Home » Reading & Literature » Indo-Anglian Fiction » Verdant Melodrama

Verdant Melodrama

© Mrinal Bose

In Hari Kunzru’s first novel THE IMPRESSIONIST, characters die or are killed just to ensure the protagonist’s onward journey. As a reader, you may find these deaths a little less than convincing, but the author does not really care.

Take, for example, the first scene in the novel. An Englishman and an Indian woman get together, not so much by a quirk of fate as by the author’s design, in a corner of India during a devastating storm accompanied by torrential rain. Despite the catastrophic weather – there was water all around, and the water level was still rising - they had no problem in a physical union. But what followed soon after was just macabre: the Englishman was swept away in the rushing water and met his death.

The second death was that of the woman. Beautiful as she was, her rich and influential family did not find it hard to marry her to a ‘ distinguished court pleader’. She gave birth to Pran Nath just in time. Well, she lived just long enough to complete her role as the mother of a child who was unfortunately the result of her illicit union with the Englishman.

Next was the death of the pleader who was really sort of cranky, and had demonstrated bizarre behavior in and outside of his professional life. Before his death, he along with others found out the truth about his ‘impure’ wife and her son. It was now easy for the family to throw Pran Nath out of the house.

The fourth, and the last death in the series, is that of Jonathan Bridgeman, an Englishman who is killed in a riot. It helps Pran Nath change in his final avatar in his continuous change from one transformation to another to yet another since his expulsion from home. He becomes Bridgeman, complete with his British Passport (with a smudged photograph, of course) which he recovered from the scene of the mayhem, and reaches England to claim, successfully, the funds left behind by his father.

So, four deaths and 288 pages later, things seem to fall in places. Jonathon is now relieved of his identity crisis, as there is no one around to question or suspect him in terms of his birth, race and nationality. Now the novel makes riveting reading: you detect no other inconsistencies and you are simply fascinated by the smart and vibrant prose, and occasional sparks of creativity. But rarely does the protagonist’s predicament touch us in a way it was supposed to.