The Death of Vishnu by Manil Suri

Review by Aparita

I am still confused. Since I am unsure of what Manil Suri had in mind when he decided to use Indian mythology as a main theme in his debut novel, I can't quite understand what larger purpose it serves in it. Of course, the fact that he uses several stories of Vishnu in his different incarnations ensures that the novel is infused with a sensibility that is inherently Indian. But other than the few issues raised because of this ploy, there did not seem to be any deeper significance to it other than the author's own fascination with the concept of the 'Trimurti' or the trinity of Brahma, Vishnu and Mahesh (Shiva).

This is not to say that the novel does not have some merit. If one puts aside the fact that Indian writing in English seems to have become a force unto its own, what with authors literally pouring out of the woodworks, (and there seems to be a thriving market for them and their works) it is good to see that there is a notion of Indian/South Asian discourse. Suri's novel does raise some issues pertinent to that discourse, sometimes consciously and sometimes unwittingly so. The fact that he borrows fairly heavily from ancient tomes such as the Gita and the Puranas, and touches lightly on the Koran, is something that is not often done in what is currently available in Indo-Anglian writing. The use mythology in that sense is interesting because it is something that is so germane to the existence of Indian sensibility that we are often unaware of it. For example, most of us know at least that bare essentials of the Ramayana. It is a story that serves various purposes - our version of a fairy tale told to children on a lazy afternoon or a sleepless night; our source of adages or morals; our explanation for various historical sites or festive events. The notion of myth is definitive of origins in that sense. In this novel about one apartment complex of Bombay, and its various inhabitants, that sense is invoked at a few instances.

The novel itself is steeped fairly heavily in the realistic mode made famous by Vikram Seth. It tells us the different stories of the Asranis, the Pathaks, the Jalals, the Tanejas, and other sundry characters like the maid, Short Ganga, the cigarettewallah, the paanwallah, and how they intersect with each other. Suri paints these characters and the lives that they lead with verve. He is good at capturing their fairly middleclass lives - the morning ritual of getting the milk, the promenades on Marine Drive, the ditsy socialites making small talk over a game of cards, the whole process of an arranged marriage. He is also good at pointing out the idiosyncrasies of the characters - Mrs. Asrani's consumption with jealousy at her ageing process, Mrs. Pathak's consternation when she fails in her attempt to make mayonnaise samosas, Kavita Asrani's dream-world full of Bollywood fantasies (replete with soundtrack and melodramatic scenes)… While amusing, these characterizations also raise issues of class and religion and the role they play in society.

In the middle of all these various brouhahas there is the narrative of Vishnu, the odd-job-man who is in throes of death, or so we are led to believe by the residents of the apartment complex. The hallucinatory daze of Vishnu, in which he imagines himself to be the different avatars of his namesake god, serves as both a unifying link, since the residents of the apartment complex are forever contemplating what to do with his seemingly dead body, and as a means to break from the realistic tone of the novel - both literally, as Vishnu's flights of fancies and his memories break into the framework of the novel at periodic junctures, and metaphorically, when the mythic dimension is invoked.

Though I had several problems with the novel itself - it is immensely exotic and at time confusing - it is nevertheless a departure from the usual immigrant theme that one is used to.