of the lyrical and the sensuous. A “just-discarded sari-blouse still inhabited by the ghosts of her breasts” and “no amount of pleasuring himself had prepared him for the real thing, of how transfiguring skin and mouth could be.”
There are also the seasoned summings-up of the sociological, political, even matrimonial; “He could say now that there was harmony between them, of a workable kind. Of course, it would be such a bonus if they liked each other.”
While riding through its rich past and switching on all the festive lights that brighten Bangalore’s by-lanes, there is still the RJ dude’s advice to old-timers: “History is your bread and butter, but it’s the present that talks to me.”
A chronological record of a city’s aspirations, the book talks about the price it pays for this dream. Once was Bangalore…. did anyone say Bengaluru?
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