I never had, still don't have, the kind of money required to pack my bags and fly away to the many captivating spots of nature to heal from bad memories, or meet men and women, bond with them, strive for experiences that distract us. I even never had too many friends. And whichever friends were there I couldn't bring up before them my personal struggles for discussion. Therefore, since a very young age, to deal with my ghosts I've always turned to cinema, to books, to writers who could tell me stories, make me meet characters whose choices in life were as bad, show me that often man suffers, loses love, falls into the abyss of solitude and that his life is still worth something, atleast of becoming a story, despite terrible things happening in them all the time.
To
deal with the aftermath of a relationship, unforgettable and impossible in equal parts, I started to look for a book with the hope I
mentioned, to find my story in its pages,
only to be torn between two Booker winning masterpieces. Coetze's Disgrace
and Flanagan's ‘The Narrow Road to the Deep North’. I went for the
latter simply because of the subject it seemed to be about. I read, reread its
single liner blurb which went “In the despair
of a Japanese POW camp on the Burma Death Railway, surgeon Dorrigo Evans is
haunted by his love affair with his uncle’s young wife two years earlier”. Once I read this, I found it hard to be able to look beyond Flanagan’s
novel. Hence, it was not just because it had bagged the Booker in 2014
that the book found its way onto my shelf and into my heart.
The
story of TNRTTDN is an unmitigated account of the atrocity perpetrated on the
captives of the Burma
death railway. Flanagan describes it in the following words “For good reason, the
POWs refer to the slow descent into madness that followed simply with two
words: the Line. Forever after, there were for them only two sorts of men: the
men who were on the line and the rest of humanity. Or perhaps only one sort:
the men who survived the Line. Or perhaps, in the end, even this is inadequate.
Dorrigo Evans was increasingly haunted by the thought that it was only the men
who died on the line. He feared that only in them was the terrible perfection
of suffering and knowledge that made one fully human”
As
the railway is being constructed by hundreds of thousands of slaves, they are forced to work no matter how close
to starvation they are and no matter how sick they are. The slaves are beaten for hours on end. They suffer from cholera
and have to walk miles through the jungle before they start work, often
day and night. Towards the end some are crawling or dying. Thus, Flanagan’s
protagonist has to deal with two colossal and perpetual events of tragedy, the
casualties of the war and his lost love. The first one, the war, is everywhere
in Flanagan's novel. You live, suffer and die with the POWs. You go through
their starvation and share their desperate clinging on to each other in misery.
You feel the peeling of flesh under the whip and the fatal entry of bullet when
they fall. But their favourite doctor, who is saving them all the time, is facing another war within, the memories of his momentous relationship with Amy. The recounting of that short experience is incredibly
detailed. In those few pages Flanagan ensures that his readers understand why
even a short, momentary experience can command our discretion long after it is
over.
Dorrigo
Evans is soon to be married to Ella, but when his division is shipped out he is
deep in love with Amy, the lovely wife of his uncle Keith. Dorrigo's brief affair with Amy haunts him for the rest of his life. The memories of her
expressions, her beauty spot over her lips, their love making. They never set
him free even when he marches through war and tends to ghastly wounds and
diseases of the prisoners.
For
Dorrigo’s longing for Amy, Flanagan writes “Dorrigo’s life at the
King of Cornwall (his uncle’s hotel where he met Amy), which was measured in
hours and which could have added up to no more than a few weeks, seemed to be
the only life he had ever lived. Everything else was an illusion over which he
passed as a shadow, unconnected, unconcerned, only angry when that other life,
the other world wished to make claim on him, demanding that he act or think
about something, anything other than Amy’.
I believe that profound art is often sourced to suffering. So when I was greatly moved by TNRTTDN, this belief I subscribe to only got strengthened when I came to know that Flanagan's father was a prisoner in
Burma himself who died the day Flanagan finished his novel. The author has made it
clear that the book is a tribute to his father.
