The devil himself is presented as a speaker in the narrative.
The spiritual is never to be separated from the physical, the supernatural is given a physical form, evil is something that is perceived through the senses.
All holy institutions are human and thus reduce holiness to a series of rituals and upgrade “piety” to “promotion and annual leave”.
A search for something more than absolution at the end of life characterises some new voices in literature. That life ultimately ends in ascension to the heavens is the case for Kunjamma P. and the rest of the characters in Shinie Antony’s new novel The Haunting of Kunjamma P. (Hachette India). Notably, these characters become propagandistic figures as their perception of eternity is reversed from the classical concept of something almost too large to be conceived as endless in space and time, to a notion vast enough to be put into a ledger and be finite to “posterity and book keeping”. This is where the human absurdity in the novel takes place.
An interesting take on the physical form of the devil is that of presenting the devil himself as the speaker. He says at one point, “Meat and metaphor…Both blood and ectoplasm run in my veins.” This is a paradox that runs throughout the narrative. The spiritual is never to be separated from the physical, the supernatural is given a physical form, evil is something that is perceived through the senses. The speaker in the novel looks at “pure rakshasa” and “local average next-door garden variety pishaach” as being two names of the same hideous creature.
Kunjamma’s is a house of God. And her experience of God has been a part of her senses, her way of life, her habits, her mannerisms and herlanguage. For long she has lived with God as if God is her next-door neighbour. The means of her communication with God is prayer and her intimate relationship with God is rooted in devotion. But that intimacy is never innocent. Though her faith comforts her, others judge her through the same lens of belief. She is deemed a faithful but a foolish woman.
The church too comes in for investigation. All holy institutions are human and thus reduce holiness to a series of rituals and upgrade “piety” to “promotion and annual leave.” And that reduces faith to administration.
For Antony, the devil’s handiwork can be listed in a fairly straightforward manner: he is responsible for man’s natural appetites, for physical/mental illness, for the troubles of old age, and for physical monstrosity. The devil of this book is “meat and metaphor”, and we are made of flesh and we are stories of flesh, as perceived and experienced by religion, family, sex and memory.
In this world of cohabiting humans attempting to make sense of each other, of loving each other, naming God or recognising his name is a struggle to understand humanity. In a sense, all that is required to recognise the other is to name God.
The novel affirms life even as it scoffs at Kunjamma’s attempts to connect with the sacred in her life. The author, in a way, undermines Kunjamma’s experience of God even as she recreates that experience for the reader in all its domestic detail. But as Kunjamma’s writing attempts to follow her thoughts in a line, in a sequence, the line is broken and the sequence disrupted—often with a laugh. For Kunjamma’s writing and our thoughts, just like life, are in constant motion and cannot be imprisoned within the four walls of a room.
It is death that encompasses all these names and provides evidence of the fact that beneath all the differing titles exist only tombs and corpses. The greatest equalising factor of all human beings is that they are made of dust.
When the devil is the only one there is to tell our stories to, we have to laugh. The holiest of men are made of the same flesh and blood as we are. And gentle words can come from the most evil of mouths.
The devil in the novel wants to hear Kunjamma’s side of the story of their marriage. Kunjamma is a woman who carries “names from the scriptures on her tongue” and her marriage to Paulose is “a peek into solitude.” Antony says about Kunjamma’s marriage to Paulose: “The honeymoon had ended on the wedding night.”
The unknown space between ourselves and God, between ourselves and the world, between ourselves and another human being is where we live and learn to love. Whatever we say about God is always a confession of our humanity. Naming things in order to come closer to them can be the same as silencing them by not naming them. Our words as well as our silences can conceal the infinite as well as reveal it.
(Wani Nazir is the author of two collections of poetry: ‘…and the silence whispered’ and ‘The Chill in the Bones.’ He is a senior lecturer in the Department of Education, J&K and writes prose and poetry)
