Reality Check

The style is reminiscent of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s, but Binoo K John works with a disadvantage. He writes in English

When a character starts talking in broken tongues and ends his lines with ‘no’—“Father, why you worry? I am here, no?”—then you know you are in the country of Indian Writing in English. It would not be so unusual if that character continued to speak like this. Or, better still, if everyone at that place in that class spoke like this. That usually does not happen. The rules of Indian Writing in English are a little arbitrary.

Having arrived in this country, should you notice a ring of smoke from a beedi going all the way up to the top of a tree, strands of uranium on the cleavage of a woman, floors awash with semen, a man’s ghost walking away from his murder in bewilderment, and so on, then you know you are now in the district of literary fiction. This is an address that looks at genres with disdain. This is also a place where anything you write is legitimate. You can spot a bad murder mystery a mile away, but when it comes to literary fiction, every book sets its own yardstick. That’s the given law, and any judgment merely exposes your own lack of exposure.

The Last Song of Savio de Souza belongs to this land. All of the above—tree, semen, ghosts and more—appear here. Savio de Souza, his father Simon and sister Silvy form the pivot. There is also another Silvy, a friend of Silvy, who is also a teacher, who is also a teacher. Savio’s sister Silvy reluctantly becomes a nun. The other Silvy becomes a ‘half goddess’. Simon just about exists. Savio plays basketball and is supernaturally good at it. He also sings and is supernaturally good at it. While he swings between these vocations, a throng of never-ending characters come in at blistering speed, taking over the pages, and just as suddenly go away. 

Thus, you have a footballer friend of Savio who plays the best game of his life and then kills an eveteaser (whose unhappy ghost is the one alluded to earlier). Having done this, the friend disappears by going to jail and then makes a brief reappearance in the last pages.

Likewise, making special appearances are beaches with uranium, rocket-launching stations, an extensive treatise on an elixir prepared by roasting monkeys, a land activist who doubles as a prostitute for a place in history… the list goes on.

If you are the kind of reader who relishes magical realism, then there is something in this book for you. It offers a rich and detailed tapestry, mixing local myths and obsessions of an earlier Kerala, ordinary Indian experiences like sadistic school teachers, and grand themes like renunciation.

The style is reminiscent of One Hundred Years of Solitude, but Marquez had an advantage: he was not writing in English. Weaving in English while the loom is Malayalam is a bitch. Savio, for example, sings Malayalam songs. How do you write about them in English? Binoo finds a loophole by transliterating in Malayalam and then translating it into English. It’s a courageous thing to do, but jarring.

If you can’t suspend disbelief, then the book pretty much falls flat. It is exaggerated, melodramatic and overdoses on metaphors. Lines like—‘…she fingered the strands as if  trying to decode unfamiliar words like a blind man on a sheet of Braille’, or ‘The poem remained in Blacky’s pocket for twenty-five years, its ink unblemished, its paper refusing to yellow, its spirits  impervious to the vagaries of time…’—are not exceptions.

Also, instead of emanating from a strong spine running through the book, its many little stories hang like bubbles in space.

Towards the end, the author gets most of the book’s characters together to listen to Savio’s final song, but it’s almost an afterthought. It still feels like a bunch of characters coming together to search for a story.

Binoo K JohnGabriel Garcia Marquezmetaphor