If
you have ever felt love that was so deep reaching and powerful and compelling
that it turned all those fiercely burning passions of your life into mere warmth
of candle flame, if you have known of the kind of love which wraps itself like
skin around your soul, if you have then had to live with no possibility of ever
getting that love and in the middle of despair if you have had to deliver
yourself to things which took you very far away from it, things that owned your
body without any meaning or heart, till you realized that there was nothing you
could have done, then Richard Flanagan's 'The Narrow Road to the Deep North' is
a must read for you.
The
book has made something beautiful out of things terrible as war and loss. By
the time you would have arrived at the final passages you’d have, with a lump
in your heart agreed with the rest of the blurb which says ‘Richard
Flanagan’s savagely beautiful novel is a story about the many forms of love and
death, of war and truth, as one man come of age, prospers, only to discover all
that he has lost’. This
book might just convince you that life is more than happiness, a normal
existence and being free. It is about having to break at life’s hands and still
strive to live. That as individuals, we have to walk very narrow roads
with great depths. The haiku of Kobayashi Issa mentioned in one of its pages will suffice to hint at the revelation one might encounter while and after
reading TNRTTDN.
"In
this world
We
walk on the roof of hell
Gazing
at flowers”
Very nice review.. rather a kind of great tribute to this great work of Richard Flanagan.
ReplyDeleteThank you Durgaji. I could have filled endless pages with what the book conveys. Reading it gave me such an experience.
DeleteThis is a book I kept on postponing to buy. Your review has made me rethink.
ReplyDeleteGo ahead Mr. Matheikal. Let us know your views.
Delete"In this world
ReplyDeleteWe walk on the roof of hell
Gazing at flowers”. loved these lines and your reviews, it is surely on my bucket list now.
It will reach the greatest depths of your being. Such is its portrayal.
DeleteGo for it Mansi.
After reading your review Anupam Ji, I also feel that this book will find its way into my heart. Let me try to read it as early as possible. Many assertions covered in your review strike a sensitive heart. Both life and truth are much more than what we believe them to be.
ReplyDeleteI have no qualms in conceding that the book carries a specific symbol of struggle which has striking resemblance with things I have experienced. And I havr even mentioned why in the beginning parapgraphs.
DeleteIn the end I can only agree with what you have said about love and truth.
Read the novel and see for yourself.
Thank you for your kind words Jitendraji
Sorry to read about Author's father. I guess that has given it more life and authentic value. I have seen many movies and read a few books on World War, but a mix of love is new to me. I will read it. Btw, I too find solace in movies and books for lack of someone who understands me the way I want.
ReplyDeleteThe book is outstanding in terms of the sheer levels of emotions it deals with.
DeleteBtw, we've never met or talked but we have known each other for a long time. Right from the days when I was finding my space in blogospere of which you were a bright star(you still are😊).
And I am still trying to find my space here and still hiding in pages and pages of words and all this time we have been scrambling with words to find what words may not suffice to describe.
Good to hear from you Saru.
Beautifully written review, Anupam. It feels alluring to get a hold of such kinds of books but I don't know if I have the courage to do so.
ReplyDeleteDear Nandhini,
DeleteIf you have written this comment (about having courage) for the reason I think you have then this novel is something you should read. Yes. It does require courage to read flashes and feelings so vividly written, ones that have the potential to mess with old wounds. The power of making you live the horrors or war and the absolute devastation of falling in ungettable love. But you know what, when you'll tremble through certain chapters of the story you'll understand the point of it all.
Let me know how your experience was.
Thanks for the compliment😊. And welcome to Reflections.
Forbidden love is so exciting yet it is so forbidden. Pain of separation is so real yet so full of possibility of what could have been. Sometimes I feel we subconsciously enjoy the agony that is why we keep remembering it.
ReplyDeleteSo aptly said Abhijitji. Thank you for visiting.
Delete