That frantic soup of sadness and madness
Tarun Tejpal’s new novel addresses existential questions with a mix of seriousness and humour
Author and journalist Tarun Tejpal, who wrote The Alchemy of Desire (2006), The Story of My Assassins (2010) and The Valley of Masks (2011), is back with a new novel, The Line of Mercy. He is in fine form, addressing existential questions with the mix of seriousness and humour that only a skilled craftsman is capable of. It runs into more than 750 pages. If you have the patience or luxury to deal with that, this book promises to be rewarding in more ways than one.
The tome comes a year after the trial court in Mapusa, Goa, acquitted Tejpal of all charges filed by the police, including sexual harassment and rape. The seven months he spent in prison until the Supreme Court granted him bail seem to have played a defining role in shaping the novel.
The Line of Mercy is set “in the thick air of a coastal town, inside the iron bars manufactured by the laws of men.” Rather than a story with a beginning, middle and end, what you must look out for is the cast of characters. They are not easy to label as villains because Tejpal has a substantial backstory for each one, a story that is a slap in the face of every stereotype, a story that evokes a range of emotions, a story that will make you wonder why we, as a society, are so enthusiastic about retributive justice. “Everyone inside the iron bars was innocent. Even those who had committed murder and rape – and shyly admitted to it – knew that they were innocent,” writes Tejpal. You might ask who gets to decide whether someone is innocent or not, especially with the kind of criminal justice system that we have in India. “Not in the crude language of the law and its makers but in the infinitely subtler script of karma. This is logic only those in hell – inside or outside the iron bars – ever know,” he adds. This needs to be read in context, for meaning is only provisional.
Some readers might stay away from the book as they believe Tejpal to be guilty despite the court’s decision exonerating him. Others might choose to read for the author’s ringside view of the hells that he might have personally seen. In either case, looking for moments that could precisely map fiction onto autobiography might be a futile enterprise; insulting not only to the writer’s intelligence but also the reader’s common sense. The book is more complex. It is also fairly gloomy but the romance, passion and comedy take the sharp edge off the darkness.
The Line of Mercy reminded me of three recent works of non-fiction that capture what life in jail looks like – hierarchies, routines, survival skills, economics of bribery, friendships and rivalries, and unforeseen kindnesses. Each one is excellent: Hamid Ansari’s book Hamid: The Story of My Captivity, Survival and Freedom (2020) co-authored with Geeta Mohan; Kafeel Khan’s The Gorakhpur Hospital Tragedy: A Doctor’s Memoir of a Deadly Medical Crisis (2021); and TJ Joseph’s A Thousand Cuts: An Innocent Question and Deadly Answers (2021), translated from the Malayalam into English by Nandakumar K. While the other authors are protagonists in their own books, Tejpal isn’t. His writerly gifts are deployed to give readers a fuller and deeper sense of those who have been banished by the law to the “frantic soup of sadness and madness” that they keep swimming and drowning in. Here, you meet a “hustling medical representative cutting sharp deals with doctors”, construction labourers caught for “snaring turtles from a swamp”, and men who
Tarun Tejpal 768pp, ~899 Harpercollins are insecure about their masculinity and suspect their wives are cheating on them.
This could be called “a novel of ideas” since the characters remain somewhat secondary to issues and debates. Tejpal’s narrative pauses every now and again to offer reflections that touch on things beyond his fictional universe. He devotes many pages to a discussion of the chaos that ensues when a love match is struck by heterosexual couples from different religious or caste backgrounds. They have to keep their passion in check if they want to avoid the wrath of elders who are all too willing to spill blood if that is the price to protect the “honour” of their forefathers.
The novel is fairly didactic but the prose is well crafted and compelling. It alternates between sublime and ludicrous, erotic and ghastly. “Men judge others to absolve themselves,” he writes. “There is no intoxicant in the world quite as heady as sanctimony… righteousness has the enduring warmth of an ever-regenerating banyan. It grows fresh limbs. It creates its own forest.” Tejpal finds new ways to speak old truths.
I found myself looking at the cover every time I took a break from reading. It is a painting by Amita Bhatt titled The Line of Mercy (2017), which reminded me of Pablo Picasso’s Guernica (1937), which memorialises the bombing of a Spanish village by the Nazis on behalf of General Franco. This seems pertinent as the rise of the Hindu right wing, and violence directed at Indian Muslims, are important themes for Tejpal. He shows us that ghettoization is as prevalent in prison as it is outside. The cell that Muslims are thrown into is called — no surprises here — Pakistan.
For me, the strongest part of the book is Tejpal’s digression on fame. He calls it the worst of all narcotics in the world. He writes, “The best people in the world are never known to anyone beyond whose lives they directly touch.” Humility is what marks them out; not the reach of their renown. This would be a good lesson for many us of to learn, especially do-gooders who cannot stop tweeting about every minor thing that seems an accomplishment.